Name: Paul
Comment: Cut-outs and Portuguese pressings... money taken by Morrissey.
(22 January 2013)
Name: Gareth
Comment: Fantastic to see that all-too-familiar, if long-lost carrier bag again!
I do have one stowed away in the attic, containing a reel-to-reel tape of an old Kenny Everett radio show.
Ah the memories! Their sales were legendary and you'd get a free bag of peanut M&Ms with every purchase, years before they went on sale in UK shops. It's a gym nowadays, owned by Duncan Bannatyne (or whatever his name is), the Scots 'Dragon's Den' fella.
(3 August 2012)
Comment: I loved Yanks, 1982/83 when I moved to Hulme. Bargains galore. All US cut-outs and cheap. I got my whole Curtis Mayfield, Bootsy Collins, Funkadelic albums in there for 79p each. One time I bought a David Bowie 'Lifetimes' promo for £4.99 - this was a lot at the time. About a week later the same record was going for £200 in the NME classifieds. They had a bunch of them in Yanks - should've bought the lot.
A bit later in 1983 they opened another branch underneath the Arndale Centre but this never seemed to have the right vibe. That basement was amazing though. Wish I had a time machine. Oh yeah - their cheapest section was 29p each or 5 for 99p.
(16 April 2015)
The following is taken from Morrissey's Autobiography (pp 119-120):
"Yanks is a messy record shop somewhere behind the old Gaumont Cinema on Oxford Road. It is a large, damp cellar stacked with cut-price US deletions, and it is here that I ring the till for a few months – wrapped in a heavy overcoat, as the cellar quite naturally has no heat."
Name: Steve Carter
Comment: Loved Yanks, used to go there every Saturday from about 1978 onwards. It also gets a mention in Tim Burgess's book Tim Book Two: Vinyl Adventures from Istanbul to San Francisco.
(25 January 2017)
Name: Nick Clarkson
Comment: Yanks was superb, I spent so much time in there. Strangely the story about the David Bowie - Lifetimes promo resonates as I bought Kiss Alive II there with the misprinted rear sleeve that added extra tracks which didn't appear on the album. (I bought it because I thought it was a different version of the album that I already had.) There were a few copies of the misprint in stock and now it's seen as one of the holy grails as far as Kiss collectors are concerned. Alas! I sold mine ages ago, pre-internet days, and had no idea of its value.
(2020)
Name: Carole Smart
Comment: In 1978/79 I was in HMV on Market Street in Manchester (the old one ) with my ex-husband. To our amazement David Johansen of The New York Dolls/David Johansen Band walked in with his band who were playing a gig in Manchester that night. We got talking to him and he was looking for Sandie Shaw albums and other female vocalists. We took them to Yanks Records and he was in his element, couldn't believe the selection of sixties artists in there. Always loved that record store, later Power Cuts which was a regular haunt for us... think David Johansen was pretty impressed as well.
(2022)
