Being in the Bay Area since the late '60's we were the first to benefit from Russ's expansion out of Sacramento. The biggest stores were in SF, at the corner of Bay and Columbus - you often had to wait to get a parking space in the big lot in front of the store. Berkeley was next, with a big store just off Telegraph Avenue (on Durant) only a block from the UCB campus main entrance. It was quite amazing that Tower opened a second store on Telegraph Avenue, about four blocks down the street, just for classical music!! Each big store had a special room for classical music, sonically sealed off from the rest of the store, so they could play classical music without the interference from the rock and other music playing in the main part of the store. I got to know the manager of the classical department in the Tower store in Concord, CA, easily to park than Berkeley. Another giant store. He told me that the goal was to have for sale copies of every record issued that they could legally obtain. For classical, it meant the first imports of EMI records, not just their Angel domestic counterparts. No British Deccas, since the licensing agreements only allowed the London label versions. I shopped in the Berkeley and SF stores for about a decade (from the late '60's) until the Concord store opened in the late '70's. I'm sure I was tithing to Tower, much more satisfying than traditional tithing.
When we started travelling significantly, I started noticing giant Tower record stores opening up in most of the major cities we visited, from NYC to Boston, London, etc. The NYT story gives a good clue to Russ's problems. He saw the success of his stores and expanded too fast, all with borrowed capital. This meant he kept all the profits, but also took all of the risk. By not going public, he didn't have to share anything with outside investors, but also did not have the advantage of the capital they would provide with no interest cost. The banks, who had no equity in Tower, were not forgiving or very flexible when times got tough. So it left him with almost no wiggle room when the banks turned off the spigots. Expanding fast into major markets, also meant he started facing competition from large companies, which could afford to set up megastores, like HMV, not just the mom and pop stores which were his main competition in Sacramento and the Bay Area.
I'm not sure that Tower could have survived in this time of on-line, digital and streaming music and so much easy free music. If they had gone public, they might have been bought by a highly leveraged company themselves, and gone under that way. Keeping Tower private meant not only keeping all the profits, but also keeping the iconic nature of Tower and its unique culture. Something that I certainly miss.
Larry