However, Supreme said it was painted onto the building and couldn’t be removed, and agreed to paint it over. When Supreme wouldn’t agree to have a Tower Records presence inside the store, Tower asked for the sign, offering to pay to have it sent to Brooklyn. To avoid confusion between the brands, a Tower Records spokesperson tells Billboard via email that Tower granted Supreme permission to use the existing Tower Records sign, royalty-free, provided there was a “corner of the store selling a curated selection of Tower music and/or branded merchandise a Tower listening bar and/or joint Supreme-Tower record launches and events.”
Original tower records series#
Now, the famed music chain has plans to revive its physical presence, starting with the opening of a physical location this summer in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, followed by a series of pop-up shops involving collaborations with artists, brands and labels.Ģ017: What Does Supreme's Billion-Dollar Valuation Mean for Music's Hypebeasts? With the rise of vinyl sales in the past couple of years, however, Tower Records, now-owned by Dutch businessman Roald Smeets (who purchased the brand and IP out of the bankruptcy proceedings), bounced back in 2020 as an online store. “I love the name Tower Records on the building, and I was involved in trying to keep the name up and Supreme wanted to keep the name up,” says Luchs. Seeking to pay homage to the location’s legacy, Supreme, named for John Coltrane album A Love Supreme, wanted to keep the Tower Records sign on the building, says real estate broker and Newmark Knight Frank vice-chair Jay Luchs, who brokered the deal (and brokered both the Gibson lease and the sale from Barket to the current owners). The building remained without a tenant for two years until December 2020, when Supreme signed a 10-year lease with an additional five-year option. By that time, Barket and his partners had sold the property for $35 million to new owners who registered the property under the name Tower Records Square, LLC. In 2018, Gibson declared bankruptcy and the lease was voided. The beloved Tower Records sign was painted back onto the building in 2015 for the premiere of Colin Hanks‘ celebrated documentary All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records. Toward the end of 2014, iconic guitar brand Gibson leased the building for 15 years and painted it beige. Throughout the years, preservationists have lobbied unsuccessfully to have the building declared a local cultural landmark, but those ultimately failed with a unanimous West Hollywood Preservation Commission vote in November 2013 not to grant historic status.Ģ018: Tower Records Founder Russ Solomon Dies at 92 From 2008–2013, Live! On Sunset followed, painting it white with silver signage, and then in 2014 short-term tenant Flipagram painted the building orange. In 2007, Warner Brothers Records leased it to promote the White Stripes’ Icky Thump album, painting it the band’s trademark red and white.
While those plans, which were scaled back but ultimately rejected twice by the West Hollywood City Council, were being developed, the building was leased to various companies for pop-up events. “I took pictures and went back to my office and called Gensler and said, ‘Make it look like this.’ We wanted to develop something special. “I was walking down the street and I had a direct view of this bandstand which was so whimsical,” he says. Over the phone from his Chicago office, Barket says his vision for the property was inspired by the Frank Gehry-designed bandstand in Chicago’s Millennium Park. A year later, Chicago-based developer Sol Barket bought the property, along with two business partners, under the name Centrum Properties for $12 million (investment firm Angelo Gordon joined the partnership in 2010), with plans to demolish the building and erect a five-story retail complex with two video billboards and a supergraphic. In 2006, when the famed music chain filed for bankruptcy for a second time (the first was in 2004) and shuttered all of its approximately 200 locations, the iconic Tower Records sign was painted over.
This isn’t the first time the historic building’s appearance has changed, though. A view of the former Tower Records building in West Hollywood, under construction for a new Supreme location.
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