From 1968 to 1982, studio-based musicians in the employ of Pickwick Records in Britain mimicked everyone from The Sex Pistols to Roxy Music. Eight albums were issued…

Factory was founded in 1978 by Granada TV presenter Tony Wilson, band manager and unemployed actor Alan Erasmus, graphic designer Peter Saville (who designed all…

Brothers Leonard and Phil Chess immigrated to America in 1928 from Poland. In 1947 they bought out Aristocrat Records in Chicago, which they renamed Chess.…

Memorably described by Pete Waterman as “a crepe soles and roll-ups operation” Stiff Records was set up by industry managers Jake Riviera and Dave Robinson…

Founded in an old movie theatre in Memphis (originally as Satellite Records) by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton, Stax had been carving out a reputation…

With an $800 loan from his family and a roster of unknown young Detroit singers, former record shop owner Berry Gordy Jnr (pictured below) started what…

Atlantic Records has introduced the world to some of the most influential musicians this planet has ever produced; Jazz icons such as John Coltrane, Charles…

Kids today want designer names, the genuine thing. But in the 1950s and 1960s when money was in short supply, they were happy to buy…

In the late 1980s the pop charts were awash with songs written and produced by Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. They worked with…

A music-obsessed Cambridge graduate, Geoff Travis hitch-hiked across America in his mid-twenties, where he picked up “literally hundreds of records by the time I got to…

With three million people unemployed, racists on the march, riots in the inner cities and the police Special Patrol Group (SPG) breaking heads on the…