On Bill Brewster and the meaning of record collecting

One lovely thing about being known for your hobby – in this case, collecting records – is that people sometimes get in touch and alert you to a collection in need of a loving new home. It might be the inventory of a defunct record shop or a radio station relieving itself of 100,000 records in its archive. Sometimes photographs do the rounds on social media and people will copy you in to say, “Got any room for these?” And, of course, my instinct at such times is to show them a photo of my record room, packed floor to ceiling with records and CDs. It’s been fun getting to this point, but right now, if I don’t operate a one-in, one-out policy, then it’ll me that’s out. Forever.

Bill Brewster

And so to the bewildering irony of finding myself in a situation where strangers tweet me, thinking that I might be in a position to “rescue” entire collections from separation. I suspect they’re imagining a version of 1983 TV movie Who Will Love My Children? – in which a mother diagnosed with terminal cancer has to find loving new families for her ten children while she’s still able to do so. In a film made up of ten harrowing goodbye scenes and one death, there’s a temptation for anyone emotionally wedded to their record collection to imagine that records are also a little bit like children and must be kept together lest the pain of separation cause them to warp. If I sound like I’m taking the piss, I’m really not. A collection put together by one person is a chronicle of a life. It’s a diary spanning decades. It’s a soundtrack to a film far more complicated and nuanced than Who Will Love My Children. To disperse it would surely be like taking the only copy of a great novel, cutting out every sentence and sending each one to a different recipient. Wouldn’t it?

Well, that’s certainly how I feel about my record collection right now. I imagine that’s how Bill Brewster felt about his collection for the longest time. You probably don’t need me to tell you who Bill is, but just in case you do, Bill is one of the greatest DJs of his generation. Over the past five decades, he’s amassed a mythically vast collection; a history of music of all genres; thousands of records whose only common feature is that, when played at the right time, the room goes crazy. I have Bill to thank for turning me on to imperishable classics like Luther’s Funky Music (Is A Part of Me), Marti Caine’s Love The Way You Love Me and The Love by Linus Loves. Just over a year ago, I turned up to Kings Cross audiophile bar Spiritland where Bill was DJing that night. Bill’s set wasn’t due to start for another hour. We chatted over coffee and he told me that he had just sold virtually every single one of his 13,000 records. For personal reasons that he would later go on to write about for a beautiful column in Mixmag, Bill had decided to declutter his life and continue to DJ using memory sticks. 

It was, in its way, a moment comparable to hearing the news that the Conservatives had taken the traditional unsupplantable Labour stronghold of Blyth Valley. As startling as the news that an art installation by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which consisted entirely of a real banana duct taped to a wall, had sold for around $120,000 dollars. (and then, when he duct-taped another banana to a wall, he sold that one for the same amount too). But once the shock had died down, another thought rolled silently into my skull. Why couldn’t he have told me first? Why on earth didn’t Bill Brewster think that I wouldn’t like take a bank load in order to procure his 13,000 records? But then came a second realisation. What would it really mean for me if I suddenly owned Bill’s record collection? 

The weird and unexpected answer is: not as much as I would like it to. There would be no memories attached to these records. No back stories behind their arrival in my life. No distracted smiles at the recollection of sitting on the bus and pulling them out of the record shop bag. No proustian rushes at the thought of the girls I’d tried to impress with these acquisitions. Sure, I’d happen upon some Isley Brothers or Bar-Kays gem that wowed the assembled revellers at Nicky Siano’s fabled Brooklyn club The Gallery; a Patti Labelle deep cut that Bill himself might have played at the legendary Low Life nights he hosted with Frank Broughton. But mainly, I think I’d feel like a tortoise with two shells. As realisations go, that’s a sobering one. You grow up thinking that you want to procure every great piece of music committed to vinyl. It’s a nice dream. But it’s no less of a dream than wanting to eat a meal at every great restaurant on the planet. And that’s when you realise what it’s always been about. It’s not just about owning the record. It’s about what happened to you when it entered your life. That’s strictly non-transferable.