The Island story, pt 3

Every year or so there’s a little reunion of people who worked at Island Records in its early and earlyish days, held in a pub near the offices in St Peter’s Square, Hammersmith, to which the company moved in 1973. The most recent of these family affairs was a week ago, and it coincided with the publication of the third volume of Neil Storey’s mammoth Island Book of Records, an illustrated oral history of just about everything that went on to make the label what it was and became. Mammoth in the depth of research that goes into documenting every release on the label and its associates, albums and singles, no matter how seemingly insignificant, and mammoth also in its sheer physical proportions. Each volume is 12 inches by 12 inches, hardbound with sturdy covers and good paper. This one has 480 pages, and you would not want to carry it up too many flights of stairs. It covers only two years, 1971-72, when the company was headquartered in Basing Street, Notting Hill, but what years they…