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John Renolds inducted into SA Music hall of fame for 50 years service to music

“Will you still love me, will you still need me, when I’m 64,” sang Paul McCartney famously.

John Reynolds. Pic Roy VanDerVegt.
John Reynolds. Pic Roy VanDerVegt.

“Will you still love me, will you still need me, when I’m 64,” sang Paul McCartney famously.

John Reynolds needn’t worry on either score. A long term music survivor also, the effervescent 71-year-old last night embarked on the latest verse of a music career that, in many guises, has spanned more than half a century.

The Goodwood Institute in Adelaide was packed to see Mr Reynolds named as one of four SA Music Hall of Famers for 2015, singer Patsy Biscoe another inductee.

“I am absolutely flattered by the award,” said the man known to thousands across Adelaide for his drumming, teaching and, perhaps more obviously, long playing John Reynolds MusicCity retail business.

“The Australian Music Collective (AMC) came to me about the award two or three months ago. I said ‘why?” said Mr Reynolds.

The answer lay, simply, with his service to the music community.

It’s a fair call.

There is the drumming itself — John played with the Dominoes and Frank Sebastian Review for many years — teaching by day and playing by night.

Then the business.

John, a carpenter by trade, was teaching drumming when he heard that Spurdens Music on Waymouth St had failed to sell at auction and promptly rang up.

“Well, make an offer sonny,” agent BW Carey told him and a $14,000 bid came forth.

“No sonny, if that was the price we’d buy it ourselves,” said BW.

“He said that wasn’t even the reserve price, I’d never heard that word before,” said John.

A price of $18,000 was agreed, and with just a $100 deposit.

“I was naive, it took me 12 weeks to get the finance. Mrs Read who owned the building gave me a mortgage for $6,000. I paid it off within five years.”

It was a good, if somewhat original location for a music business, a church built in 1847, wrought iron fence at the front and a well out back.

That was 1969, five years later the next door premise was added to the portfolio.

There MusicCity has sat since, albeit in many guises, although just three years ago, a series of sales and name changes led to eventual owners, Allans Billy Hyde, heading into receivership.

“Billy Hyde had pestered me for two years to buy the business and in the end we sold. They then sold to a corporate raider which got into debt. Allans bought the debt, got our staff, and the receivers stepped in,” said John.

The opportunity almost three years ago for John to get back into the music business was too much to pass up. A chat with the receiver ensued and $12,000 bought all the fixtures and fittings and counters. The freehold was already under John’s ownership and in November 2012, John went out shopping and came home with around $2.7M stock.

There are now 10 staff at work in the shop with a further three part-time employees.

It’s the busyness of purpose that strikes, drum cymbals plastered like platinum record sales awards fill the walls on entering.

The hire component of the business has been sold but the teaching remains, so too recording studio and a retail business focused primarily upon guitars (there are 500 or so, John estimates, dotted around the store), drums and a multitude of hi-tech PA systems and accessories.

A giant, vertical gong of the ilk bagged at the beginning of J Arthur Rank films for years, grabs the attention upon entrance though bettered by an Aladdin’s cave of guitars reaching up to the floor above.

The current retail environment — across all sectors — is tough says John, the right business model mattering more than ever.

Online has been a threat — all today’s kids want to do is plays with computers he says — although electronic sale, of guitars and drums in particular, has been engaged.

Costs, amid a wider public reluctance to spend are key, the approach of a shop where all staff are musicians themselves is paramount.

“You have to give 100 per cent service, price comes after. People trust you,” he said.

“These guys have to know what they are talking about, they’re experts in the instruments they sell.”

Not that John is about to pack it in, ever.

“I am not leaving the industry, I’m in it for the long haul,” said the septuagenarian who works 10-15 hours per day, seven days a week still.

“You only get out of life what you put into it, you fight your way though.”

The stamina is nothing new.

Fifty years back, John headed to the unlikely surrounds of the Port Lincoln Tunarama where, as you do, he set out to beat the world record for non-stop drumming, a shade over 82 hours of solos and rhythm patterns doing the trick nicely, mostly performed in a shop window.

And how was the hearing afterwards?

“Good, I went to bed, slept for eight hours and the next day was fine.”

Original URL: https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/john-renolds-inducted-into-sa-music-hall-of-fame-for-50-years-service-to-music/news-story/fcf58439963510cb199eaf0dc550ce8e