Guitars gently weep
Steven Kirman, whose laid-back Steve’s Music Store has been a rock ’n’ roll haven, has died,
Before Steven Kirman expanded his eponymous Steve’s Music Store from Montreal to Toronto, in October 1977, guitar salesmen wore shirts and ties and checkered jackets. Not very rock ’n’ roll. The Queen St. W. haunt — on a block east of Spadina Ave., then surrounded by second-hand bookstores, wholesalers and a Goodwill donation centre — was a barebones operation, whose original carpet could very well line the floor today.
But it wasn’t trying to be flashy, just comfortable. People were invited to play the instruments before buying them, and at discount prices — something unheard of until then.
It did quite well. What began as a three-man operation doubled in the span of two weeks.
“The store just exploded,” said Gerry Markman, one of the managers who helped open the Toronto location, and who knew Kirman for almost 50 years. “He always called it a hands-on store. Let the people come in and try the goods.” Kirman — the man who brought rock ’n’ roll to the music store, and guitars to the masses — died Saturday at Montreal General Hospital after a brief illness. He was 65. Markman said his boss, who leaves a wife and two children, suf- fered from unknown medical complications.
He is remembered by colleagues and musicians — not that Kirman himself could play a lick — as a firm, decisive businessman who knew what he wanted but encouraged a laid-back atmosphere at his stores, which include the original branch in Montreal and one in Ottawa.
The Toronto store — where customers with dogs, tattoos, wedding rings and children mingle amid the baby blue 1972 Ernie Ball Music Man and the brown and white Fender Stratocaster with satin finish — has since expanded one storefront east from its original location. It also has a second floor of drums and about 900 guitars hanging in three colourful rows.
Known by employees as Mr. Steve, Kirman always put patrons first, said assistant store manager Nigel Roopnarine.
“He would always refer to the customer as Mr. Customer. ‘Make sure you take care of Mr. Customer.’ He’s a very old-school guy,” he said.
Then again, it went both ways. “Anybody that came to work here whose name was Steve had to change their name,” said Roopnarine, in all seriousness.
Throughout the years, those customers included a who’s who of Toronto’s music scene: Bruce Cockburn, Alannah Myles, Kim Mitchell, Stephen Fearing, Colin Linden and Colin James. Kirman opened the Montreal store on May 15, 1965, when he was 18 years old, in a strip of pawn shops in Old Montreal.
He recruited customers by showing up to band practices and hawking strings, guitar picks and fuses stored in the trunk of his car, recalled Markman, who was 14 when he met Kirman.
Eventually, Kirman’s success led him to expand his Montreal store to nine sections, encompassing a city block.
In Toronto, it became a landmark in 2010, when a police cruiser was burned outside the store during the G20, breaking windows and damaging the iconic bubble-letter sign.
As for what Steve’s Music Store now means without its namesake, Roopnarine says the band must play on. “Mr. Steve would want the store to be open,” he said.