Michael Reuben Campbell is not the sort of man you'd challenge to a wrestling match. Not unless you fancied being flattened in a hurry.

He may not be especially tall — but he's big; the sort of big that gives him an air of relaxed, unflustered cool. And, while physical dimension has never ranked as an essential tool in a manager's repertoire, it certainly comes in handy sometimes.

Michael, better known in music circles as Mikey, is under no illusions about that. Seven years of experience in handling Britain's top Reggae band Aswad have given him plenty of time to weigh up whether tact or force is the best way through business.

"I find that I don't have to take a strong line with people," he explains, "because they already know that it's possible, you understand what I'm saying? So it just doesn't have to happen. Besides, in this industry, you don't get people to do what they don't want to — particularly not at record companies. No amount of getting tough or twisting arms is going to change that."

Mikey has a different tale to tell than most managers, if only because his band faces peculiar problems suffered traditionally by only black music in the British record business.

For example, did you hear the one about how, in some quarters, black music — be it Funk, Soul, Rock or whatever — is trashed and ignored as second rate? Or the one about radio stations which believe any Reggae other than Bob Marley's is too 'ethnic'? Mikey Campbell has.

"Exactly as you've said it is, that's the way things are," he nods. "Many people seem to think that black music doesn't merit the attention that 'white' music does. It's thought of like that by the people who work at record companies, and by the people who control radio. In fact, it's thought of that way. Period.

"And it's that way of thinking that we have been fighting for years. We've just been knocking against walls all the time but slowly, slowly, we're rubbing away at them. I'm not saying we're breaking the wall down, but we're making a few dents in it. One of these days a few bricks will fall out!"

Lack of funds mean that Mikey, 34, has to wear many and varied managerial hats — from negotiator and gig organiser, to mixing sound for Aswad when the band hits the road — in order to keep things ticking over.

"My kind of management involves all kinds of different things," he explains with a mysterious grin. "You see, where you'd normally have someone else to do this and someone else to do that — we never have. Because we never did have the thing which keeps this whole business together; money.

"I mean, we don't ever have a tour manager because we can't afford one. So I end up dong that, and countless other things, myself. I'm one man doing many things!"

Chief among these has been to manoeuvre Aswad backwards and forwards between record companies. The band has been involved with Island on no less than three separate occasions.

It's been a continual headache, says Mikey, to find the right label for Aswad, and he's still trying to decide whether they've arrived at it yet. Mikey doesn't come across as someone who minces words — indeed he put a few noses out of joint even by agreeing to do this interview.

"Maybe some people ain't going to like what I have to say," he explains.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Mikey arrived in England when he was 10 and, after leaving school and doing "various bits and pieces", he ended up at one of Britain's biggest Reggae outlets, Trojan Records, where he sold records and did the occasional bit of studio work.

His involvement with the outfit led to this first foray into management, with Delroy Washington.

"That just seemed to happen," Mikey recalls. "See, Delroy was getting some things together with Island — who then shared the same offices as Trojan — but it wasn't going to work.

"So, because I knew him and we were both around, I decided to take his tape to record companies. I took the music from Island and the first place I went to, Virgin, they wanted it."

After a year or so with Delroy, Mikey parted company and went on to form Grove Music with his partner, King Sounds.

"The label started releasing stuff from Jamaica like Yabby U, Freddie MacGregor and Judy Mowatt," says Mikey.

Mikey had known Aswad for many years — Brinsley from when he used to play in the backing band at weekly talent competitions Mikey helped to organise in North London, and Drummie because he'd played with Delroy — and the formation of Grove Music coincided with the band's first departure from Island.

"They'd been to Jamaica to record an album," Mikey adds. "It never came out, although some of the material did surface later. Anyway, when they came back to England, they didn't have a record company, they'd broken up with their management — and they asked me to get involved.

"At the time, as there is often now, there was a lack of interest from record companies towards what we were doing; home-grown Reggae, black music — call it what you will. Which ever way you put it, there were no takers.

"There's never, ever been a black record industry in England, which makes things that much harder. We ended putting everything out on Grove Music, which then did a licensing deal with Island. So we ended up back there but, the second time around, necessary monies weren't forthcoming for promotion and marketing because of the way the deal was structured. We had no alternative but to leave Grove Music and go to CBS."

CBS had been chosen, Mikey explains, because of interest in Aswad shown by the company's then managing director, Dave Betteridge, and an A&R man, Howard Thompson. "They believed in us," says Mikey.

"But, and this is part of the history of what seems to happen to Aswad, whenever we sign to a label, the people who have been instrumental in signing us leave. Dave left as soon as we'd finished our first album for CBS — New Chapter — and Howard went the week before it was released. So we ended up with nobody there."

Mikey then did a deal with Island to put out a dub version of the album.

"CBS had no intention of releasing it," Mikey claims, "I knew that. So all I had to do was convince them that they didn't want to put it out! It was finally released on our own Simba label and distributed by Island."

Aswad recorded a second studio album for CBS — Not Satisfied — before Mikey decided not to renew the band's option with the company once its contract had expired.

"We were extremely not satisfied," he remembers. "From what I could see, there were quite a few potential hit singles on that record — but CBS just didn't have any heart in it.

"They told themselves that they didn't know how to handle it when, really and truly, it didn't have to be handled in any special way. All you have to do with a record is get it out to the market — and if there isn't one there, then you create one. That's how it's done for other artists.

"Nobody has a ready-made market until after it's been created, but people have, for some reasons, always expected Aswad to have one. Nobody has been prepared to actually go out on the street and make it happen.

"We've had to do it ourselves by going out every year and touring, by getting it together. We have a massive following right now — it's just a question of turning that into record sales. That isn't our job."

Hearing of Aswad's unrest at CBS, Island's boss, Chris Blackwell had told Mikey to "come back home" as soon as the band was free.

"We came back," says Mikey, "but I remember everybody laughing at me — lawyers, the lot — when I suggested that we should draw up this agreement saying that, if Chris Blackwell sold Island Records or anything, then Aswad should be free to leave.

"Everybody said 'Well, that's hardly likely!' So what happens?, halfway through making our new album Island and Stiff merge! In came Dave Robinson (who set up Stiff).

"Now, we'd never, ever spoken to the A&R department at Island because we never had need to. The A&R men were dealing with something completely different from Reggae. But suddenly we find ourselves facing a different kind of policy to what we thought we'd be dealing with.

"We've never had A&R men telling us what to do, or any other men for that matter. We've just got to straighten those sort of things out and, at the moment, we're still trying to determine how that's going on!"

Mikey reveals that Aswad's latest album, Rebel Souls, shifted around 20,000 copies in little over a week of its release.

"That's good news," he admits, "but it would be even better news if we sold that next week and the week after. However, the opinion is that we will not. Do you see the problem? My only question is why not? A record company's job is to put out your music and get it on the streets where people can hear it. If that doesn't happen, then you're half way to nowhere."

And, sadly, Mikey considers that much of today's hopeful music won't even get that far. "What really got to me at CBS, and it must happen all over the place, is that you see these poor guys sending cassettes in — you see a whole pile of them on the floor — and you know that those tapes are going nowhere but in the dustbin," he says.

"On those tapes are people's dreams, people's hopes — people's lives. And they're just sitting there gathering dust because some guy hasn't even got the time to listen to them. I'm not accusing anyone, but that's what happens. I mean, I used to do it too, I suppose."