40 Years Ago Today, the 60's Died at Altamont
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Altamont, the infamous free concert thrown at the the Altamont Speedway, east of Livermore near the junction between 580 and I-5. The concert was billed as Woodstock West, and headliners The Rolling Stones had imagined a utopian gathering, initially planned for Golden Gate Park, in which the admission charges and confusion of Woodstock could be avoided. In the end, one of the largest gatherings in California history ended with the deaths of four people, and the Rolling Stones ringing in the end of the 1960s with the song "Street Fighting Man." This dark day was recorded in the Maysles brothers' documentary Gimme Shelter (trailer after the jump).
San Francisco city officials had initially agreed to the GG Park idea, but insisted that the permit was contingent on the concert not being announced until 24 hours before. Mick Jagger either didn't know or didn't care about this contingency, announced it anyway, and the permit for the show was revoked. The concert plan then moved to Sears Point, now Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, where a stage was being constructed 10+ feet above the audience. Had the concert happened there, says Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally, "nothing would have happened."
But the negotiations broke down and the concert ended up moving to the Altamont Speedway. Contrary to popular lore, the Hell's Angel's weren't formally hired to provide security for the show, but were asked to park their bikes and provide an intimidating presence at the sides of the stage in exchange for $500 in beer, much like they had been at a number of free Grateful Dead shows.
Things went south pretty fast, with the crowd of 400,000 not behaving as peaceably as people had at Woodstock. The crowd started scuffling with the Angels near the stage, and one of the members of the second act, Jefferson Airplane, got punched by an Angel (the incident is captured in Gimme Shelter). Seeing what was happening, the Dead refused to go on, but The Flying Burrito Brothers and Crosby, Stills & Nash all went on, followed by the Stones. During the Stones third song, "Sympathy for the Devil," 18-year-old Meredith Hunter of Berkeley, who was high on methamphetamines and running around near the front of the stage with a gun in his hand, ended up trying to rush the stage and was stabbed by Hell's Angel Alan Passaro. Possibly not knowing that anyone had died, the Stones continued to play what some say was an inspired second set of eight more songs. Two others died in hit-and-run accidents that night, and another drowned in an irrigation ditch.
The NYT recently spoke with Dixie Ward of Oakland, Meredith Hunter's older sister, who remembers well the day her brother died:
When Meredith died, I heard it on the radio. There was a mention of someone who had tried to get on the stage and tried to attack the singers. I had no idea. Before he had left that day, I told him it wasn’t a good idea to go to Altamont. It just doesn’t feel right. It was a time when black men and white women were not supposed to be together. He said, Sis, you don’t know what’s going on. I said, Meredith, things are different in Berkeley than the outskirts of town. He left, and I had a real bad haunting feeling that someone was running with no help.
Some pictures above, courtesy of the AP archives. Below, the trailer from Gimme Shelter.