Sam Cutler
psychedelics - discretion vs promotion - the conundrum
In the late sixties and early seventies there were 'competing schools of thought' on whether psychedelics should be promoted publicly or whether 'discretion' was the better way of approaching these substances. The two polarities could be best illustrated by the position taken by Timothy Leary and the position taken by the Grateful Dead. Both were in favour of psychedelics but both had radically different ideas as to the desirability of the 'public' approach taken by Leary. My talk will illustrate these differences with examples and describe the inner-debate amongst people in the Grateful Dead family concerning the issues that were raised by Leary's simplistic slogan "turn on tune in drop out".
Sam Cutler was the former tour manager of The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead and has worked with (amongst others) Janis Joplin, The Band, Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd and many artists central to the music business in the United Kingdom and America. He is a trained teacher and honours graduate in Contemporary History and has maintained a life long interest in 'better living through pharmacology'. His book YOU CANT ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT is central to understanding some of the seminal cultural events of the sixties and seventies and draws an interesting portrait of the drugs popular at the time and their effects (both beneficial and otherwise) on the artists of the period.