Roy Hall is the founder of Music Hall, the importer of the turntables and components under that name, as well as brands like Creek and Epos. Music Hall began in 1985 and established itself as a provider of excellent-sounding, sensibly priced audio gear. Copper readers may know him from his articles for the magazine.
In this first of two parts, Roy talks about his formative musical years, some early audio experiments, meeting up with Ivor Tiefenbrun (Linn), Mike Creek and others, the romance of the guitar, the beginnings of Music Hall, an unexpected relationship with Wharfedale, and a whole lot more.
Frank Doris: Let’s start with the obvious questions: What are your first musical memories, and how'd you get hooked on music and hi-fi?
Roy Hall: We had a gramophone at home and I was about nine years old and I heard a piece of music on the radio and I really fell in love with it. I asked my father to buy me the [record], it was a 78 at the time. It was the March Militaire by Schubert. I got that record and I played it, I don't know, a hundred times. I played it all the time to the point where my parents went crazy. In those days, if you had an old-fashioned gramophone, if you left the arm off the support, it just repeated. That was my first real musical memory.
Next musical memory, which is I've often thought as maybe a forerunner to Music Hall, was…in post-war Britain, [people were] very poor. There used to be lots of the equivalent of garage sales, yard sales, things like that. And I came across a raw loudspeaker, just a raw loudspeaker. Don't remember who made it. I knew that my gramophone had an output for another speaker. So I got some wire, tied it on because I didn't [know how to] solder or anything. I had about maybe six feet of wire. And I would put the speaker on a table, and I would listen in the middle. I called it “stereo” because between a proper speaker in the [gramophone] and a raw speaker outside, I got two totally different sounds in sync. No one else listened to it but me, but it piqued my interest in audio.
And then after that, I bought records. 78s at the time, and eventually 45s in the early '60s. Having grown up in Britain, I knew about the Beatles long before you guys did. I have a Beatles story if you're interested.
FD: Sure. Can't get enough.
RH: My best friend at school, his father was the manager of the Odeon Theatre in Glasgow. That's where the Beatles would perform. When they [first] became popular, they were just a regional band going around. This is before they came to America and became a world sensation. So they would come to Glasgow frequently. And one day my friend says, “look, the Beatles are in town. Why don't you come with me? We'll watch them from backstage and you'll meet the Beatles.” And I was a 14-year-old kid full of weird feelings and embarrassment and shyness and sh*t like that.
And I refused. I refused to go see them. I was too embarrassed to go. I don't know why I couldn't. The idea of being [near] a celebrity was overwhelming for me. And over a period of a year or so, he asked me three times and I never went. So that's my non-Beatles story.
There is one aside: he told me that it was always young girls who came to the show. He said after the show was over, the whole theater stank of piss. He said the teenyboppers screamed so much that they peed their pants. His father would complain [and] they had to get cleaners to clean it up. It was a mess. There's my Beatles trivia for you.
FD: There's a story I would've never imagined.
RH: I don't think there'd been anyone since Frank Sinatra where the women got so turned on.
FD: My mother was a huge Sinatra fan. She used to see him at the Paramount. Maybe my father was a little jealous.
RH: Well, my wife told me about Frank Sinatra because we listen to a lot of him. We even have a Frank Sinatra channel on Sirius [XM] in the car. She’s a big fan of him, and what she said was, “When he sings, he's singing to me.”
He's not singing to men. So we get a wee bit jealous. But when a woman hears Frank Sinatra singing, he's not singing to an audience, he's singing to that woman. And it moves them in some way. So that was his appeal. It wasn't just…I mean, the guys were, of course, he had a broad appeal amongst everyone. But his appeal initially when he was younger and had that thinner voice was that the women went crazy for him, because he was talking to them, and no one else was doing [that] at that time. He had that special quality.
After [the Beatles era], there was nothing really much except that I joined a group called Habonim, and I was about 11 years old. Habonim was a Jewish Zionist group, a youth movement with the idea of going to Israel.
I walked into the hall that belonged to Habonim. And I heard guitar music, and went to [find] the source of it. On the stage is a guy playing guitar very nicely. And below him at his feet is a woman looking adoringly at him while he's singing. I said to myself, “That's for me.” I convinced my father to lend me money. I went out and bought an acoustic guitar. I then learned to play guitar and play well enough that I could sing songs with the Habonim. I became a musician. (I lost all my ability to play over time.)
When I met Rita, my wife, she came to Scotland and I took her out for a drink to a place called the Kiwi Lodge, which was in the edge of the Fenwick Moors going down toward the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea. It was a lovely June night, and we had some drinks. And I said, “Do you want to go somewhere beautiful?” And she looked at me as if it was idiot. She said, “More beautiful than this?” And I took her down to the edge of Loch Lomond. In June, in Scotland, it doesn't get dark. It gets twilight for a few hours and then around about two o'clock it starts getting light again.
I took her down to the edge of Loch Lomond, and she said to me facetiously, “A fire would be nice.” She didn't know that I'd been camping since I was a young boy with the Habonim. So I went to the car, grabbed some catalogs, and grabbed my guitar, which I kept there for emergency purposes only, and made a fire, and then sang songs to my bride to be.
I think she fell in love with me that night. And it all started with me going in [to that hall] and seeing this guy [playing the guitar] having a girl look adoringly at him.
FD: At one point in my life, I realized that any woman who ever gave me the time of day had heard me play guitar first. So on my first date with my wife, I made sure that my guitar was there. She walked in, and I mean, it was love at first sight. After a while she said, “Hey, they tell me you can play anything.” I mumbled something. Then she said, “Can you play “Sholom Aleichem?” I'm like, “Sure, of course I can!” I'd never played it in my life. I had no idea. So I stumbled my way through it. Well, it was only…
RH: Three chords.
FD: Or so. And we've been married since 1991. The magic of the guitar!
RH: You still married?
FD: Yep.
RH: Then it worked. Anyway, to get back to…
FD: We can go on as many tangents as we want.
RH: Fast forward. I had lived in Israel for four years. On the way back from Israel, I stopped in Scotland on my way to America. I met Ivor [Tiefenbrun] from Linn Products who I’d known since we were neighbors in Glasgow as young kids. Eventually we both moved to a new neighborhood, and by coincidence we lived around the corner from one another. Ivor’s father had installed a very high-quality system in his house, and Ivor and I would listen to music on it regularly, mostly classical.
He suggested that when I went to America, why not set up an American company, a division of Linn, and make products in America? And I said to Ivor, “You're my oldest, closest friend. I'll never work for you. I love you, but I'll never work for you.”
I got a job in Macy's, got fired, got fired at Bloomingdale's…Abraham and Strauss didn't fire me, but they were very happy when I left. I went to Bambergers, and Bambergers didn't fire you, they just made your life miserable. After a few years of this, I'd [still] been in touch with Ivor and I said, “Do you still want to do this?” And he said yes. I quit Bambergers before they could ease me out. Me with my big mouth and corporate culture just didn't work.
So anyway, so the net result is I set up a company. We found a premise on Bond Street in Manhattan off Lafayette Street. And we started making Linn loudspeakers under license for Linn products. We formed a company called Isobarik Corporation. We had that for four years. Unfortunately, the deal was that I would supply Canada and America with loudspeakers, but I had to keep parity with the British price; otherwise, why would they buy from me?
So what happened was the pound kept dropping. It was a bad time for the pound. It kept dropping in value, and Ivor wasn't sophisticated enough to have hedged his bets by buying something in America. There's a way of doing it [where] if you're worried about currency [fluctuations], you buy something in the other country. So as the value of your product drops in one country, the value of the other thing goes up. You have to know a bit about international finance to do it. So it came to a point where we were selling the product and making no money. So Ivor decided to bring in a product for the company to sell to try and make money. Somehow he got hold of Revolver turntables.
I started going around trying to sell them in, what, the 1980s? It was when everyone was buying CDs. CDs were king. Everyone was throwing their turntables out.
I did a lecture for Queensborough Community College once, talking about [how to run a] small business. And one of the subjects was to never underestimate the value of ignorance. Had I known how bad it was to sell turntables when everyone was throwing them out and buying CDs, if I'd known what the market was like, I would never have tried. I would never have succeeded. It was complete ignorance and going against the groove that kept me going.
I built loudspeakers for four years for Linn, and so my reference point's always been Linn. In fact, I still own a Linn LP12 [turntable]. Whenever I brought [in] a new turntable, I would compare it to the LP12. Never got it as good as an LP12, I'll tell you that.
FD: I wish I never sold mine. Our mutual friend Bob Reina (reviewer for The Absolute Sound and Stereophile) was always trying to get me to upgrade. He convinced me to upgrade from an LP-12 to a Goldmund Studio. So I did, and I expected to hear the revealed word of God, and I'll never forget…it was my first-ever experience of upgrading and being disappointed. I mean, it was a great turntable, but I was expecting it to blow the socks off the Linn and it just didn’t…
RH: There is something magical about [the Linn]. The best way I can describe it is that the musicians [sound] more relaxed playing on a Linn turntable than any other. The singers, they articulate better. The musicians are playing together in a much more relaxed sense. It's really quite something.
So anyway, after six months [of starting with Linn in the US], we were making money, but not real money. And I said to Ivor, “Look, it's not going to work. You’re best to close the business.” Give me some compensation and I'll take over the distribution of Revolver.” This was in 1985. So I went around selling Revolver turntables.
At some point I heard, through a friend of Ivor's actually, that Creek [Audio] was looking for a distributor. I went to England to a hi-fi show, met Mike Creek, went up to Scotland for a few days, and flew down to London to meet Mike Creek at his home. He said, “My [current] distributor takes a container load of orders but then orders [everything] and then wants it right away. And that pisses off my customers because he's not distributing properly. He's not holding stock. He's not holding inventory. And so I'm pissed off with him. So if you can [fix] that, then it'd be interesting.”
About a month or so later he called me up and said, “Roy, I'd love for you to distribute Creek.” And that really gave me the leg up into the business. There was a big demand for Creek. At that time, 1976, 1977, there were very few inexpensive integrated amps around. And he came up with a real high-end [one], the Creek [CAS]4040, it was really a truly high-end product.
FD: A, classic, I think. Like the NAD 3020. Timeless.
Creek CAS4040 integrated amplifier.
RH: The NAD, that was a good one. There was an ADCOM I think also. But there wasn't much around. And so I started selling Creek, a lot of them, and generated a lot of money. Now, there's a story about them. Maybe 10 years ago, I said to Mike, “Why did you choose me? I know you had other distributors who wanted to distribute Creek, but why'd you choose me?” He said, “It was my wife's decision. It was because of your coat.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “You came wearing an Armani coat.” I said, “I don't have an Armani coat. I don't buy Armani.” And he said, “According to [my wife], you do.”
So I went downstairs, looked in the closet where the coats are hung. And lo and behold, [there was] the coat that I bought in the bargain basement in Macy's for about $25, just because I liked it. It was a f*cking Armani coat. And she said, “He must be rich. He's wearing an Armani coat. Go with him.” And that's how I got Creek. I mean, you can't make this sh*t up.
FD: Unbelievable. My father used to work at Macy's. He would get all kinds of great stuff at a heavy discount because he had an employee discount. He was a salesman in the Manhattan store.
RH: Me too. I got another 20 or 25 percent off. So by the time I bought [the coat], it was nothing. And you know something? If I wear it today, it still fits. It still is stylish. My son wore it for years to impress girls. But I just bought it because I thought it'll look cool, which it did.
The coat that changed Roy Hall's life.
So Music Hall is humming along. But I've always put all my money [back] into inventory. I didn't take much money out. It [was] only in recent years I started taking money out. I always fed any profit right back into Music Hall. So I used to have inventory, but no cash.
Here's another story. I called up Wharfedale [in the 1980s] because the Wharfedale Diamond, the original Wharfedale Diamond, was selling really well. That was the hot little speaker. And I contacted Wharfedale’s sales manager and said, “Would you be interested in making me a speaker like the Wharfedale diamond with my name on it?” And he said, “Maybe.” But [then] he said, “Would you be interested in buying Wharfedale?” And I said, “But you have a distributor in America.” He said, “Yeah, but he's not paying me.” So I said, “OK.” And he gave me a price and said, “But, cash up front.” And I said, “OK.”
I didn't have a penny to my name at the time. I called around and I asked, “Do you want to buy Diamonds?” Suddenly, [I was selling] four pairs, six pairs, eight pairs. I called J&R Music World and spoke to the buyer there. He said, “Can you get Diamonds?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “How many?” I said, “How many did you want?” He said, “250 pairs.” I said, “I'll need a purchase order.” He said, “Okay, I'll send it right over.” I think it was before e-mail or anything like that; maybe we had faxes.
And I call up Wharfedale and they wanted the money up front. So I go to my father-in-law and I show him the purchase order. And I said, “Look, I know you're earning 8 percent in the bank. I'd like to borrow this amount of money. This looks like a really good deal, and I'll give you 8 percent on it so there's no loss.” So he gave me the money. I sent it off to England, and eventually I got paid by J&R. I was sweating for a while…but they did pay me six weeks later.
Wharfedale Diamond loudspeakers.
And we started [doing] business with Wharfedale and did a really good business. At one point they invited me over to see the line and to see if I wanted to become the distributor of Wharfedale for the US. And the line was a mess. The only speaker that was any damn good was the Diamond. Everything else was just…I often think that the original Diamond was a mistake that came together. I've found this before. Every so often the gods are with you and…it just works, even though it shouldn't. I think the Diamond was one of these. I don't think they knew how to design speakers, but somehow they cobbled together the Diamond and it was just magical.
Anyway, we parted company, but by that time I had Epos and one or two other lines like the EDA record brush, and was doing well. The Diamond business was a good cash boost for me over a few years. We left as friends.
About 10 years later, at one of the last CES shows that was in Chicago, I bump into the [Wharfedale] sales manager and he's with his boss, the president of Wharfedale. He introduced me, and he said, “He's the guy who saved us! He's the guy who, when we were really on our last legs, started buying thousands of Diamonds and kept the company going.” I didn't realize that I had saved Wharfedale. They were about to go bankrupt, but I bought so many Diamonds from them that it kept the company going and got them out of bankruptcy.
And then I moved on. I lost the Revolver turntable line because [the designer] had a stroke and no one could replace him. I should have bought the Revolver name, but I didn't. I wasn't thinking about that. I was so sad about it. I moved on.
The original Revolver turntable.
0 comments