Altamont At 50: The Disastrous Concert That Brought The 60s To A Crashing Halt – Forbes

LIVERMORE, CA - DECEMBER 6: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones at The Altamont ... [+] Speedway on December 6, 1969 in Livermore, California. (Photo by Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

If the Woodstock festival in August 1969 represented peace and hippie idealism, then the Altamont Free Concert, held almost four months later, symbolically shattered that innocence. On December 6, 1969, about 300,000 gathered at the Altamont Speedway in Tracy, California to see the Rolling Stones perform a free concert that was seen as a Woodstock West. It was also supposed to be a triumphant conclusion for the band that year, following their successful U.S. tour. But the event was marred by violent confrontations between the Hells Angels (who were hired to do security) and the crowd, in addition to lack of organization and bad drugs. By the end of the show, a total of four people diedamong them 18-year-old Meredith Hunter, who was stabbed to death by a Hells Angels member, a moment captured in the Maysles Brothers and Charlotte Zwerins classic documentary film Gimme Shelter.

Fifty years later, Altamont is not only considered one of the most disastrous moments in rock, but it has become a convenient shorthand term for the death of the 60s. To San Francisco-based veteran music writer Joel Selvin, who wrote the 2016 book Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day, now out in paperback, the concert was a toxic cocktail of greed and innocence. It's a subject of never-ending fascination and not just for people who were there, he explains on the eve of the milestone. It's such an anomalous event in our history. And it also is commemorated by [Gimme Shelter], which is a great movie. But that movie is a patented fiction. Its an apology for the Stones and paints them as victims.

Book jacket of Altamont, by Joel Selvin

There were a number of reasons why the free concert happened. For the Stones, said Selvin, mounting the event which also included the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and Santana was their way of being part of the counterculture hippie zeitgeist as represented by Woodstock, according to Selvin. Theband was previously criticized over charging high ticket prices for their U.S. tour, particularly from San Francisco Chronicle music critic Ralph Gleason. And another incentive for mounting the show was because of the documentary film, which the Stones, primarily Mick Jagger, had a financial interest in.

They wanted a piece of that pie... to be a part of this underground that had sprung up since 1966 when they were last in America, Selvin says of the Rolling Stones. The free concert and the Woodstock ethos certainly were part of it. They definitely had their heads turned by the immense reaction to their tour in 1969, they were surprised by how famous they were and how intense the excitement was. And by that time, the movie was underway. So there's no doubt they were thinking about these things. And I know that, because Jaggers deal with the Maysles was contingent on them delivering a finished print to theaters ahead of the Woodstock movie in March [1970].

Jagger was clearly sitting there thinking they never had a big time movie deal, they didn't do A Hard Day's Night. So he's going to go into this and he's going to surf that Woodstock wave. He doesn't quite realize that Altamont was going to have its own cachet and become an event in itself, and that the movie was worth one-million bucks, a big hunk of dough to the Rolling Stones in 1969.

In hindsight, it's remarkable that the event as the Stones were touring America starting in early November 1969was put together in a short amount of time. Driven by both the Stones and the Grateful Dead, the concert was supposed to take place at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park until the city squashed that. Plans to host it at Sears Raceway in Sonoma fell through when the company that owned the site wanted $100,000 upon learning the concert was being filmed. Finally Altamont Speedway in Tracy stepped in. In a matter of days, the staging was set up, albeit in somewhat makeshift fashion (the stage was so low, creating not much of a barrier between performers and fans). According to Selvin's book, there was no central command or figurehead running the whole concert and handling the logistics; nobody in the crew knew who was in charge.

Pictured later in the day, the increasingly packed together crowd at the Altamont Speedway for the ... [+] free concert to be headlined by the Rolling Stones. (Photo by William L. Rukeyser/Getty Images)

At the end of their tour on a Monday, [the Stones] went to Muscle Shoals to record Brown Sugar and a couple other songs, says Selvin. They sent their people to San Francisco to make the concert happen for the next weekend. There was no site, there was no sound system. There was no staging, although some of that was being sent to the Bay Area. There was no crew. There was no nothing. 'You know, we'll be there over the weekend. We'll do the show on Saturday.' The hippies that the Grateful Dead marshaled behind this were idealists and innocent in some ways. They just figured that they could do it. It just didn't matter what obstacles were thrown in their way.

The decision to have the Hells Angels to do security for $500 worth of beerwould have serious consequences. On the day of the show, they Angels were physically violent towards the crowd with pool cues; they even assaulted Jefferson Airplane co-singer Marty Balin during his band's set when he tried to intervene in a scuffle. Adding to the sense of drama were the bad drugs going around; health professionals at the medical tent were dealing with numerous people experiencing freak-outs. It's like a toxic mass psychosis, says Selvin. And the drugs were terrible. There were no longer sacraments of a movement. They were cut with all kinds of things.

Such factors as the Angels, drugs, and the lack of police intervention and proper facilities all contributed to a tense and dark environment throughout the day. Sensing the chaos, the Grateful Dead decided at the last minute to pull out. And as the Rolling Stones were trying to play Sympathy for the Devil, Jagger was telling everybody to cool out when things started to get out of control within the audience.

Meanwhile, Meredith Hunter, a young black man who went to the show with his girlfriend, was beaten up by members of the Hells Angels. Trying to get away from them, Hunter pulled out his gun near the stage and was fatally stabbed by Hells Angels member Alan Passaro (he was later acquitted in court). [He was] in many ways, Selvin says of Hunter, emblematic of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong blonde girlfriendcaught between the Hells Angels and the Rolling Stones where no black [person] could watch, dressed in a lime green suit, with his Afro combed out, having been shooting speed.

A still from the documentary film 'Gimme Shelter', showing audience members looking on as Hells ... [+] Angels beat a fan with pool cues at the Altamont Free Concert, Altamont Speedway, California, 6th December 1969. The concert was headlined and organized by The Rolling Stones. The film was directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin. (Photo by Bill Owens/20th Century Fox/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Ironically, the Stones performed, in Selvin's opinion, a great set. They'd pick it back up finally when Mick Taylor says, Lets do the new one, and they did Brown Sugar for the first time. They just put their chins to their chests and played the set of their lives. Richard's and Taylor just locked in, and Charlie and Bill are holding down the bottom. Jagger put in a vocal performance that is so sincere, as opposed to as usual sort of cartoonish caricature type of voice. Not this time, man. He's for real and they burned from Brown Sugar to the end of their set Street Fighting Man. It could be one best sets I've ever heard from the Stones.

LIVERMORE, CA - DECEMBER 6: The Rolling Stones L-R Mick Taylor, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and ... [+] Tour Manager Sam Cutler take a break during their set to assess the damage by The Hells Angels attacking the crowd. Sam Cutler brought The Hells Angels in to act as Security on December 6, 1969 in Livermore, California. (Photo by Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

In the years after Altamont, the Stones have rarely mentioned that event publicly, although Keith Richards recently said to The Washington Post: "It was just sort of a nightmarish day. Not just for us, but for everybody." On why the band didnt just cancelthe show, Richards responded: It could have gotten a lot worse, man. That could have been a really big disaster...Who knows what else would have happened?

The few times they've addressed it, says Selvin of the Stones, [its,] We're the victims. There has not been the slightest acceptance of responsibility. The Stones left town without paying any of their bills. That was a pirate trip: they came to the island, they ransacked it forbooty and young maidens, and then they made it back home.

Except for a few die-hard rock music fans and tons of empty wine bottles and other litter, the hills ... [+] around Altamont Speedway are serene compared to the scene the day before when an estimated 300,000 persons attended a free concert by the Rolling Stones and other rock music groups. The owner of the speedway said it would take at least a week to clear the area of debris.

While the Stones and the Dead came out of it relatively unscathed, the incident forever changed them in Selvins view. I don't think the Stones would ever be so fierce and fearless and unrestrained ever again, having had to confront real evil face to face in the performance of their music. You can see [in the movie] the fear, anxiety and despair that the Stones experienced when their stage was nearly invaded and taken over by these Hells Angels, who are very clearly the masters of the stage. And that has been an inviolate space for them, it was a humbling experience to the bone. I don't believe the Stones ever really recovered from it as artists.

Today Selvin takes issue with the idea that Altamont represented the death of the 60s. The probable end to the 60s was the fall of Saigon in 75. Woodstock was a disaster. [The violence there] just didn't happen. That's all it was. They burned down the concession stand when they got there and saw the prices. They broke the fences, they turned it into a free concert. They blocked the interstate highway. The Woodstock myth is pretty fragile, and don't blow on it too hard because it'll just crack under pressure.

Now 50 years later, much has changed for the Stones as their subsequent live tours have been extremely professional and tightly-organized affairs. So has the live music business in generalyet there have been occasional disasters from Woodstock '99 to most recently the Fyre Festival. As for lessons to take from Altamont, Selvin says: Everybody has a different lesson to learn. Meredith Hunters lesson was entirely different from Mick Jagger's. There's abundant evidence to indicate that whatever lessons there were, [they] were not learned.

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Altamont At 50: The Disastrous Concert That Brought The 60s To A Crashing Halt - Forbes