Groucho’s opened at 89 Perth Road in the summer of 1976 and was far from the one-hit wonder some Dundonians thought it would be.
Edinburgh-born Alastair ‘Breeks’ Brodie spoke about its early beginnings in a forgotten 2001 interview, published again to mark two years since its demise in September 2020.
Breeks, the word for trousers, discovered in an Oor Wullie book, brought great delight to three Edinburgh schoolboy pals, who decided to adopt it for themselves, but only Alastair stuck with it.
In the wide-ranging interview, Breeks said he’d had a love of music since he was 10 or 11, when he used to watch Top of the Pops on the BBC while turning his tennis racket into a guitar and trying to emulate John Lennon!
Breeks spoke of his early days in music
His after-school job was in a record shop in Auld Reekie, and the seeds of a career, germinated in a hobby, were already planted.
Breeks wasn’t even deterred by the fact the record he was wrapping most when he first started was Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep by Middle of the Road.
The job had other compensations, not least when one of his heroes, Vivian Stanshall, front man of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, walked in.
He said: “The Bonzos are another great love of my life, and had just split up on the day he arrived in the shop.
“He was such a gentleman and chatted away. I didn’t think it was him at first, but it was. That was a great moment for me. Unforgettable.”
Edinburgh’s Cockburn Street Market, was, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a haven for the quirky and the exotic, and the place to look if you wanted something different.
Breeks worked there, selling records and clothes, and in 1976, having just got married, he was offered a cottage in Dundee.
He said: “My sister was studying in Dundee, and I’d been up to see the her, but I hardly knew the place. But we fancied living in a cottage, so we decided to move.
“That’s the sort of thing you can do when you’re young and reckless. Besides, it was that sort of era, and there was the potential for young people to take a chance.”
He set up business in partnership with Ron Maclean in Perth Road after deciding to open away from the second-hand record shops on the Hilltown and Victoria Road.
A huge fan of the Marx Brothers, Breeks chose the name Groucho’s to reflect what he planned would be the quirky, off-beat and humorous nature of the shop.
Native pessimism from the public
They had confidence in what they were doing, but what of the Dundee public?
They got their first taste of native pessimism when one man wandered into the shop as they re-fitted it and asked what they were doing.
“Ach, you’ll no’ last three weeks,” he said in disgust and walked out.
“I think we’ve proved him wrong,” said Breeks.
He was right.
The shop also sold “trendy” gear like Afghan coats and cheesecloth shirts, rent was a fiver a week and their first day’s takings were £74.41, a sum which confounded not only Groucho’s but cynical Dundee punters as well.
When punk rock kicked off, Groucho’s was suddenly perfectly placed and it became a mecca for those hungry for the hard-to-find punk and new wave records.
Cheese cloth shirts and Afghan coats were now distinctly passé!
Speaking in the 2001 interview, he said: “We had all the punk singles for sale and as we were perceived to be a younger and trendier place to shop, there was a steady stream of youngsters trooping up Perth Road.
“We also had a badge machine, and in that era, there were new bands springing up every week and you really had to be on top of the whole scene.
I always felt there would be a place for vinyl and it is proving to be the case.”
“We’d get the music papers on a Thursday, tear out the pictures and make them up into badges. They went down a storm.
“I’d go to London, go round all the markets to get all the punk gear and bring it back.
“Although we were older than the kids who were buying the stuff, we did have our finger on the pulse and knew what they were looking for.”
Punk struck a big chord in Dundee and it was a big part of the city’s music scene well into the 1980s.
It was in 1983 that Groucho’s moved to their shop in Marketgait when they were “chucked out” and forced to find new premises.
They were apprehensive about moving into town but, once there, they soon realised it was a great move and brought them closer to a new customer base.
Showaddywaddy shoes for sale
The bigger premises also gave them a chance to extend the range of goods on offer to include shoes, another move that was to prove a hit.
Breeks said: “There was nowhere in Dundee you could get the right shoes to go with punk clothes, the Goth shoes with the pointy leather boots, so we started selling them.
“Jam shoes, bowling shoes, brothel creepers the Showaddywaddy shoes, we stocked the lot and they did very well for us.”
The partnership split in the early ’80s and Breeks continued on his own, expanding the business to include being agents for concert tickets.
Groucho’s’ stock-in-trade was second-hand records so there were always people walking in with cardboard boxes of LP’s, trying to make some ready cash.
The shop bucked the trend following the demise of vinyl in the early 1990s because customers flocked to buy the music they already owned on compact disc.
Breeks said: “That definitely regenerated the market and ensured the business continued to flourish.
“But when CDs came along, many were saying vinyl was finished, but we didn’t go down that road.
“I always felt there would be a place for vinyl and it is proving to be the case.
“First and foremost, I’ve always been a vinyl lover. The only things I collect are 7” singles, which I play on my jukeboxes at home.
“For me the parameter of good music is a 7” single and my all-time favourite is the Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling.
“And when I got married again recently the choice for the wedding waltz had to be Nat King Cole singing When I Fall In Love.
“They don’t come any better than that.”
The demolition of the Angus Hotel saw another move for Groucho’s, to the other end of the shopping centre, before reaching its final resting place in the Nethergate in 1999.
Groucho’s, of course, built its reputation on finding the obscure and the downright dated in the world of popular music, many for funerals and weddings.
They would usually manage to track down what the customer is looking for, despite the dearth of information often provided by said customer as a clue.
Service to the music-loving public was what Groucho’s was all about.
The much-loved Breeks was still working in the store up until July 2019 but had been battling a number of health issues and died in Ninewells Hospital.
His death at the age of 65 set off an outpouring of grief across the city.
The music lovers’ haven closed in March 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, but failed to reopen after lockdown and shut down in September 2020.
The shutters came down 44 years after first opening.
Far from the one-hit wonder, then, that some Dundonians thought it would be.
Conversation