This Red Lion rock music museum is packed with memorabilia - even a signed pair of panties
The most interesting − and most talked about − item in Tom Anderton’s massive collection of rock memorabilia is a pair of panties.
They are a pair of white Victoria Secret panties with a blue snowflake-like pattern encased in a frame, behind glass. There is a Sharpie autograph close to the waistband. It reads, if you look closely enough, Amy Lee.
Lee is the lead singer and primary songwriter of the Evanescence, an eclectic, Grammy-award winning hard rock band that had hits, including “Bring Me to Life” and “My Immortal” in the early 2000s, songs that cemented the group’s reputation of, as Rolling Stone observed, “a much-needed femininity to the hard-rock boys’ club of the early 2000s.”
The story behind the panties, according to the written documentation Anderton received along with the knickers, is that Lee was staying at a hotel while on tour and one of the maids was a big fan. When she was checking out of the hotel, as the story goes, the maid asked her for an autograph. She pulled out the pair of panties and signed them, which may seem odd, but it’s rock ‘n roll.
The panties made their way, via eBay, to the collector, a big Evanescence fan who collected all sorts of memorabilia and who, one day, walked into Anderton’s Red Lion shop looking to sell his collection. (Why he wanted to sell is a mystery. Maybe the band fell out of his favor.)
Anderton bought the collection, admitting that the piece he wanted more than others were Lee’s framed panties, not out of any fetishistic desire, but out of a passion to collect the most interesting bits of rock memorabilia.
The panties, part of a collection that spans decades and multiple genres of popular music, have become one of the more popular items curated in his massive collection.
“So many people talk about it,” Anderton said.
A life-long passion, on display
Anderton is the proprietor of Tom’s Music Trade in Red Lion, just off the square, housed in a storefront that is decorated with mannequins and assorted weirdness.
He is a music fan – it's probably fairer to say that he is obsessed with music, a life-long passion that has morphed into a business, one that has been an ongoing concern for nearly 20 years.
His cluttered shop on Main Street is packed with records and CDs and memorabilia that covers the history of popular music, from classical to jazz to an eight-track tape of Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever.” (He also has an LP of speeches by disgraced former Vice President Spiro Agnew, on sale for $1, which may or may not be a bargain.)
The walls are covered with posters and photographs and all variety of rock flotsam.
Anderton, 52, speaks with a clipped, British accent, hinting at his upbringing in the working-class city of Birmingham in the West Midlands of England, often referred to as the country’s Second City, like Chicago to New York. He refers to acquaintances as “mate.”
Birmingham, he said, had a great music scene, and he was part of it, playing drums in rock bands, one of which was named Spoonful. He has an old promo photo of the band and when he points himself out, he jokes, “That’s when I had hair.” Once, he recalled, someone asked him whether the band took its name from the ‘60s folk-rock band The Lovin' Spoonful. He never heard of the band; they adopted its moniker after hearing Cream’s version of the Willie Dixon-penned blues classic by the same name. (At that point, he said, they didn’t know it was a classic blues best known for Howlin’ Wolf’s version released in 1960.)
On a recent afternoon, he talked about his collection, how he acquired it, in between waiting on customers and assessing a collection that included everything from Led Zepplin to the Grateful Dead to acclaimed songwriter Carole King.
Tall, with close-cropped hair, he has a lot of energy, talking about his collection energizes him. Rock ‘n roll, and hip-hop, and grunge, and punk, he loves them all.
The panties, though, are the only thing anyone wants to talk about, even though he has some choice Beatles items, including a letter from the fan club formed around the band’s discoverer and early manager Brian Epstein.
'Still going strong'
Anderton’s journey to the United States, and Red Lion, began with a chance encounter at his father’s bed and breakfast in Wales. There, he met some people from York who were vacationing in Wales. They became friends and they invited him to the States.
He took them up on the offer and came to York during a month-long vacation. He met a woman and fell in love, but his visa had expired, and he returned to Birmingham. He worked to emigrate – the immigration process took months – and moved to York in January 2000. He married in March of that year and had three daughters.
He worked in construction for a while, he said. It was hard work and taxing on his body. He had dabbled in dealing records and memorabilia. (He lost a lot of his early collection in England when a former girlfriend disposed of it during a break-up, he said.)
In 2005, he said, “I decided to take a gamble and go all-in on records.” His now ex-wife was unsure of his judgment. It was a bad time for records as digital music was taking off, albums and CDs being replaced by downloads and iPods.
Business, at first, was “sloggy,” he said. But he committed to it. “I could see myself doing this 20 or 30 years,” he said, “not 10 years like construction.”
He opened Tom’s Music Trade in Red Lion, on Main Street, eventually moving to another Main Street location before moving to his current storefront not far from the town square.
He kept at it and soon time caught up with him. Interest in vinyl records and vintage recordings began picking up about four years ago, he said. And it hasn’t waned. “It’s still going strong,” he said. “There’s a lot of interest.”
COVID ends one plan, starts another
In 2018, he toyed with opening a coffee shop in the back room of his record store, “a kind of rock ‘n roll cafe,” he said. He bought equipment and worked on it.
But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and put his plans “totally on hold,” he said.
He was shut down for three months. When he reopened, he said, he didn’t want to open a coffee shop and risk having to shut down again. So, he scuttled the notion of a cafe and changed his plans. He had, by then, accumulated a massive collection of rock memorabilia and thought it would be a good idea to open a museum of sorts, sharing his collection with customers and whoever wandered into his shop.
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He was using the back room as a stockroom, and it was packed with records and other stuff. He cleared the room out, took down a wall and readied the space for his collection. It took about a year. Just clearing the room took a long time, he said, winding up with his filling a 10-by-20-foot storage unit with stuff.
The museum opened in October 2023.
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'It's really fun to see'
His collection is massive. It includes a set-list from Alice Cooper’s 2009 show at the York Fair, vintage posters of concerts past, autographed handbills and letters, including one from the late Clash leader Joe Strummer, and a tie and silk shirt worn by Thin Lizzy lead singer Phil Lynott, both accompanied by letters of authenticity from former band drummer Brian Downey.
He has the press kit released ahead of Led Zepplin’s first record, including a promo 45-rpm single of Stairway to Heaven. (The song, of course, is truncated on the single, incapable of containing the song’s nearly eight-minute run time.) He has the backstage rider for Cinderella when it played at the former Hammerjack’s in Baltimore. It specifies “assorted Tic Tacs, no orange.” He has a pair of canvas shoes autographed by filmmaker John Waters, along with a letter explaining that the director of “Pink Flamingos” bought the shoes at the Rio Film Festival.
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He has some Beatles memorabilia, including a ticket stub from the band’s August 1966 show at Atlantic City’s Steel Pier and a letter and autographed photo of the Fab Four’s manager, Brian Epstein. That display includes the original envelope, sent from the return address of the Brian Epstein Fan Club. Yes, the Beatles’ manager had a fan club.
“Do you know how many times I’ve tried to explain that to people?” Anderton asked.
The response to the collection has been “absolutely amazing,” Anderton said. “People get really excited about it. It’s really fun to see.”
Of course, people get excited about seeing the lead singer of Evanescence’s panties, not in a great way.
Some people say, ‘That’s so gross,’” Anderton said. “But I don’t think they’ve been worn.”
Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: This Red Lion PA rock music museum is packed with memorabilia
