The Courier and Advertiser, Wednesday, June 15, 1994
PERTHSHIRE MUSIC buff Roy Deane - the owner of Britain's largest collection of rock and pop memorabilia - was yesterday playing the Crying Game.
Roy (36), of Coupar Angus, no longer has enough room at home to store his massive musical archive.
And after devoting 15 years transforming his house into a pop shrine, he is handing the whole lot over to Christie's to auction it off.
"Everything has to go - I can't cope with it any longer," he said yesterday.
His collection includes everything from rare records to a pair of peacock-feather trousers once worn on stage by Jimi Hendrix.
The 5000 hours of video footage he has accumulated would take nearly two years to watch. And his semi detached house contains almost every music magazine ever published since 1956, as well as thousands of LPs and cassettes.
Lots of reading - Roy Deane at home last night with some of the memorabilia.
"It has got to the point where two rooms of the house are crammed with stuff. It is totally out of hand," he said.
"It has become an albatross. I can literally spend every single minute of every single day just cataloguing the archive."
Roy, who trawls the country seeking out rare collector's items, makes a full-time living out of buying and selling his hoard.
He has now handed it over to auctioneers Christie's, who plan to sell it off in London in September.
He hopes the collection, which he calls the Rockmine Archive, will not have to be broken up. A consultant is looking into the possiblity of keeping it in Scotland and using it to educate young people about the history of the music industry.
The collection is expected by Christie's to sell for £125,000, a figure Roy dismisses as "pennies." "I would get a lot more by selling off every individual item, but to try to do it piece by piece would take forever.
"I would far rather get rid of it, clear the house, and start again."
Roy plans to continue collecting memorabilia but on, more specialised basis.
Over the years he has picked up Marc Bolan's tambourine, an Elvis Presley autograph and exclusive souvenir posters of the Beatle playing Scottish dates.