HMV (Sutton)

Name: Cat Stuijt
Comment: Yes, I was the manager there - I remember it well - what a hellhole but loads of fun - we had a break-in one night and I attended the alarm callout - I got arrested as the safe key on my shop keys chain was soooo big and long that the police thought I had a gun!

Name: James Hamblin
Comment: I remember buying Bottom Live on VHS from there.

Name: Nigel Rapley
Comment: Virtually all my record collection, through the 1980s, came from that shop and I still have every one of them.

Name: David Hayward
Comment: Bumped into (quite literally) Phil Collins in there!

Name: Kelly Rogers
Comment: I bought my first Pet Shop Boys album from there with my dad!

Name: Anne Barnett
Comment: I queued to meet Paul Young there in 1983 when he was doing a signing for his No Parlez album.

Name: John Howell
Comment: My ‘go to’ record store, particularly in the early to mid-1980s. Most of my record collection came from there.

Name: Mark Straker
Comment: I worked there from mid-1985 until 1995, then moved within the company. It was a great place to work with great and knowledgeable staff.

Name: Lisa Lloyd
Comment: I remember when we met Paul Young there, and Phil Fearon.

Name: Charlie O'Connor
Comment: HMV opened the year that Wherever I Lay My Hat by Paul Young was number one, because he was a special guest there, I met him and got the 7", 12" and album signed! The DJ Gary Crowley was there too.

Name: Clare Houghton
Comment: Fave shop on a Saturday - spent most of my pocket money in there. I remember they showed Michael Jackson’s Thriller video (1982) one Saturday before everyone had access to MTV etc. and the staff turned all the lights off in the shop. I recall a bit of screaming from me and my friend (we were very young at the time).

Comments

Trust the Wizards

06 Jun 2023 at 10:22

30 years ago this month a naïve 17-year-old boy from a rural village in Sussex started his first full-time job among the bright lights of Guildford! I’d been working Saturdays and school holidays in Comet on the top floor of Debenhams. The bloke behind the nearby Virgin Records counter got fed up of me constantly asking him if there were any jobs going there and told me to try HMV. Some of my peers sneered as they boasted of A-levels they’d actually passed and prepared for their new lives at university. But as far as I was concerned I’d landed myself a dream job surrounded by music every day, what could be better than that? I worked there for four happy years, during which my musical tastes and knowledge broadened exponentially. I gradually started to 'listen without prejudice' and stopped being such an indie music snob.

https://trustthewizards.com/2018/08/17/the-hmv-years-1988-1992/