Sam Cutler

Sometimes it is necessary for a “decent interval” to have elapsed before one can write meaningfully about historic events, especially if those events have intersected with one’s own life in a dramatic fashion. In my case this “decent interval” has extended to some forty years. That period of time has seen the period of which I write (the Sixties and its counter culture) enter into the mainstream of  academic and literary discourse. University and college undergraduates now study the Sixties and there is a growing consensus that the period is of significance and worthy of attention. The Sixties are now being re-assessed. People of my age are looking back at their lives and  they are asking themselves, “what did I do with my youth?”

For many years I had been told, you should write a book, and for many years my instincts told me the time was not ripe for my contribution to the history of the two most popular music groups of that era - the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. By a weird co-incidence I had been the Tour Manager for both of them and the change from the one group to the other had been bifurcated by the dreadful events at Altamont - a free concert in California where a man had been killed right in front of the stage as the music played. Finally I felt that the time was right for me to make my contribution to the literature of the sixties and I steeled myself for the task ahead.

Where was I physically to write my book became the first order of my attention. I could not like the author JK Rowling sit in a cafe and scribble away, and I could not be in a cosy house with my lover -  I needed to be completely focussed, and most importantly; alone. A dear  friend (Anette Harris) came to my rescue and offered me a “cabin in the woods” on her property outside Bellingen in New South Wales, Australia. Full of a “sense of purpose” I isolated myself in the cabin and began the task of ‘remembering what I had forgotten’ and writing my auto-biography.

‘Remembering’ and ‘forgetting’ are words that signify a strange and (sometimes) revealing process ! They force one to consider the whole business of HOW one re-creates what happened to one’s life. It helps (I think) to take the position that NOTHING is actually forgotten ! Like undiscovered gold it’s ‘in there somewhere’ and it’s only a matter of time and luck and application before the mother-load is somehow discovered. So one begins upon a coherent and logical course of self-exploration, carefully proceeding from one memory to the next and slowly ‘chipping away’. The process unravels some startling insights, some memories long since buried beneath the daily grind of existence. With patience and care most of what has ever happened to us can be revealed to the meditative and enquiring mind. NOTHING is actually forgotten - though often it is obscured from view !!

I started with my ‘earliest’ memory - one that had been ‘unearthed’ in a series of hypno-therapy session long ago in Northern California, where under skilled guidance I was ‘re-gressed’ back to my earliest childhood memories. The ‘earliest’ the therapist could get me to was just prior to my third birthday when I had been carried down the steps of a bombed out railway station and been given to my adoptive parents. The therapist couldn’t get me ‘back’ any further and to all intents and purposes that was where my ‘memory life’ began. So I started on the long road to remembering things from right THERE. And I spent three months alone in that cabin writing/remembering/writing about my childhood years. This preceeded my writing abour rock and roll, which happened to me in my young adulthood.

At the end of writing about my childood an irrational desire to re-locate myself and write  somewhere else, took hold of me. It was interesting that this desire in my sixties should have exactly mirrored what I felt as a teenager when I was anxious to ‘discard’ my youth and become an adult ! So I was faced, again, with the question; where should I write. Once again, I was ‘saved’ by a friend. David Siler, an American from San Francisco who had lived in Australia for many years, offered to let me write on the deck of his beautiful house in a suburb of Brisbane, and I shifted myself to the new locale. An added bonus was that David was a chef and he kindly cooked and froze a whole range of wonderful one-man meals - it took him longer to teach me how to use the micro-wave than it did for him to cook one of the meals !

And so I undertook the next part of the ‘journey’ facing a green and verdant valley seated at a large table on a magnificent deck. The words flowed like the beer David consumed in prodigous quantities and a futher dilema presented itself. David had never much cared for the Grateful Dead (even though he was from San Francisco) so I had no-one to talk to about that period of my life, to check what I had written and to generally ‘be involved’ in the magic of recalling those wonderful times. Up stepped Nick Veltre, a Dead Head with a love of the band that bordered on the demented and a series of laughing and joking sessions went on for several weeks, whilst Nick checked what I had written and generally helped to inspire. Being from New jersey proved useful and Nick also did some ‘research’ on the more unsavoury elements of American life for which I am eternally grateful - and not dead ! Yet !

Other people were also involved. NO book is written solely alone. Even Ian Fleming (James Bond) who could write a book in three weeks (!!) had his cook and his gardener and his houseboy to support his efforts - if only by staying out of the way ! Some understood my efforts - some didn’t. At the end of the writing those who had helped have to be thanked in the acknowledgements - those that THOUGHT they had  helped (but who in fact had hindered the process, albeit unconsciously) had to be studiously ignored. The publishers had wanted a manuscript of around 90,000 words and I had written 160,000. There now came the editing process, and there in the trenches where words are dissected and often destroyed and cast aside, I finally learnt about books - as opposed to writing ! Throughout that (sometimes) painful process I was guided by a wonderful woman called Elizabeth Cowell who walked into the wild garden of my creative imagination and pruned the trees, cut back the overgrowing shrubs, and re-planted the lawn. To my editor I owe everything ! This is not to forget my kids, my ex, my lover, and everyone else who was prepared to support and nurture my ambitions.

The first book was released in Australia almost two years ago and did moderately well. It is now about to be released in America. It’s a bit like giving birth to a child, I imagine. Once one has had the first one then the thought of additions doesn’t seem so daunting ! I shall go to America and promote the book and we’ll see whether the Gods have favoured our endeavours. Then I’ll find the right place to write the next one ! Meanwhile the rather daunting prospect of reading reviews becomes a reality. Get ready for a slap I tell myself and I’m prepared ! Not every reviewer is going to like a book (impossible!) and some are going to be wildly off-base in their comments. You put a book out into the world about your own life it’s going to be judged ! Warmly, harshly, kindly, bitterly - all things are possible. If autobiography is to be REAL then it has to be BRAVE - the world seeks (and needs) authenticity. One can satisfy oneself in this regard and give it one’s ‘best shot’ but in then end other people will decide whether they’re going to embrace what you’ve written  - or not ! Better a false hope than an unendurable reality ? As the Rolling Stones sing : “you can’t always get what you want” -  I decided that was a perfect title for the book !

© sam cutler 2010