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C. Weber: 'An Unusual Life' Book – Artist Interviews – Articles – Travel

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Creators

Charley Weber: Writer/Developer                            Petra Schmidt: Articles Editor

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Images

mum quad shot
BW me on stage w jimi
CW bw mirror Nesustadt
Gerard as a lad at work
Charley Summerhill meeting Dining hall
CW beneath Galata
Beau Empire State
Paul F in St. Potteries
Joanna 2 shot one lying down
Summerhill House BW
Zoë in Jeep
Jimi talks to Charey onstage film still
C whisper in Jimis ear
Kim three but younger shot
ger2
Me with cowboy hat and Keith read paper in bg
beau on a bench 7yrs old circa
Petrasunbatheknitting
Kim B&W nice shot
Bea lucy and me Restaurant
Mumreachingfortheheavens
MeinBulgyIcecream
Summerhill
Petravintageadult
Summerhill Meeting Ena
Beau Travelling w Iran gf in bg
Susiyoungshot
Jake lu buddy and beau
Zoe and Neil
Kim Shuck
Petrawbabyruthie
Tomyoungw60sitgirl
Jake and I s kids
Summerhill coming thru door shot
Racing in 6os grandstand bw
CW Radio Bulgy
Marcos
Charley Keith Cowboy hat nelcote
CWteen
prancoisem6

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Overview

‘A beautiful website, I Love it’. Author, Joanna Harcourt-Smith.

Podcast Interviews. People at the heart of writing, film, music and education.

Alternative Travel. Off the beaten track escapes. With a focus on island life; remote and internet work; live-aboard boats and unusual locations.

Some of our early content:

No. 1/Oct, 2019. Kim Shuck. Poet Laureate, San Francisco. Catalina. A gem of an island and nature reserve off the coast of Southern California.

No. 2/Nov, 2019. Jon East. Film and TV Director. ‘The Last Kingdom’ and the  ‘Summerhill’  series. Istanbul /Princess Islands. A short ferry ride from Istanbul. Living on an island which relies on horse-drawn transportation and commuting to work in Istanbul.

No. 3/Dec, 2019. Joanna Harcourt Smith. Podcaster and author: ‘Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary’. The Balearic Islands. Then and now. Adventures in Ibiza, Formentera and Mallorca.

No. 4/Jan, 2020. Zoë Readhead. Principal at A.S. Neill’s Summerhill School. Devon/Cornwall.  The English Riviera. Blue seas and sandy beaches conceal a long history of  smugglers tales and pirates coves.

No. 5/Feb, 2020. Gerard Mosiniak. International restaurateur and chef. Bali, Indonesia. Spiritual haven and party island. The festivals, retreats  and less busy islands.

In each issue is also a new chapter in the E-Biography: ‘An Unusual Life’. Where Charley Weber explores growing up in the heart of counterculture from all perspectives: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Raised around incredible artists like George Harrison, Steve Windwood and Jimi Hendrix. Using a mixture of personal recall, music, videos and first person interview bites, as well as iconic shots of the writer on stage with Jimi at the Albert Hall, Donovan  at The Isle of Wight and The Rolling Stones in the South of France, Charley explores what it was like to grow up in that unusual environment.

Charley and his elder brother, the actor Jake Weber, were page boys at Mick Jagger’s wedding to Bianca in the south of France in 1971, where the Rolling Stones were recording ‘Exile on Main Street’.
Later that summer the two discovered that their too-good-to-be-true lifestyle came with a downside, when their mother  took her life. They began to understand that their lives, which included being used as child drug mules, were anything but normal.

In the mid to late 70s, the two found a semblance of peace and stability at A.S. Neill’s Summerhill School, which their mother Susan had enrolled them in some years before her death.

An Unusual Life follows the long journey of coming to terms with the emotional aftermath of that kind of dramatic childhood: the initial unusual privilege and hope, and the subsequent dissolution, tragedy and loss to drug taking that came along with all that.

It follows generations of one family, from the very heart of London’s counterculture in the 60s to the present day.

Taking a circuitous route of starting a family and producing music videos in London in the 80s; working in film and tv in the 90s in NYC; being a music director of  clubs and a contracting producer for the
first 24-hour multi-stage electronic music festival in Istanbul; the out-lands of Eastern Anatolia, searching for family, clues, identity and meaning with the family of a wife whose father also was a smuggler, for an underground partisan political organisation. A gambler and a risk taker of a seemingly identical archetype, pirates by nature. Not totally bad, but unpossessed of   ‘normal’ boundaries.

Shortly after the new Millenium, Charley discovered the man he  thought was his father, Tommy Weber – a wild hearted Viking –  might in fact not be his father at all. Then began a search for a biological father: ‘Gaucín, Southern Spain, 2007. After the death of my father, while interviewing an old friend of the family about our mother, the question of my own paternity came up. By chance, it turned out that the man we – meaning Tommy and I – suspect may be my biological father owned much of the land in the valley the little restaurant we are sitting at overlooked. It was a sweeping vista.’

There are also characters we follow throughout, people like Petra Schmidt, who is very much part of this tribe or culture  – and who, amazingly, is editing all of this – and Paul-François, a friend from
Summerhill who shared a similar experience regarding the identity of his own biological father.

Other fascinating lives and character portraits, which I’ll get into on the project, are Kathleen Ginyard, and Bobby Lear – also a  musician – both of whom were born into historic music families in Doo Wop
and Jazz and are part of the strange story of music and alternative culture over the generations.

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