A bit of a layout surfaced with Newsletter 4 and lasted for two issues! The mag was late 'cos I'd been dragged up to Beamish Museum in Co. Durham on some sort of college course though I'm damned if I can remember why. I'd splashed out on some Letraset for a couple of the headings too and done an RBAS logo at college, which was soon turned into a badge and then printed on a t-shirt. I stopped wearing mine when some berk on a Manchester bus asked me why I had a t-shirt with my picture on. The info sheet was on (I think) Purple bootlegs. Ann was also offering a photocopying service to fans from our cuttings collection though this soon became impractical to continue. Rainbow news was beginning to filter through thanks to members in America who would send us snippets from Circus magazine, a fortnightly glossy rock mag (which put anything we had in the UK to shame). Still no gigs over here but we had tickets for Purple in Liverpool and were fearing the worst. Steve Micklethwaite's name crops up in the credits section; amazingly I had an e-mail off him last week - the first contact in twenty years!

Here are some cuttings about bootlegs, from circa May 1971. "Deep Purple 'H-Bomb' is a live recording featuring 'Black Night', 'Paint It Black', and a 20-minute (all one side) recording of their instrumental 'Wring That Neck'. There are now over 20 bootleg albums circulating throughout the country. One dealer gave the following Top 20 list of albums: 1. Live At Shea - The Beatles, 2. H-Bomb - Deep Purple....."

"Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple : 'I think we all were flattered - it was done at a concert in Aachen. I look on bootlegs as being collectors' items. If I was really into an artist, and I wanted to hear how he performed live, then I'd buy one.'"