Sam Cutler remembers http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24461129-5013575,00.html
SPIN DOCTOR: James Jeffrey | October 11, 2008 ERSTWHILE Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead tour manager Sam Cutler is flogging his memoir, You Can't Always Get What You Want, a title that may see it mistaken by bookshop browsers for Peter Costello's potboiler. And the confusion may last for more than a few chapters, both books telling the story of men who toiled night and day inside a powerful machine but without getting to be a Mick Jagger or a Keith Richards or a Jerry Garcia or a J.W. Howard. Costello-Cutler parallelogists (a word I have just coined for the benefit of the broader reading public) will have their work cut out for them for days, even weeks. In just one eerie echo of a classic Costello observation, Cutler predicts his former bosses the Stones won't quit the spotlight and will just keep on playing until they cark it on stage. Cutler recalls catching up with them 34 years after they sacked him, to be greeted by His Keefness thus: "F..k me, Sam Cutler. Or should I say, f..k you?" I haven't shovelled through enough of Costello's copy to know if this represents another spooky parallel. Nevertheless, Cutler clearly comes from a family more robust than the average nuclear unit, judging by his description of the backstage reunion as being "a bit like meeting your aunt after many years". * * * IT'S bad enough having your musical tastes called into question by friends, but to be found wanting by a car thief is a blow almost too low to bear. It happened the other week when my vehicle -- a rudimentary piece of technology dating from the late Cretaceous -- was boosted from outside the house, along with a glovebox full of music cassettes. (Kids, ask your parents what they are.) I was bemused by the thief's choice -- most of the other vehicles in the street are far more readily recognisable as cars -- but also gutted by the loss of what amounted to an archive of bagpipe music. Had my thief the gift of a discerning and pipe-curious ear, they could have had hours listening to Galician gaitas, uilleann pipes, Scottish half-longs, German dudelsacks, Italian zampognas and AC/DC's Bon Scott almost blowing his lungs out on It's a Long Way to the Top. As they started the engine in the darkness, what first greeted their ears would have been the gem I'd wedged into the tape deck: the Shotts and Dykehead Caledonia Pipe Band belting through Cock Up Your Beaver (it's from a poem, you know) and making a noise like a B-52 ploughing into a minefield. None of us in the house heard anything, but the thief would have copped an earful. Which may explain why they made it only a few blocks before dumping the car, but not before systematically ripping the tape out of nearly every single cassette. As Scott -- whose own bagpipes came to grief at the hands of crazed fans -- knew only too well, everyone's a bloody critic. -- Iain Shedden is on leave. [EMAIL PROTECTED] . --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to sixties-l@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
