In your book you say that the BPI tried to close The Tip Sheet down on copyright grounds, but strangely enough, the record labels seemed to be more than happy to pay you £250 per track to have their music included on the free CD that came with the magazine. Why would that be? Were they under the false impression that the phonographic copyright holders would want royalties from you (collected by PPL) for giving away their music for free, when it seems the money was quite happily flowing in the other direction? I don't get it...

Though I see you got round them by slighly bastardising the tracks, making them unbroadcastable on the radio.

Yes; that was how we got around the problem; by adding a spoken logo to each track, they became unplayable on radio.

The very same big labels were, of course, giving free promotion copies to those very radio stations.

We only charged labels. Unsigned or indie tracks went on for free. What execs hated was; we chose the featured tracks, not them. So they had no control over their priorities. And, as a result, often featured tracks they didn't want pushed. As on No Limits - we frequently used music by dead people (like Eva Cassidy). Our sole rule was - if it was good, we played it.

I see; so the big labels' priority was to get their own products marketed and aired, no matter how awful the music was, whereas TS just wanted its readers to hear and read about artists it considered to be good and worth listening to. But didn't the big players always win in the end, by snapping up those unknown bands once the public had decided they liked them?

Yes - and that was fine by me; it wasn't done to try to "beat" the majors - just to break great music and talent, whether the artistes were living or dead, signed or unsigned.

We'd pick the new release by the biggest artiste in the world if it was the best record we heard that week.

The Tip Sheet made virtually no money. We weren't there to get rich. Luckily I'd already made money through my own hits and productions (and none of those were made to make money either).

So the JK9000 Rolls Royce was just a nice little bonus on top of doing what you love to do!

BTW, what is the significance of the 9000?

It was my friend Derek Taylor's office on Sunset in Hollywood.