I started collecting the information for these projects from the mid 70's as a hobby and in 1978 I have enough to put out a small book: Rockmaster, I cannot even find a copy of this book, I know I had one somewhere.

Only a few of these ever appeared. By 1979 I had learned from the mistakes in the first book and worked quite hard making sure that the information was much better.

The first two books were produced in house, each entry was typed in on an electric typewriter and kept on sheets of paper. The first Rock Record in 1979 was made up of hundreds of small sheets and made in to pages staples together, these were taken to a local printer who made printing plates. I bought a small print press and started printing the books in my spare time. It was a very time consuming job as the 300+ pages had to be printed one set at a time then sorted into the book. Tim came in to help and took over the index of the musicians, which was also kept on small slips of paper. The house was full of boxes of paper with various pages store in them. Me and the print machine did not get on, It would decide to jam on a whim. Some of the first rock record had a magenta index as I was given this ink to try. It was OK apart from the fact that I had bright pink hands for a few days after using it as nothing seemed to remove it. I was working full time and all this was done during evenings and weekends. The cover was printed at a local printer in Poole, I "Designed it in the car park with letterset during my lunch break. I took the finished books at weekend to record and books shops in various places around the country. The interest far exceeded my expectations.