My Love Affair With Record Shops.

I fell in love in 1971. Not with a person  that came later, usually accompanied by emotional turbulence and the occasional need to apologise for “misunderstandings” involving fondue. No, my first true love was a record shop. And like all great romances, it began with a single moment of reckless passion: the purchase of T. Rex’s Hot Love.

To understand the significance of this, you must picture me as I was then: a young man with hair that believed it had diplomatic immunity from grooming, marching into a record shop with the swagger of someone who had saved up actual money  coins, mind you  for the express purpose of buying a seven‑inch disc of pure glam‑rock glory. This was the early ’70s, when trousers were flared, collars were aerodynamic, and Marc Bolan was legally classified as a fire hazard due to excessive sparkle.

Record shops in those days were not the sleek, minimalist, “curated experience” boutiques you see now, where a man with a moustache that looks like it has its own podcast will sell you a reissued album for the price of a small hatchback. No. Record shops back then were chaotic, dusty, slightly sticky shrines to noise. They smelled of cardboard, teenage ambition, Juniper juice (Hippy oil) and whatever the manager had for lunch. They were staffed by people who looked like they had been born inside a stack of LPs and had never fully emerged.

And I adored them.

Buying Hot Love was like being handed the keys to adulthood. I marched up to the counter, slapped down my coins,  Fifty pence worth and the man behind the till  who had the expression of someone who had seen civilisation collapse several times already  nodded with the solemnity of a priest blessing a marriage. “Good choice,” he said, which in record‑shop language is the equivalent of being knighted.

From that moment, I was hooked.

Record shops became my natural habitat. While other people spent their weekends doing sensible things like “studying” or “maintaining relationships,” I was elbow‑deep in the H–N section, hunting for treasures. I learned the sacred rituals: the slow flip through the racks, the sideways tilt to check the spine, the discreet but judgemental glance at what the person next to you was buying. (If it was The Best of Goodies, you moved away. Quickly.)

There was always that one guy every shop had him who would stand in the corner listening to something so obscure it probably didn’t exist yet. He’d look at you with pity, as if your taste in music indicated you were one poor decision away from joining a cult. I loved that guy. He made the whole experience feel like a quest.

And the staff! Record‑shop employees were the original search engines, except with more sarcasm and less accuracy. You’d ask for a specific album and they’d respond with something like, “We had it, but then it sold,” as if this were a shocking and unreasonable turn of events. Sometimes they’d guide you to something even better. Sometimes they’d guide you to something that sounded like a washing machine having an existential crisis. It was all part of the magic.

Even now, decades later, walking into a record shop flips some internal switch. I become that 1971 kid again, pockets jangling, heart pounding, ready to fall in love with whatever I find in the racks. Streaming services are convenient, yes, but they don’t smell right. They don’t have the thrill of discovery, the weight of a sleeve in your hands, or the possibility that you might accidentally buy something life‑changing because the cover art looked like it was designed by a caffeinated wizard.

Record shops are time machines, sanctuaries, and treasure chests. And it all started with T Rex's Hot Love  the record that launched a lifelong affair. I still have it. I still play it. And every time I do, I’m back in that shop, hair wild, coins ready, falling in love all over again.