Before it burns, Charlie Springer’s home includes 18,000 vinyl LPS, 12,000 CDs, 10,000 45, 4,000 cassettes, 600 78S, 150 8 tracks, hundreds of signed music posters, and about 100 gold records It was there. The album alone took over the entire shelf walls of the family room, the other in the garage. On his desk was a set of Nirvana drumsticks and an old RCA microphone that Prince gave him in the recording session. prince. As far as he knows, the Neon Beach Boys sign is one of only eight remaining in the world and is on the dining table. His laundry room featured a Gibson guitar signed by the Everly brothers. A white stratocaster signed by Eric Clapton near his fireplace.
Last month, the night Eaton Fire broke out, Charlie took shelter at his girlfriend’s house. And when he returned, the remains of his house had been bleached by fire. The spot in the family room where the record collection was located was Dark Ash.
I know Charlie as much as I can remember. He and my father met for the record. In the late 1980s, Charlie was at a busy party in Hollywood Hills. Charlie whipped: “”you Fred Warekki? I’ve seen your name on the record. “My dad owned a Rock and Roll Instrument Shop. The musicians thanked the album for the gear (and emotional support) they provided during the recording session. Charlie is the national sales manager for Warner Bros. Records and of course he recorded it as it could rattle from the B-side of any record Walekki It appears again and again. Growing up, I thought all the songs I’d ever heard would be found on Charlie’s shelves. My friend Jim Wagner, who once ran Warner Bros. Records sales, merchandising and advertising, called it the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame West.
Charlie’s collection began when he was six years old. He asked his mother to get a record “about the dog.” No, it’s not that One – he wanted the 45 recently released single “Hound Dog.” He drove it with him in several states for the next 70 years before placing it on his shelves in Altadena. At the age of eight, he could cut his lawn, steal the snow from his hometown outside Chicago, and afford Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Six” and champion “Tequila.” When he was nine, he got Ray Charles’ “What I Say.” And when he was ten years old, he walked to a local record shop, whose owner, Lenny, sat on the floor, surrounded by a mountain of records. Each week, Rennie had to rearrange the wall records to reflect the order of the top 40 charts created by local radio station WLS. Charlie offered to help.
“What does that cost me?” asked Renee.
“Two Singles a Week.” Charlie continued with all these singles and a paper survey from WLS.
When he was 12, he bought his first full album: Surfing safariby the Beach Boys. His debut was named after Bob Dylan. and Green onionby Booker T. and MGS, he entered Wisconsin Seminary two years later and hoped to become a priest. There, he and his friends found a list of addresses for members of the Columbus branch of the Order of Milwaukee and sent a letter asking for a donation. The radio was contraband, but Charlie tapes what was under the chair next to his bed, and in the evening, 75 other students slept around him, but he had earphones I listened to WLS using “And I will hear the record, and I will go, Oh my god, I have to get this record. I I have it To. “The seminary could only go to town if strictly needed, so he wore glasses and ran between the optometrist and the five dimes. That’s how he got a few other Beach Boys records, the Kinks “I’m tired of waiting for you” and Lavin’s Spoonful “Daydream.”
Charlie dropped out of seminary in 1967 at the end of his third year. All records of these five dimes were in his governor’s room, but when he left, the governor was nowhere to be found. There, Charlie gets a ladder, sprinting through the transoms, and his collection, kept in two wooden boxes that previously contained oranges. (“Orange Crate held the album perfectly,” he told me. He then hitchhiked to San Francisco and grew his hair in time for the summer of love. He was a wall between the apartments. moved to a commune of sorts, a broken 16-unit apartment building, where he hangs Fillmore posters on electric poles around the Bay Area. He was a Jefferson plane, Champlin’s son, Grateful Dead. , or appeared psychedelic artwork promoting Sly and Family Stones. (He still had about 75 of those posters.) He worked for the Tower Records on the side, but he was I returned my salary to my boss. All the money went to records. When Morrison, Mitchell, Dylan and one of his favorites of the Beach Boys released a new album, he had a listening party for friends. He held. When he returned to Chicago, his music collection featured most of his cars. The record store he managed there listened to here about 20 new albums each day for viewers. Plays on: When Charlie hears Bruce Springsteen’s first album (two times ago Born to run), he thought it was such a hit, he locked the door to the store. “Until we sell five of these records,” he announced. “No one has left this shop.”
Next, Charlie worked for a music distribution company that began with a warehouse gig (Picker No. 9). Later on Warner Bros. Records, he worked with stores and radio stations to help artists sell and maintain enough music to get their big breaks. For sale Takin’ It’s on the streethe drove with the Doobie brothers so they could sign the album at a record store in Kansas City. To help Dire Straits get off to a start, he lobbyed radio stations and played his first single for about a year. He was also on the list of candidates for those listening to test presses for any pop or crackle new album before the company shipped the final version. Charlie held about 1,000 of these rare presses, including the Fleetwood Mac rumor And the prince Purple rain.
He moved to Los Angeles in the 80s, becoming Warner’s National Sales Manager, and in 1991 he purchased his home on Skyrun Drive, Altadena. Located in a hillside, the area smelled hay for its neighbor’s horses. Along the fence, in Bougainvillea and his garden were spectacular native oaks where our family sat together. He began placing thousands of albums on the shelves of the family room overlooking the tree.
Records were constantly playing at Charlie’s house. He recently covered the walls and ceilings of his bathroom on paper in a WLS survey that he began collecting as a child at his first record job. Every record he pulled off the shelf brought memories, he told me. And if he placed an album or memorabilia in his house, “it was a good story.”
Gold record from U2 on the wall next to the stairs: “All bands, when they start first, they’re a new band and who doesn’t know who they are? …I’m from Chicago We went up the U2 on our first album to Madison. They had a gig with about 15 people. Then we went to eat at an Italian restaurant. I returned to the restaurant a few years later But the same waitress was waiting for me. And she goes,Those people Was it U2? “I was “They were U2s back then and they’re U2s now.”
In the kitchen, the following poster of Jimi Hendrix playing power chords at the Monterey Pop Festival looks like this: “Hey, this new seal record will be in gold,” he announces. The Vice President of Finance said, “You shouldn’t say that. Why do you have such expectations?” And I said, “Because I know I’m going to go to gold in all my corpusules in my body. ”…I will make a bet for a dollar gentleman. About six weeks later, it’s gold. “At the next lunch he asked the financial executor to sign his dollar bills. Just then, label head Mo Ostin walked over to hear about their bets. “Mo said, ‘So Charlie, is there anything around the building you’ve always loved?’ I was like, ‘Well, Jim Marshall’s poster from Hendrix.’ And he says, “It’s yours.” ”
*Illustration source: RCA / Michael Ochs Archive / Getty; Stoughton Print / Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times / Getty; Warner Bros. / Aramie. The Sun Record/Aramie
