From Skate Punk to Hair Metal： A Deep Dive into Vinyl Obsession with Phil Guerrero
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Summary
Phil Guerrero joins me in studio today to talk about his love of vinyl and his collection of over 5,000 pounds of old records. We talk about how he fell in love with music, the history of vinyl, and what it means to be a collector.
Transcript
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If you're like me, you take joy in flipping through your old vinyl.
00:00:04.000
I think the first thing that I got in the way of vinyl was...
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No, it was, for those about to rock ACDC, my dad brought it home.
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I put it on. I couldn't believe how cool I was.
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And that sent me down a spiraling rabbit hole of radio
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and associations with jokesters like Phil Guerrero right here.
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Joining us in studio today to talk about vinyl and the love of records.
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Phil, I'm glad that you could join me today for this very serious conversation about vinyl.
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Actually, I think I would like to leave these on.
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I don't think it was the sunglasses, to be honest with you.
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And look, you might know him if you grew up on YTV.
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You might know him if you were in the fashion industry.
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And also, if you are working at a vinyl store in Toronto, L.A., or anywhere in between,
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you might have had him flipping through the vinyl in your store.
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Because I think you're the guy I know that has the most vinyl.
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Well, no, I have one of those stupid IKEA 5x5 things full and more.
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I do want to talk about that because one of the things I thought about was cassettes
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and why they didn't, maybe it's degradation, but we can talk about that.
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Is it the music that you love on the records or the collecting itself?
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I still, you know, I didn't, I sold them all when CDs, like I don't even want to talk about it.
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And that collection was like all like early, like it was stuff that when I was going through
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my little periods, like I had a goth period, so I had all like The Cure and Suzy and the Banshees
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and ministry, like early, like Twitch ministry, that album.
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You know, yeah, like Frankie Goes to Holland, all that crap.
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And then I started like collecting, what did I become?
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So it was like the Circle Jerks and Gangrene and Suicidal Tendencies and the Misfits and
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And then after that, I became like a heavy metal freak, like a hair metal.
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So I had all that and that was all collecting records.
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But honestly, stocked because I kind of ran out of room.
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But it was a lot of fun when I first started where you could find like, I was going to
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Value Village and I'd get a stack like this and it would be like Billy Idol and David Bowie
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and the Scorpions and Iron Maiden and Bob Dylan, like, but not anymore.
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Those thrift shops now, like people are waiting for stuff to come out.
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That was a lot of fun and it slowly didn't, it wasn't like that anymore.
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Not, not going to the record store and buying that Metallica record, but trying to score it.
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And I remember going and, and, you know, vinyl and plastic and imports was a big thing.
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And colored vinyl was another thing that was sort of attractive.
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Like they're up on the wall and they were like a hundred dollars and you couldn't afford
00:04:14.880
But there were some bootleg live Led Zeppelin concert from, you know, Quebec or something.
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One of the ones that was going around that was a huge collector I remember was Kiss live
00:04:26.140
at the Budokan, I think, or somebody, some, some band live at the Budokan.
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There was maybe 70 or 80 of them in the world or something like that.
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And then, I don't know if you had this experience, but I had relatives and friends with relatives
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from like the UK and Italy and things like that.
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And they would come back at the end of the summer and you'd be like, whoa, where did you
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You know, introduced, I was introduced by Susie, to Susie and the Banshees, for example, by
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And I was like, and it took me down that road, that sort of new wave, alternative road.
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But then, and then you're either, you're listening to 102.1, right?
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Or you're going to the record store to hear what they're spinning to figure out what, where
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Did you ever record the radio just to figure out what songs you wanted to get?
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I used to sit there all morning and pause, record, pause, record, you know.
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1050 chump was one of the kind of OG charting, charting radio stations.
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And I would follow and I would record what I wanted to record as they counted down a number
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That chart, now that I think about it, probably sold a lot of records at Sam the Record Man
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Oh, there was, yeah, Records on Wheels was my big one.
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And he was like this mean kind of skinhead guy.
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And I would buy whatever, if I walked in and he was spinning, I'd be like, what's that?
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And he'd be, it was just like high fidelity, just like flip up the record.
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And I remember, I'll tell you the day I flipped from like skate rock, like punk, you know, gangrene
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and suicidal tendencies to metal was the day I came in and I heard like the fastest punk
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They looked like four scarves, you know, like people from Scarborough in Toronto, which were
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You know, with the long hair and the mullets.
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And that's when I start growing my hair and playing the guitar.
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Anybody who made that link between alternative and metal did it, I think, on the back of
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I thought it was a punk band and it was just the most amazing shit I'd ever heard.
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I picked up a guitar and then I started moving towards hair metal.
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I mean, I remember people showing up at school.
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I felt, like I said in the intro, I was the coolest guy on earth because I had, for those
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about to rock with the cannon and it opened up and, you know, I could only listen to it.
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Album art was a big thing when I was growing up.
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My dad, I realize now my father had these great albums.
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And I remember a Pink Floyd album where the guy's on fire, you know?
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But I really remember the ELO albums because they looked like comic books to me.
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It was a spaceship and you'd open it up and you'd see all these, you know, like stuff
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You know, there wasn't Batman all over the place.
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It was just like, you know, when did you get to see Batman?
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If you went to a toy store or it was just not on TV all the time or anything.
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ELO and the other one was Boston with the Spaceship on it.
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But those ELO albums were these elaborate, you know, you flipped them open and there
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was like a world you looked at where it was like space and like...
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Now you look back and you think, yeah, you know, my dad might have been using acid.
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What's the best album art you think you've ever seen?
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I've, I've, as I, as I got more, as I've, as I'm older, I've gotten into art, art and
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He did like, uh, Judas Priest albums, like Screaming for Vengeance.
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You know, Patrick Nagel, like that Rio album cover is Patrick Nagel.
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Like I notice, uh, Tool is very intricate with their artwork and...
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You know, uh, it's almost like, it's almost like design artwork, uh, repetitive design
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Um, and then of course, this year I chased around for my stepson, uh, just a single album
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It was just green and it was, uh, oh man, I'm good.
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But getting it was next to impossible because the vinyl version of this record was so popular.
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It took us over a year to find it and then it took eight weeks for it to deliver.
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And then it was record store day and that came and gone.
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Like there's stuff and, but it always comes back.
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Like I paid, you know, the most I paid for an album was, um, it was like,
00:11:06.900
I paid a hundred euros for, for an Aussie album.
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And at the time, this was, I don't know, a few years ago, five years ago.
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At the time, the only pressing, vinyl pressing was this European pressing of it.
00:11:26.760
So does that earlier version keep a better value than the new re-release?
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It's still as rare as, yeah, it still retains its value.
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I think it probably shoots it up when they start throwing other comparables.
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There's like a million versions of the white album.
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I kind of, for my birthday, I was like, I'm rich!
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Yeah, but apparently there's 18 releases of it and, uh, in every country.
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I forgot what it was called, but it was, the original cover was them like at a butcher shop
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And then they, the record company didn't want to release it, so they put like a sticker
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If you could find one of those where, like, it's behind the sticker kind of thing.
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Because they did, they did sticker over something.
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There's a relabel on it or there's a, uh, but that, okay.
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Misprints, uh, label misprints, uh, limited editions and stuff.
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Is this a big collector's world still, do you think?
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It's just, it's a nerds, it's a nerds collector thing.
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I know I scored at Value Village, uh, and Neil Young's first album.
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The, the version that he, he canceled, re-recorded and then released because he didn't like the
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That's pretty incredible that rock and roll had to do that.
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You mentioned that you're, uh, going towards CDs.
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I gotta wonder, I had, I really believe just because of how stackable and cool they were.
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Hey, by the way, Nick, did we find out what that record was?
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I did not, unless you're talking about the Weezer album from the early nineties.
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Um, I did, I did want to bring up that, there was that Beatles album, maybe you were mentioning
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the one with the, with the dolls and the blood.
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And then they were like, we get something happened.
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Uh, I thought for sure cassettes were going to be the cool thing forever.
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Why don't, from a collector standpoint, do they have any value?
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That's why when you're asking about CDs, you know what I mean?
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I, my stereo at home is a stupid, like, vintage.
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I have two monoblocks, like, that are 300 watts each.
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So I have 300 watts going into one speaker, 300 watts going into the other speaker.
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Two reel-to-reels, like a big, Fostex 10-inch reel-to-reel.
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If you play around with stuff, like, you know, to get that sound.
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I kind of stick to, if the music was recorded in the, like, digital age, then get the CD.
00:15:14.760
Like, I have a Chemical Brothers vinyl record, and it doesn't sound right to me.
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For a little while when you would get the CD, or actually more to the point with MP3s, there seemed to be a loss of fullness in the sound in early days.
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I think that they've kind of caught up with that now.
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The reason why I'm collecting CDs again is I discovered digital audio converters, like vintage ones.
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You know, so certain high-end Denon CD players from early days.
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The kind we would have used in the radio stations.
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Kind of, like some elite home players, some things.
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Like, it really depends on the DAC, the digital audio converter.
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Some are made by, like, a company called Wolfson or Burr-Brown, and those are these, like, sought-after digital audio converters.
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Some of the first-generation iPods, those big white ones, have Wolfson DACs in them, and those are sought-after.
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Because what they're doing is they're taking that digital music, like the ones and zeros, turning it into analog.
00:16:22.920
But certain ones will make it, give it that sweet sound.
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Yeah, like, I don't know what you want to call it.
00:16:44.280
Yeah, and what you're hearing on vinyl is an actual needle doing that, right?
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Like, you're listening to that, a needle actually follows that, and I know that with tape, analog tape, the reason why you get a sweet sound from tape is the amount of particles being moved, right?
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So that's why tape sounds better when it's faster, right?
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That's why 45, like, singles, like 12-inch singles sound better than that track on an album.
00:17:28.300
So stupid vintage audio crap that I learned over COVID.
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To make your record sound the best, you had to put it out on a 45 as a single, ideally, not just for pricing.
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You'll, you know, play those extended versions of, like, a 12-inch single on, that's 45 RPM.
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Like, on my reel-to-reels, I'll have, um, what's, uh, 15 FPS or 7, you know?
00:17:59.600
You can put more, but it sounded better when you put less, right?
00:18:05.740
It was a switch on my, uh, on my dubbing machine, and you could...
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So DACs, what DACs do, they simulate that, and some are better, do the job better than others.
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The only thing I think they really changed was to add, like, USBs.
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It's the hipster thing now to have a turntable.
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And there's a lot of garbage, actually, out on the market.
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And they're just trying to sell these kind of turnkey kind of systems.
00:19:01.260
But I'll tell you, if you get into finished stuff, anything Japanese is great and old.
00:19:08.980
And those are the ones that will have FONO inputs, right?
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Sometimes these new ones, they come with preamps in the turntable.
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Or, you know, with the ground in the right-left.
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Or you have a separate preamp for your turntable.
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Which, some of them, they make as a separate thing.
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Stand-alone with a tube, you know, that feeds the low signal in from the turntable.
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As you describe it to me now, it seems like, wow, we really are lucky to have MP3s and Spotify and a few of these things.
00:20:00.300
For me, vinyl really was about the bus ride down to the record store.
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Because you went there and they're playing something.
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I remember that bus ride downtown and thinking, okay, I'm going to go to the Silver Snail and I'm going to go to Sam the Record Man.
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And you would get off at Bloor and just walk down to Dundas.
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There were like two up by Bloor, you know, where the boxing gym was.
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And then there was another vinyl museum down by Dundas.
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Literally, by the way, as best I can remember, you just gave us the actual.
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What's the first record that you remember buying with your own money?
00:21:19.420
I brought those guys on stage when I was on radio.
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Do you think that they'd be better behaved?
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But they were certainly into the rock star lifestyle, as I recall.
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I see interviews with them, and they're just really smart, intelligent, artful dudes.
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The interesting thing about those guys, they went through that whole Kent State University craziness.
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They were at the school, you know, when that was going on.
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Like, they were into Dadaism and, you know, like, post-war sort of art movement shit.
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Is there one piece of vinyl you listen to more than anything?
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God, I'll tell you, since the wife's been working at home, that stereo hasn't even turned on.
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I hardly have the time to just sit there and power up the amps.
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Like, music, yeah, it's all kind of here, just because I'm listening in the car or I'm listening.
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It's almost like you should put time aside, like, once a month and just sit down.
00:22:43.880
Like, the vinyl collecting and then the stereos.
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And then I kind of, my personalities, I move from one thing to another.
00:22:52.220
Like, I was re-gripping golf clubs a few weeks ago.
00:22:56.400
Now my band's playing again, so I'm playing, picked up the guitar again.
00:23:02.340
But I have, I did, over COVID, learn how to re-fret guitars.
00:23:18.980
I got a neck need straightened out and a guitar to clean up.
00:23:25.820
I'm not sure if it's twisted or it's my playing.
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I could do a setup, but you've got to put the hours in and the pain.
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Listen, if you set it up, I'll put the hours in.
00:24:09.720
Yeah, you want to see a 50-something-year-old jumping around on stage.
00:24:16.460
All I see on my Facebook is just all these bands that, oh, what happened to the singers?
00:24:26.480
Listen, like Phil Collins, oh, it makes me so sad.
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Keep our eyes on the new talent if we need to see something beautiful.
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I feel like, you know, some bands, like, if you didn't see them when you should have seen
00:24:58.660
And he just sounds better than he's ever sounded.
00:25:01.060
You should hear Style Council records on a good stereo.
00:25:27.000
Some stuff, like, some punk albums are just the worst recordings.
00:25:37.020
Yeah, you take something like Phil Collins, right?
00:25:45.100
Like, you know, what did they call those drums?
00:26:01.440
So that was a sound in the 80s they discovered, and everything had gated drums.
00:26:11.000
They were just, like, so in your face, the drums.
00:26:16.820
And all those, like, high-produced albums are just incredible.
00:26:45.600
That Owner of a Lonely Heart producer had a certain amazing way of recording.
00:26:50.580
It's always interesting to me to hear what producers did with analog production, and now
00:26:56.100
you see so many studios trying to incorporate analog production back into their studios and
00:27:01.740
into their process just to get a sound that's not replicated digitally properly.
00:27:06.320
I don't know if you saw that documentary with Dave Grohl.
00:27:09.820
He bought this, this, this board that came from, um, a sound studio in Van Nuys, was it
00:27:18.260
Legendary sound studio, so, like, um, yeah, like, Fleetwood Mac recorded there, um, James
00:27:26.000
Brown, uh, not James Brown, um, anyways, like, all these famous albums were recorded there
00:27:31.900
at, I forgot the name of the sound studio, but he bought that board, and, um, yeah, it
00:27:39.060
I forget the name of the doc, and I forget the name of the...
00:27:41.080
In Toronto, is the, uh, is the, the board, I think, that the album we discussed earlier,
00:27:49.160
the White Album, was recorded on, and was brought here from Abbey Road, yeah, it's analog.
00:27:56.080
It's fantastic, you know, and sound waves and shit like that.
00:28:00.200
Yeah, it's pretty, that's, and that's what you're talking about, trying to get that analog
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00:28:05.840
Um, Phil Guerrero, I love to talk to you about anything, but talking about albums, uh, because
00:28:11.200
I've seen your collection, it, it actually has meaning, and, uh, that you're still so