美国国家公共电台 NPR Tower Records Founder Russ Solomon Has Died At Age 92

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The founder¹ of Tower Records has died. Russ Solomon was 92 years old. He started selling records in his father's drugstore and built a chain that was mecca for many in the days when you bought music by flipping² through the albums or tapes in a bin³. Here's NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas.

ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE⁴: Russ Solomon opened his first stand-alone store in 1960 in Sacramento, Calif. By its peak in the 1990s, Tower had nearly 200 stores in places as far-flung as Tokyo and London, with sales of more than $1 billion. Music nerds loved Tower because you could find everything there decades before streaming services made access to music instant. Bruce Springsteen raved⁵ about the story in "All Things Must Pass," director Colin Hanks' 2015 documentary about the chain.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALL THINGS MUST PASS")

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: If you came into town, you went to Tower Records.

TSIOULCAS: But in 2006, Tower declared bankruptcy⁶. Solomon and his team didn't foresee the digital revolution. People were starting to buy downloads. File-sharing sites like Napster were becoming common. And big-box stores like Walmart and Best Buy sold popular CDs on big discounts. Tower Records just couldn't compete. Even after his chain's collapse⁷, Russ Solomon couldn't stay away from the album bins⁸. Before he finally retired⁹, he and his wife ran a little record store back in Sacramento for a few years. His motto was, no music, no life. Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR News, New York.