Forget the beatings, the fat naked girl making for the front or the Hells
Angel having the mother of all bad trips. The strangest shot in Gimme
Shelter, David and Albert Maysles’s film of the Rolling Stones’ fateful
American tour of 1969, occurs when a stray alsatian ambles across the stage
during Sympathy for the Devil. Yes, Altamont really was no ordinary rock
concert. It was supposed to be the West Coast’s answer to Woodstock, a free
gig for 300,000 at a Speedway track east of San Francisco in early December.
But it became the biggest collective bummer of the freewheeling 1960s, a
handy metaphor for the death of the hippie counterculture. No more peace and
love. At its horrific climax, 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was stabbed to
death by a Hells Angel, while the Stones played on mere feet away. “It was a
day that was oppressive and dark,” recalls Chris Hillman, whose Flying
Burrito Brothers shared the bill, “and the ending was the worst scenario
you could imagine. I thought that day was the end of the 1960s. It had come
from the wonderful innocence of the Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers to
this.”
So much for the aquarian dream. Less than four months after the libertarian ideals
of Woodstock, it was all but over. Rock music and the Stones — particularly
the Stones — would never be the same again. “I think Altamont had a
tremendous effect on them,” says the writer Stanley Booth, whose The True
Adventures of the Rolling Stones is a riveting account of his time with them
on that tour. “Instead of being part of the counterculture, they opted for
show business. When they came back to the USA in 1972, they were playing a
much lighter show, going more for comedy rather than drama. And I think that
had a great deal to do with Altamont. Its effect was profound. Mick Jagger
said that if Jesus had been at Altamont, he would have been crucified. And
he wasn’t exaggerating.”
The Stones’ original idea was to play Golden Gate Park, but that quickly fell
through. As did their second choice, Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma County.
With less than 24 hours to go, a local operator, Dick Carter, offered up
Altamont as a hasty alternative. As he had done several times with his own
band, the Grateful Dead’s manager, Rock Scully, suggested inviting the local
Hells Angels to guard the generators. They would receive $500 worth of beer
as a gratuity. Both Altamont and the Angels proved calamitous choices.
The photographer Ethan Russell, whose Let It Bleed is a visual record of the
tour, recalls arriving on site: “The vibe was horrible. The place itself was
horrible. It was a barren hillside with no trees. Chip Monck [the Stones’
stage manager and the MC at Woodstock] and his crew only had two days to set
it up. There were insufficient toilets, there was no security, there was no
food.” Other bands on the bill were Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,
and Jefferson Airplane. Airplane’s bassist, Jack Casady, was shocked at what
he found: “It was a monumentally disorganised affair. Chaos in a place that
already felt like you were abandoned. Altamont was like an island within a
desert. It was set up for disaster.”
The first significant sign of trouble came during Airplane’s set. Their
singer, Marty Balin, was knocked unconscious by a Hells Angel when he dived
into the crowd to stop a beating. “I knew right away that it was the wrong
thing to do,” says Casady. “It was like jumping into a bowl of ants. But
Marty was emotionally involved. He saw somebody get hurt and was trying to
do something about the situation. Unfortunately, he got caught in the
crossfire.” Hillman vividly remembers having to argue with an Angel even to
get onto the stage, as “they were so out of their minds”. The Burritos’
languid country-rock proved a brief respite from the madness, calming the
crowd to a point where they were happily chucking Frisbees. It didn’t last.
“I remember talking to David Crosby after CSNY had just played,” says Hillman,
“and he was saying, ‘Boy, there’s something real strange going on here.’ As
soon as we were done, I got straight out of there.”
Crosby’s bandmate Stephen Stills saw the writing on the wall, too. “We did our
set, and the feeling, from the combination of the Hells Angels and a crowd
that was getting increasingly inebriated and vile, was that something was
dreadfully wrong,” Stills recalls. “So I stuck two guitars under one arm,
picked up Neil Young’s wife and carried her. I said, ‘We’re getting out of
here. Move!’ Something was up and it wasn’t going to be pretty.”
It was nightfall before the Stones came on. By then, the mood was even
blacker. Fights erupted at the front of the 3ft stage — so low that the
Stones were more or less part of the crowd — during Sympathy for the Devil.
Both the tour manager, Sam Cutler, and a visibly nervous Jagger pleaded for
calm. Hells Angels were swarming on stage. Albert Maysles, Gimme Shelter’s
co-director, remembers his first sighting of a young black man in a sharp
green suit, bustling near the front: Meredith Hunter. “Apparently, some time
prior to the killing, he was tormenting the guys from the Hells Angels with
his gun,” says Maysles. “If you look in the upper left-hand corner of the
screen, moments before the killing, you’ll see Meredith Hunter wagging his
tongue in and out of his mouth. That’s a clear sign that he’s on cocaine,
which is well known to produce violent action.” Cocaine or not, it is clear
that Hunter, a member of a petty local gang called the East Bay Executors,
was indeed carrying a gun that day. The crucial frames of Gimme Shelter show
Hunter brandishing a revolver as the Stones play Under My Thumb. Suddenly, a
Hells Angel descends, there’s a flash of steel and Hunter falls to his
death somewhere off screen.
“To this day, I still feel that Hells Angel probably saved Mick Jagger’s
life,” maintains Scully. “There was no doubt as to the intention of the guy
[Hunter]. He had a loaded pistol in his hand and was aiming for Mick. When
you’ve got a guy high on speed and crazy, there’s no reasoning with that.
And if it took a knife in the neck, then that’s what it took.” The Stones’
financial manager, Ron Schneider, was right there. “Someone screamed out
that somebody had been stabbed and they needed the ambulance,” he remembers.
“So I started running to find the driver. I asked someone if they’d seen him
and they said, ‘Don’t worry about that. He [Meredith Hunter]’s dead.’ That
was like getting punched in the stomach.”
The Stones soldiered on for another hour, before Schneider ushered them onto
the helicopter and to the sanctuary of their San Francisco hotel. There was
shocked silence all around. The band have remained largely silent on
Altamont over the ensuing 40 years, though Russell did interview Bill Wyman
for his book. “Bill had a great quote,” he offers, “which was that the
Stones had never been scared of anything, but they were terrified at
Altamont. Everybody was. Everybody remembers it like it was yesterday: where
they were standing, what they saw and how they felt. I don’t think Altamont
was ever resolved, for any of the people who were there.”
One unresolved issue, it seems, is accountability. Alan Passaro, a Hells
Angel, was acquitted of Hunter’s murder, after a jury concluded he had acted
in self-defence — but who was really to blame? “For a long time afterwards,”
says Crosby, “my picture was on the wall in the Mother Chapter of the
Oakland Hells Angels. And that was because, right after it happened, I was
the only one who defended them. I said, ‘Listen, if you don’t want the tiger
to eat your lunch guests, don’t invite the tiger. What the hell did you
think you were doing, asking the Angels to come?’ Of course they got in
fights with people. That’s what they do. Rock Scully was the guilty
partner.” To this day, Scully balks at the accusation: “Ralph Gleason, of
the San Francisco Chronicle, basically called me a murderer for organising
this debacle. But that was just unfair. I hid out for three months
afterwards.”
Monck took it upon himself to apologise to Hunter’s grieving mother. “Nobody
took responsibility for Altamont,” he says. “I went to Mrs Hunter’s house
three times and was turned away. The fourth time I finally got in to
apologise.” The stage manager still shoulders the bitter weight of
what happened that night in 1969: “We all have a death that we are either
responsible for, or might have averted. So sorry, Mrs Hunter. So deeply
sorry. It lives with me daily.”
The DVD of Gimme Shelter is released on September 21
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