Here's a true Tower Records story that isn't in the documentary: Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo worked at the Hollywood store (the famous one on Sunset Blvd.) before they got signed. When the interviews started at the time of the first album's release, he was asked about working there, and he talked about what a nightmare it was. The word came down from Sacramento---pull all the Weezer product from the shelves and return it! Russ Soloman wasn't about to support anyone who bad-mouthed his business.
I knew a guy who had worked at the Hollywood store at the same time as Rivers, and he told me that one of their Tower co-workers took a dislike to Rivers, and being a bullying kind of guy (and physically big, while Rivers is the small, meek type), really gave the poor kid a hard time, tormenting and pushing him around. Who got the last laugh?! A few years earlier, a couple of the guys who wound up in Guns N' Roses were working in the Tower Video store.
When you start at Tower, your eight hour work day is split in two---a four hour register shift, lunch or dinner, then four hours of stocking shelves, maintaining your assigned section, answering the phone, and assisting customers. To some Tower employees, an eight hour workday seemed to take forever, Rivers being one of them.
