Walking through Mayfair yesterday I got a deeply unpleasant surprise – 12 Bruton Street, the original headquarters of Bruton Music, has been torn down. Why, I don’t know – it’s probably been sacrificed for something godawful like a restaurant or luxury flats. If anything, that building should have been the recipient of a blue plaque commemorating it not only as the birthplace of a hugely important British music company, but also as a landmark in British music history. How sad it is that the edifice in which Robin Phillips and Aaron Harry worked, and which was visited by so many wonderful musicians – Steve Gray, David Lindup, Neil Richardson, Johnny Pearson, James Clarke, Keith Mansfield, Alan Hawkshaw, Brian Bennett, Trevor Bastow, Frank Ricotti, Harold Fisher, Paul Keogh et al – is no longer there.
And let’s not forget that Denmark Street has now changed beyond recognition, partly because of the demolition job to which number 21 – KPM’s long-time home – was subjected. The area that had once been the basement studio, where the WASP albums went down to tape, became a casualty of urban planning, in this case the development of the Elizabeth underground line.
But, of course, the wrecking ball can’t obliterate Robin Phillips’s legacy, nor for that matter Aaron Harry’s. In the KPM 1000 Series and Bruton Music, Robin created the world’s greatest recorded music libraries. Their only real competition, certainly in terms of quality, came from Syd Dale’s Amphonic Music, and they will never be surpassed.
