As an unrepentant songwriter, I have a lot of opinions on the nature of music. One of my beliefs is that a song takes its meaning in the ear of the listener. It doesn’t matter what the writer thinks it means; what’s important is what it means to the person who hears it.

Now, I grant you that this can lead to some harrowing moments when you miss the mark and the listener interprets your work in an unexpected and, on occasion, cringe-inducing manner.

But a moment like that should generate wisdom, not mortification. You can learn a lot from the distance between your intent and the listener’s extrapolation. Plus, there are times when the message a listener takes from the song tells you something brand new, a perspective of your work and possibly, of yourself that you might never have experienced without an audience.

So, based on feedback received regarding songs, I came to the release of A MAN OF SUBSTANCES with some curiosity. I think that the book and its subject matter have the potential to reach a broader audience than the music I make. Being new to long-form writing, I had no experience with this broader “audience” in spite of years of turning out tunes. But I still suspected that music’s “ear of the beholder” principle would apply to book readers as well. I was prepared to learn something.

The first surprise came at how consistently reader’s referred to the book as “funny”. Now, Gerry – like his family, in fact– is not without a sense of humour. But some pretty harrowing stuff happens to Gerry in the course of his story. One reader even referred to the “sense of impending doom” she felt in the later chapters of the book. Being told of this comment, a member of Gerry’s family replied, “Tell her to talk to ME!” This, to my mind is the key to the brand of “funny” folks find in A MAN OF SUBSTANCES. While some of the humour is in the events, it’s more often the response to those events that seems “funny”. The sense of doom is there but the absurdity of the circumstance is never far behind. Thanks to a reader, first lesson learned.

Another reader wrote that the story carried her along “like a good novel always does.” The book is a memoir, of course, not a novel. But this is where my perspective (those opinions again!) shaped the way that Gerry’s story is told. I read a lot of memoirs, generally of musicians and artists that I admire. In almost every case, however, I find myself skimming paragraphs about stuff that was clearly important to the protagonist but is substantially less so to me. Even in books about artists I adore, I skim. I don’t do this when reading a good novel.

Memoir or not, I aspired to trim the skim. Full disclosure: this aspiration was at the core of several disagreements with Gerry. You can see his point; the book is about his life, for heaven’s sake. And I’ll admit that we left out some pretty good stories and side trips. But that’s what they were in my mind – roadside attractions. At one point I told Gerry to think of the book as a shared journey where he wanted to stop at every stand for fresh fruit, baked goods and even a bit of wine tasting. I, on the other hand, just wanted to get to Niagara Falls! To fortify my position, in my list of unworthy roadside diversions, I purposely omitted establishments selling ice cream.

To Gerry’s credit, he came to see the point. I think this “stay on the highway” storytelling strategy is why folks tell us that they read the book in “two sessions” or complain cheerfully about staying up too late reading it. I’m grateful that they seem to want to read on. Even so, the guy who wrote of reading the book on the toilet until his bath was too cold could rightfully be accused of over-sharing.

Some readers have noted the book’s intent to reflect the era in which its events unfold. This one really tickled me. As an, ahem, older fellow, I admit to developing a pique from movies set in a time in which I lived, but made by those who, clearly, did not. Don’t take this as reverse ageism – I’m thrilled when research supplants experience. But damn it, disco did not unfold in the Swingin’ Sixties and every attractive woman in attendance at a rock festival was not topless. Gerry’s desperate dash across a department store parking lot in Beatle boots is not in the book because it reflected the era, nor because it is funny. It’s there simply because it’s true. Take the incident out of its time– with Gerry’s footwear unspecified– and it’s not nearly as vibrant. So the details are important. I take great pleasure when readers notice.

>Unsurprisingly, A MAN OF SUBSTANCES’ subject matter comes up most often in reader comments. Those who were not part of the substance subculture express astonishment at the lengths to which a pot cultivator goes to get the weed into the baggie. From field to pocket or purse, it’s a business with a product that requires a manufacturing process like every other consumer product.

This much I understood. As for much of the rest, I was clueless. My partnership with Gerry was serendipitous in this regard. He was immersed in the substance culture; I wasn’t. When Gerry set aside guitar and amp for motorcycle and marijuana, I did not. Similarly, like a lot of readers, I went on to straight job and family without Gerry’s lifestyle schizophrenia. Sure, he had straight jobs and a family as well. But he also had a secret life, the resultant burden of which makes his path unique to a lot of us.

By “us”, I mean the readers and me. I share the reader’s outside perspective when it comes to the way that Gerry lived from rationalization to rationalization, from escalating problem to unexpected solution. Conversely, to those more knowledgeable souls who remark on the accuracy and detail with which the drug culture is revealed, I take no credit. I had a pretty good tutor in Professor Pot.

Someone else who wrote to us called the writing “rhythmic”. Back to the music thing again, this one meant a lot to me. In music, the way you play or sing a melodic thread in the context of a tune’s tempo is termed phrasing. The word is used to describe the way different players string together the same notes over the same bars in a very unique way. It’s partially rhythm, partially volume, partially pitch and partially tone. So, as a muso, so much as nod in this direction from readers of the book is immensely gratifying.

There’s so much to be learned from reader feedback about what transpires when the sentences sink into a welcoming brain. In every case, we’ve gained from the perspective of those who’ve taken the time to comment. On behalf of Gerry and me, thank you for your perspective and the passion expended to express it. Even the over-sharing!

David Partridge