Even though AP was still a young company, we were already running into the very problems for which we were least prepared-like, well, running a company. Whenever I talk to a would-be publisher, I scope out whether they’re coming more from an artistic mindset or from a business mindset. If from the latter, then I guarantee they’ll end up spending their early years like we did: full of great ideas, but always with one foot in the grave.

In 1989, I had to fire my first employee. My God, did that suck. I didn’t sleep the night before and figured the only way I could fire this guy was to get myself so agitated that I would just storm into work and just let him have it. I put on my steel-toed Dr. Martens that day, and when I called him into the back office, I just ranted and raved and stomped around like a Nazi on speed. I made no sense, and it took me an hour to tell him, “You’re fired.” He begged to stay. I felt so bad, but I stood my ground. I ran into him years later. He was selling ads for the big rock station in town. He was happier and richer, and we got along fine. Sometimes good things come out of bad ones, y’know?

Then, more trouble. My editor, Joe Cairnes, who’d decided to go back to school, put in his notice. Joe Banks, our news editor, took over. Thank God. Joe was meticulous about his work. For the first time, we were super-organized. The magazine became more focused; we spent more time picking the right bands to cover instead of jumping on whichever bands happened to be pitched to us by publicists.

Then, David Earle, who was still writing a hardcore column for us and whose apartment we were sharing, decided he was going to move back home to save money-which meant AP would have to cover rent for his apartment if we wanted to stay there. We decided to find a cheaper place, and ended up finding an apartment on the other side of town, on West 112th, not far from the Phantasy Niteclub, where a pre-Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor was playing periodically with the Exotic Birds.

Despite all the headaches, AP was starting to do things that I had thought would take years to achieve. We had snatched big interviews with the Cure, PiL’s John Lydon (Rotten), the Pixies and Bad Brains. We were distributed across the country through major record distributors, which at that time were the primary way fanzines ended up in cool indie record stores. Thanks to the new exposure, we were now attracting more writers and photographers from New York and L.A.

Our NYC correspondents, Rachel Felder and DV-8 Magazine founder Peter Belsky, were doing wonders to promote AP. Rachel was super-connected with the press, so she ended up getting AP mentioned in the New York Post and other gossip columns as though we were a huge media company. Peter was connected with the fashion and club scenes, and through him we ended up on a bunch of parties sponsored by super club kid Michael Alig (yes, of Party Monster fame). Here we were in Cleveland, throwing our little record-release parties for things like Soundgarden’s Louder Than Love at local clubs and thinking we were still small fries, while hipsters and movers in NYC were throwing parties with a magazine they’d never even seen.

By the time we nabbed a cover with the then-infant Red Hot Chili Peppers for our last issue of the year, AP had suffered good and bad growing pains. Yeah, the staff was turning over, but we were getting better at running a business. I was beginning to worry, though, because I knew our debt was growing, especially with our printer. The initial $16,000 my grandmother had loaned us was already spent, and we were struggling again. We loved putting out a magazine. We hated thinking about money-after all, that’s not why we got into this, so why should finances be our No. 1 concern?