INTERVIEW: ROY HALL

In which he e xplains why he ha tes hi-fi reviewers: ‘They know f**k-all about hi-fi!’ he says, plus the true story behind H all’s famous blue Armani raincoat…

You’ve been Music Hall for so long that I really know nothing about what you were doing prior to founding that company in 1985.

I was working for Linn Products. I grew up with Ivor Teifenbrun in Scotland. When I told him I was moving to America in 1975 he asked if I wanted to build speakers in America, because he wanted to start manufacturing in the United States. I told him: ‘ No, you’re my best friend; I’ll never work for you, so go f**k yourself.’ Four years later, after having being fired by Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Bamburgers and every other major retail company in America, I phoned Ivor and asked him: ‘ Do you still want to do something in America?’

The result was I went back to Scotland for training, then opened a company in Manhattan called Isobarik Corporation which built Linn speakers under licence. After four years the company was losing money because of a very strange thing: exchange rate loss. The pound kept dropping in value versus the dollar so we were having to drop our prices to keep parity with Scotland. There are financial strategies you can use to offset exchange rate losses but I didn’t know them 30 years ago—and neither did Ivor—so we kept losing money.

We tried a last ditch effort to stay afloat by importing a line of turntables called Revolver but after a while realised it couldn’t keep the manufacturing operation going so Ivor and I agreed to close the company.

I continued on as the US distributor for Revolver turntables, which was an insane move, because it was 1985 and everyone was chucking out their turntables and buying CD players. But ignorance can be a great asset, so I didn’t know how ridiculous the idea was, and just went ahead and did it. Then I managed to pick up Creek Audio and then Epos and all of a sudden I had a business. And to my great surprise, I’m still in business 30 years later, still making money, and still making a profit… and still completely perplexed by it all.

So you’re saying that you never actually worked for Linn in Scotland, you just knew Ivor personally?

I never worked for him until after I had moved to America. We grew up together as kids: he just lived around the corner so, as kids do, we used to hang out. As we grew older, we started to do all the stupid things teenagers do… get drunk, try to pick up girls… I have a story about that. When Ivor was a teenager he was devastatingly handsome, so with his personality and good looks, he had no problem getting whoever he wanted, so he’d always get the good-looking ones! We had a great time together and we remain very good friends.