Shelf Life: Rough Trade West

Just an average day...

Rough Trade West is – it’s fair to say – a bit of an institution.

Clutching onto the same location since 1983, the shop has earned global fame through its eclectic choice and unique atmosphere. Knowledgeable staff oversee every purchase, with London whizzing by blindly outside.

As part of our Shelf Life series, Clash decided to hook up with Rough Trade West hero Sean to discuss their average day.

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What’s the first thing you do after you open?
Nigel comes in from Oxford every day, he’s the boss, and he has a massive shit in the morning. Every morning, without fail. So you could say he’s as regular as clockwork. He gets that out the way, I get in earlier about half 8 and start answering emails from people and then we open up around 9:30am and then get the coffees. Then wait for the local loonies to come in.

I imagine the clientèle is hugely varied. Any characters in recently?

We have a guy who’s 81 I think, his name is Cyril – he comes in two or three times a day and buys CDs. He buys anything from Beach House and The XX to Frank Sinatra. He doesn’t care, as long as he likes it and he listens to everything at the counter. He knows all our names.

Does he get you to stick it on the shop stereo?

He listens to it on the headphones and starts rocking out. He’s pretty much daily. Then there’s a local homeless man called Floyd with mental health issues, who comes in and puts the headphones on, bangs his head a couple of times and we ask him to leave. There’s so many regular people.

How do you deal with rowdy customers? Is that a problem you get in Rough Trade?

We don’t really get them in Rough Trade but if we get anyone leery we just beat the fuck out of them. Just deal with it!

Who was the last person you had to chuck out?

The last person we had to chuck out actually was Josh T Pearson. He just wouldn’t shut up. He did an instore here because his album was our album of the year and he wouldn’t shut up, so we had to like…”You’ve got to go now, byyyyye!” Then this couple from Spain turned up and they missed him, so he gave them a hug and took them to the corner bar and carried ion drinking. So he was the last one. He’s a nice man.

There’s always music being played in-store – is that a fairly democratic process or do people tend to take charge of things?

No, we all take a go at playing what’s out there. We tend to play things that are sellable rather than brand new things, although we do play brand new things when we want to sort of guage what interest there is in something. Like, for instance, two weeks ago we had the Bobby Womack album on, so we had that a couple of times and and sure enough a lot of people asked what it was and they like: “oh great.” You can sort of gauge how well you’re going to do with it from that, the public are the greatest gage of what is popular of course. I mean…it’s not just…everyone thinks they have amazing taste blah blah blah, but everyone has…so have the public.

Do you think you can drive sales of an album by playing it in-store?

Yes, 100%. I mean, for instance, we sell that new Damien Jurado album, like hand over first because my boss Nigie loves it. He doesn’t stop playing it. I could fucking sing every song to you if you wished, but i don’t think anyone would want to hear that. We’ve sold, probably in the west London shop, 200 of that record. Just from mere playing. The last one we probably sold 10, but because he likes it so much. That is the best way to sell things.

So Nigel’s routine is he comes in, has a shit, puts an album on several times, sells about twelve copies.

Then lots of west London yummy mummies come in and buy the Damien Jurado album for their dinner party off him, and everyone’s happy!

There are a lot of yummy mummies.

There are. In fairness, they like music as well and they don’t care. The thing is about them people is they don’t care what’s written in magazines, they don’t care about blogs, they just care about the purity and actual sound of it. There’s something to be said for that, all of us people in the music industry, we’re full of shit, really. When something comes out or some new band, you’ve already got a view on it. Like Savages, everyone’s really into Savages, everyone’s got a view on it. The yummy mummies, they don’t care about Savages. When they get an album they might hear it and they’ll say “I like that.” There’s a purity to that.

Quick stop on your lunch break – there’s a lot of choice in West London, where do you go?

We normally go to a place called Mr Christians, which is posh. They do a £4 deal with a sandwich, crisps and a posh drink. We’re all pretty much in there and the people from there shop in here as well. We get nice free coffees from the Coffee Plant as well. It’s all community based around here, it’s more community based in a lot of places.

A classic record shop question, but you must get a lot of odd requests with people in requesting records – can you think of any recently?

There’s this 75 year old Caribbean guy who’s lived in west London for years and years, and (puts on Caribbean accent) he speaks like that… yah man… and he’s really hard to understand, and he buys reggae and Caribbean stuff, and the other day he came in and bought The Birthday Party, which shocked us all. It was like: “are you sure you know what you’ve got?” He was like: “yeah maaaan!” He took it away and we were like, “did you like it?” He was like “…not really.” Apparently, because he lived in the area, he’d heard of them and thought he’d give it a listen. So that was pretty odd.

Do you have any words of advice for people who want to get into the record store game who go into Rough Trade and say “I’d love to work there.”

Be prepared to eat £2.50 meals from Tesco everyday. The wages in retail are terrible and there’s not much glory, but it’s a good laugh. We definitely have a good time here, and as much as we take the piss out of everyone we appreciate them as well. We have a lot of customers who…you know everything about them, because they just come in and battle on for ages. Likewise, we’re quite a big sports shop, Nigel and the bosses here go to the cricket and they take people with them, and we all like football and end up talking about that a lot of the times. There’s a few customers, there’s this guy called Ben who supports Arsenal who doesn’t come in for days after they’ve lost, and rightfully so. But he should shut up about football, he’s been saying Wenger should be sacked for ages.

Have you ever had anyone famous come in and bought something that you thought, “that’s a bit bizarre.”

We get a lot of famous customers, but it’s a bit weird talking about them really. We try not to do that because they come in Rough Trade to be anonymous because they don’t want to be famous, they want to buy records like other people and we’ve got lots and lots of them who…one I would say was…Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers who asked for the shop to be closed. Not because he was famous, but because he was going to be late. He said “would you mind staying open just for me?” So we were like yeah, that’s alright. He spent a lot of money and was very friendly, and when he left he said “oh, do you want to be on the guestlist for V Festival?”, because they were playing there. Chris went, who was working, “yeah, yeah, yeah!”, so he was like “here’s my managers number, ring him.” When we rang and said “can we be on the guestlist?” he said “oh yeah, he told me about that.” So it was one of those things that’s really wholesome as well. Paul Weller is a regular customer and he had his photo taken for…the Guardian, maybe? I can’t remember, one or the others. But he buys records and he’s interested in stuff. I like people like that, who are still genuinely interested in hearing stuff and not being stuck at home listening to classics, they buiy new bands. But there are so many of them that are coming here.

This is for a series of articles profiling independent record shops across the country…

That shouldn’t take you very long.

It’s a dying breed, but there are a number of them still around… still flying the flag. Do you have any particular favourites in London?

Well, I quite often go to… there’s a second hand shop in west Wickham called Rollin’ Records, which is just on the outskirts of London. It’s a really great second hand shop with a great selection. It’s a proper record shop, you go in for a chat and all that kind of stuff. There’s that new one in Dalston – Kristina – I go and hang out there and have a laugh. I just don’t see other record shops as competition, I see them as good things. I would rather there be more record shops in the world than phone shops and fucking shoe shops. That’s all Portobello road is now: phone shop, shoe shop, phone shop, shoe shop…it’s bull shit. Everyone’s got shoes and phones, surely. You’d have thought they did, but obviously not. But if I go on holiday I go in record shops, that’s what I do. It’s a bit sad.

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Rough Trade site.

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