Any store would be thrilled to have a member of The Beatles browse their shelves. But when John Lennon would walk in to the West Village record store House of Oldies during the early 1970s, owner Bob Abramson had an extra reason to be glad. Source The New York Post - to read all click HERE
“He used to buy 45s by people like Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis for his jukebox quite frequently,” Abramson tells The Post. “If the bill came to $200, he would say, ‘Why don’t you make it $400 — just call Apple Records.’ So I would call [Lennon’s assistant and sometime lover] May Pang over there, and I’d get double the money! He loved the little guy — a man of the people.”
In the age of streaming — when record stores seem to close every other week — Abramson is bucking the trend. This year, he celebrates 50 years of business, relying on his loyal regulars to keep him afloat. “Most of my stuff dates from the 1950s to the 1990s, and I keep it all in very good condition,” he says. “My customers are very fussy!”
Over the years, he’s seen music-obsessed celebrities come and go (and return again). Back in the late ’70s, John Belushi would swing by (“my daughter was 10 years old, and she would wait on him”), George Carlin would do impromptu sets between crate digging (“his schtick was so funny — people would be mesmerized”), and Quentin Tarantino would seek out instrumentals for his movies.
Justin Timberlake, David Bowie, Steven Van Zandt and Mike Myers have also dropped in over the years. Meanwhile, Jimmy Page is still a regular: The Led Zeppelin guitarist maintains a deep love for the 1950s rock ’n’ roll and rockabilly that fascinated him as a child growing up in England.
“He buys a lot of really expensive first pressing albums,” says Abramson. “Gene Vincent is his favorite. Eddie Cochran, Elvis originals, too. Some of them are several hundred dollars each. Ninety-nine percent of the time, no one else recognizes him, which is good, because I want him to concentrate on buying records!”
