LIVERMORE, CA - DECEMBER 6: Rolling Stones Tour Manager Sam Cutler tries to manage the crowd of 300,000 at The Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969 in Livermore, California. (Photo by Robert Altma
LIVERMORE, CA - DECEMBER 6: Rolling Stones Tour Manager Sam Cutler tries to manage the crowd of 300,000 at The Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969 in Livermore, California. (Photo by Robert Altma
"What was happening was you'd be at a place where several thousand people were taking acid, as you were. We all took acid before the band played. Four or five times a week," Sam Cutler says. "It was a quasi-religious experience to be at a Grateful Dead gig."
Before becoming a writer, Cutler worked as the tour manager for legendary and hedonistic bands the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. In 1969 he took the Rolling Stones around America, a tour which culminated in the infamous and murderous events at the Altamont Free Concert and was captured in the extraordinary documentary film Gimme Shelter. After which he joined the eternally touring Grateful Dead for the first half of the 70s.
Now 75, Cutler retired from the music business at the ripe old age of 30. Operating at the highest echelon with the biggest acts, it begs the question of why he'd give it all up.
"I decided that I wanted to do what I wanted to do," he says simply. "And what I wanted to do was be a writer."
He's written ever since but, somewhat predictably, it's his book You Can't Always Get What You Want, his insider account of that violent and fatal day at Altamont that has garnered the most attention.
"There are already 150 books about the Rolling Stones. I didn't want to do another one of them," he says. "But what I did find interesting was the contrast between the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. This massive, super-important English band and this massive American band, which was very different. How they were different, why they were different etc. That was what intrigued me.
"The Grateful Dead, of course, always kept their feet firmly in the meadow of the counterculture. That's where they came from. That's what they were. You wouldn't describe the Rolling Stones as a counterculture phenomenon."
Sam Cutler, former manager of The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead
He laughs, then says, "the Rolling Stones basically became very popular because they appealed to people who didn't like the Beatles. Your mum liked the Beatles. There was a time where you immediately gravitated to the bad boys of the Rolling Stones rather than the good little Beatles. Yeah, they had long hair, but they washed it, you know what I mean?"
A natural raconteur, Cutler is great company. Reeling off story after story about his experiences at, as the good little Beatles put it, the toppermost of the poppermost.
"I can remember one time where Keith offered me some heroin and I just told him, 'look, that's the last time you're ever gonna do that and if you ever try to do that again I'm gonna shove it up your ass'. So, we agreed to differ on that one," he grins.
He describes the art of being a tour manager as keeping a distinction between running a tour and running people's lives. He had an uncomplicated approach to the job. Mind his business.
"It's not my business what people put in their body. My business is to make sure people live, get on stage at the time it says on the contract and fulfil their legal, moral, ethical, spiritual obligations," he says. "I wouldn't dream of telling Keith or anybody else not to do something. I had my own personal attitude. I despise heroin. I see it as the enemy of any kind of creative activity. I'm addicted to oxygen. That's what I've decided I really like."
He likens being a tour manager to being an army general in that you're co-ordinating many disparate parts.
"You have to be the kind of person who is more than prepared to deal with anything that comes down the road. Anything. And if you can't deal with stuff on that basis and be ready to make a decision in three seconds flat then you're in the wrong job."
When asked what was something unexpected he had to deal with he thinks back.
"Girls used to steal your clothes from hotel rooms all the time because they didn't know which room was Mick's or Keith's," he says. "In the end, I took to touring with a very small bag. I had a spare pair of underpants, a spare pair of jeans, couple of pairs of socks. That was it. Mick never used to leave any of his clothes in his room at all. Because they'd just steal them."
LOWDOWN Who: Sam Cutler, former tour manager of the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead What: Gimme Shelter screening followed by an audience Q&A When: Saturday at Lot23, tickets at eventbrite.co.nz
