Media: March 2025 • Flipside Records Remembered
Flip Side owners Carl and Larry Rosenbaum had three choices they were considering at the beginning of their careers. “Hot dog stand, a dry cleaner, or a record store,” Larry confirms. “And fortunately, we chose record store.”
That record store became an empire in Chicago (1970s—1990s), a string of stores throughout Chicagoland, soon to be accompanied by a concert promotion arm, Celebration/Flip Side. The two brothers, who had considered opening a dry cleaner, became major players in the rock and roll business. But it didn’t come without defeating some scary crosswinds. “Yeah, the mob came after us,” Larry says. “When you’re approached by a couple of thugs that tell you that they’re going to be partners in your concert business, and you have meetings after that. That indeed was terrifying. Towards the end of the extortion attempt, our offices were above the store on Foster Avenue. They rang us from the store and said that there were two gentlemen here to see us. We were upstairs in the office, and it was one of those Chicago storefronts where there’s a stairway to a separate door out to the street. So Carl went down to open the door. I was at the top of the stairs with a gun behind my back because I thought, you know, both of us thought that this was it. The mob’s final push. Carl went down to open the door. And you know, it took him 50 years to realize that that wasn’t the wisest move for him.”
The way they got out of that situation is just one of the scores of memorable stories featured in the new book The Flip Side. The book is presented in oral-history style, with comments from both brothers, Mr. Cheap Jeff Schwartz, the workers from their stores, their concert security staff, and their customers. During the days, rock and roll was THE music, and the Flip Side was THE record store. For one thing, they were a Ticketron location, meaning concert tickets were sold there too. At a time before the internet, that meant waiting in long lines.
“The cover of the book is a picture of our first store on Foster Avenue and the crowd of people outside for the 1975 Rolling Stones tour,” Larry explains. “The interesting thing is people I talk to now, one of the most common things they talk about is, oh, I used to line up at your store in Hoffman Estates or in Downers Grove or wherever, sleep overnight, and it was a big party. And yes, it was mayhem at times, but it was always relatively organized confusion.”
The mayhem wasn’t just at the record stores. It was also in long-lost concert venues like the International Amphitheater. “It was this big, long barn-type facility,” Larry describes. “With a lot of doors. So, you know, of course, people tried to crash through the doors. These crazy kids would climb up one of these big drain pipes onto the roof, and there was a door onto the roof. Unfortunately, they had assistance. Part of the security detail, particularly those that were affiliated with the ninth district of the Chicago Police Department, were actually selling people in through that door. This was Mayor Daley’s Chicago.”
The crown jewel of the Celebration/Flip Side concert promotion days had to be the Super Bowl of Rock at Soldier Field. “We did four big sold-out shows that year,” Larry recalls. “The first one was Emerson Lake and Palmer. The second show was Pink Floyd. The third show was Ted Nugent, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and half a dozen other groups, and the fourth one was Peter Frampton. Frampton was quite an issue. There were death threats against him, so we had to take some unique methods to get them in and out of the hall.”
Did they ever run into the typical rock and roll issues backstage? “Oh yeah, it happened,” Larry admits. “This was the 70s, and, you know, somebody like Johnny Winter, we could tell when he got out of the limousine whether we were going to have problems or not. If he only had a drink in one hand, everything was going to go okay. If he had drinks in both hands, we knew that there were going to be issues getting him on stage to perform.”
Flip Side Record Stores have been gone thirty years now, but the brothers had a wonderful time working on the book. It brought back memories and brought them closer together. Carl lives in Arizona now, while Larry is still in the Chicago area.
“We’re probably closer now than we were even during the Flip Side years,” Larry says. “We had our moments back in the day. But, you know, it worked. I mean, we’re two totally different people, personality-wise and everything else, and maybe that’s why it worked. I would have been happy just having the store on Foster Avenue, but because of the push from Carl to always look for new things and get out there, we really blossomed. He was the frontman. I was the pencil.”
Veteran writer Ken Churilla lovingly put together the Flip Side book. The stars of the book are clearly the Rosenbaum brothers, but along the way, you’ll meet the biggest rock and rollers of all time. The book is available at WhereChicagoRocked.com and Amazon.
Ken Churilla appears for a book signing at the Chicagoland Record Collectors Show in Countryside on March 23.
