Ed Intagliata leaned his body against the cash register as he greeted customers with a heartfelt goodbye hug. After nearly 78 years of business, his beloved music shop is closing in light of his retirement.
All that remains of Cassell’s Music are empty shelves, scattered boxes and unsold instruments — a quiet ending for what was once a lively hub for music lovers and aspiring musicians.
Eric Knight, 29, reminisced about his childhood years spent inside Cassell’s.
“My dad came in, he bought me a bass and a little amp to go with it and set me up with some lessons back here,” Knight said. “As I got older, I started making some friends that played music and we all got together, drove down here and spent about two hours in that back room, three or four teenagers piled into that tiny room. If we ever did that in Guitar Center, we would be kicked out. But Ed would pop his head in, listen and get back to work. He made everyone feel welcomed and invited.”
Intagliata, now 71, became the shop’s owner after he graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in music. At the time, Intagliata worked in the complaint department at Sears.
“The success of the store was on my shoulders as a 24-year-old kid,” Intagliata said. “I made some mistakes, but I grew from it. My father taught me some very savvy business advice, which I’ve governed the store by for 48 years and it’s been a good run. We’ve weathered all the recessions and things like that.”
His father, an aerospace engineer at the time, bought the store from its founder, Albert Cassell, in 1978 after seeing an ad for it in the Los Angeles Times. His father, Intagliata said, employed his siblings to fund their college education.
“My brother Robert was a marketing major at Cal State Northridge. He started implementing a lot of ideas he was learning in his marketing class,” Intagliata said. “And one of the things we did was we donated a guitar and some lessons as a giveaway to somebody at Dodger Stadium at every last Dodgers home game.”
His brother John repaired band instruments for about 12 years, Intagliata said. His next brother, Paul, taught trumpet lessons to a student who eventually went on tour with Green Day. Intagliata said his sister, the baby of the family, obtained an engineering degree from Cal State Northridge and taught piano at Cassell’s for about eight years.
“A lot of students still remember her,” he said. “They come in and ask, ‘What’s your sister doing? I took piano lessons from her 30 years ago.’ ”
Mornings come in early for Intagliata, much to his dismay. He commutes regularly from his home in Santa Clarita to his shop, nestled in San Fernando on Maclay Avenue in front of a Fosters Freeze, Valley relic. Originally from Connecticut, Intagliata’s family moved to California in 1960, setting root in Palos Verdes — where his mother still lives today.
“I hated the peacocks,” he said. “They’re a mess.”
Originally located in the San Fernando Mall, Cassell’s has been around since 1948. The shop sold teenage rock star Ritchie Valens his first guitar, a sleek Gibson ES-225 electric, in 1958.
Intagliata’s father put down a down payment and purchased the store’s orignal name for about $5,000 in 1978. Ed Intagliata paid about $173,000 in a span of five years, he said. And six years after purchasing it, he moved Cassell’s to its current location on Memorial Day 1984. The location used to be an electronics store that sold CB radios and TV antennas, Intagliata said.
“I remember in the early to mid-80s, before they moved out to Maclay, they were in the heart of San Fernando Mall and I was in elementary, buying cassettes,” said Rago Mier, 52-year-old San Fernando resident. “It’s just heartbreaking for me that this store is no longer going to be here. I’m gonna miss it.”
Intagliata said Cassell’s used to be a record store at one point. He kept one of the original plastic sleeves with the shop’s logo.
“It was one of those things where you can come in, put on your headphones and listen to the latest thing,” he said. “We would put these sleeves on all the LPs.”
Intagliata personalized almost every corner of his store: buying luau decor from Party City to feature his assortment of ukuleles, frames of signed celebrity headshots and a prized possession: the white 1964 Fender Stratocaster electric guitar featured in the 1992 film “Wayne’s World.”
In the movie, Wayne’s character played by actor Mike Meyers makes repeated visits to the shop just to gaze at the fender guitar. Posters of the song “No Stairway to Heaven,” are scattered all around the shop. Intagliata said he had no idea how big the movie would be.
“They had a location scout come in one day and he was just asking, ‘Hey, we are looking for a music store to film a movie of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch,’ and I didn’t see him for many months,” Intagliata said. “He came back in again and said they liked my store, and apparently went to like seven or eight states looking for a music store that would fit what they were looking for.”
Intagliata said “Wayne’s World” put Cassell’s on the map after film crews decided to keep the store’s name in the movie. Visitors from all over the world came to see the guitar on display, one New Zealand fan even asking him for the case dimension to make a replica at home, Intagliata said.
“People come here and feel like the actors can come out any minute,” he said. “It gives them a real sense of excitement.”
The guitar will be featured in a shrine alongside the car used in “Wayne’s World” at a father-and-son museum in Canada, Intagliata said.
“I’m just finding out that I didn’t realize how deep the impact and influence the store had on people’s lives around here, getting them started on music,” he said. “Just how it’s kind of a nice place to hang out and be creative with.”
Intagliata recently revived an old T-shirt design from 1978 he found in his father’s closet. The shirts sold like hotcakes the same day the shipment was delivered. All Intagliata has from those days, besides a few shirts and the memories, is the first guitar he ever sold: an auditorium guitar, hung up in a corner of his store.
“I think I’m going to keep it,” he said as he stared at it. “They want me to sell it, but I’m going to keep it.”
Intagliata’s plan is to visit Italy next year. He has been eyeing the Amalfi Coast after he saw a picture of the Ravello Music Festival stage.
“Isn’t that something?” he said, admiring his computer screen. “I sing in a classical choir up in Santa Clarita. This is my genre, not rock ‘n’ roll. It’s this.”
Intagliata toyed with the idea of retirement a few years prior. After successfully selling his store via an online listing, Intagliata went on Facebook to make the announcement.
“I want to be able to travel while I still have relatively good health because I’m getting up there in age. I know I don’t look it,” Intagliata said, jokingly.
Cassell’s Music will be open until July 21. My Valley Pass, an online visitor’s guide to the San Fernando Valley, will be screening “Wayne’s World” at Cassell’s on July 10 starting at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 per person and can be purchased online.
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