The view from The Tower

As store manager at Tower’s Wicklow Street branch, Clive Branagan is one of the key inspirations behind the company’s Irish success.

He joined Tower over seven years ago as a retail manager and has seen lots of changes since then. “Big time,” he laughs. “When I first joined we were part of a global brand, but about five years ago Tower in the UK and the USA closed, so we are now owned by local investors. I don’t think many are aware that we’re now indie Irish record retailers. But I think one of the main reasons we survived was the independence we had in the Irish operation, even when we were part of the international company. We were always free to buy in whatever stock we wanted, whereas in some similar companies there’s a central buying department which dictates what you stock irrespective of local tastes. That’s been one of the key strengths of Tower – having a really good feel for what fans who really know their music want.”
What have the other key changes been? “There’s now a tendency to leave important releases until September-October which crushes the big sales into a few months before Christmas. CD sales in general have dropped and video is gone. But then we’ve had the rise of the DVD. Music DVDs now sell far more than music videos ever did, and we now do a good business in vinyl records – which a few years ago we were told were like antiques! Obviously, illegal downloads hurt CD sales, but the internet has been a great way for music fans to discover new artists. While recorded cassettes have disappeared, we still do steady trade in recordable cassettes as well as recordable CDs and DVDs.”
If anything the pace of change is going to get quicker – that’s what makes the music industry an exciting one to work in. “One of the most interesting new developments is the Blu-ray disc,” Clive says, “which has been developed to allow recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video, as well as storing large amounts of data. It’ll have over five times the storage space of today’s DVDs so that will have a major impact when it takes off. But it’s worth remembering that in Ireland it took a long time for DVD to take off and now they’re a huge part of our turnover.”
Also ringing the tills these days at Tower, according to Clive, is the store’s electronica section – he singles out the likes of Lali Puna, Ulrich Schnauss and Mum – as well as their psych and prog sections. As Clive puts it, “Weird music has always found a home at Tower, and maybe it reflects the kind of staff we employ!” But they’ve done some tempting deals with labels such as Ace, which has a superb soul and blues catalogue. In fact good value is of the essence!
“We’ve got a lot of Neil Young and Tom Waits, for example, at €6.99,” Clive says. “Waits’ catalogue has been doing incredibly well since he played Dublin. The same applies to Leonard Cohen, a lot of whose back catalogue we also have at €6.99. We have albums from the Sanctuary label selling at €15 for two, including The Kinks. But the CDs we offer at such great bargain prices are probably not the obvious ones, so we always tend to offer something a bit different from other shops.”
The Wicklow Street store has also had its fair share of celebrity customers over the years. Joseph Plunkett, who now manages the O’Connell Street branch, remembers a visit from Sean Lennon and his crew who were in Dublin for a gig, including Family Man Barrett, who played bass with Bob Marley. “Actually, Family Man was really chuffed to be recognised,” recalls Plunkett.
Very importantly, the Wicklow Street Tower Records has built a reputation for supporting Irish artists. “A high percentage of our staff, both now and over the years, have been in bands themselves, so supporting local music is something that comes naturally to them. We love to see a local act doing well, whether it’s U2 or The Script or Glen Hansard.”