Altamont - 40 years on!

[Foxhound]

An article on the fortieth anniversary of the Rolling Stones' free concert at Altamont was printed on the front page of the Entertainment section of today's 06 December 2009 edition of the Toronto Star:

The Blood and the Stones

Here's some quick excerpts and my commentary thereon:

Altamont, it could only happen to the Stones, man. Let's face it. It wouldn't happen to the Bee Gees and it wouldn't happen to Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Yes, for a variety of reasons.

Within 24 hours, the name Altamont would become forever associated with many things, none of them having to do with car racing. It would be shorthand for the death of an era, the Luciferian powers of the Rolling Stones, the disillusioning rupture between rock music and its fans, and the moment when the violence latent in American culture finally caught up with countercultural idealism and fatally beat the flowers right out of its hair.

Well that's laying it on a bit heavy but the writer is after all a journalist.

Most baffling, however, might be the contradiction contemporary observers will immediately apprehend between the sunny stated intent behind Altamont – which Mick Jagger told a press conference was "creating a sort of microcosmic society which sets an example to the rest of America" – and its grim reality.

Methinks that chroniclers misunderstood Mick. The Stones concert did indeed make a statement for the rest of America that day, but the statement wasn't what the chroniclers thought. It was that all this flower power business was just a sham and had been so all along.

Mostly, however, it was the year of Woodstock. And more than anything, Altamont became the anti-Woodstock.

Right on!

The Stones had no idea that Meredith Hunter, a black teenager with a lime-green suit, bowler hat and a pistol in his pocket, had been stabbed to death by an Angel when he pulled his weapon less than 20 feet from the stage.

Now here's a point that I've never seen made by any commentator. Given that a crazed individual brought a gun to the concert and then pulled it a mere twenty feet from the stage, don't you think that it was a good thing that there were some no nonsense enforcers in the form of the Hell's Angels to provide security? Had your typical security guards been hired to provide event security, might they not have just stood back and watched in horror as this fellow just started shooting at everybody? How many people would have been killed then?

By the next day, Altamont had already begun its journey to myth. The '60s were over and this concert had killed them. The Stones had lived up to their Satanic majesty and stood by as a kid was killed in the process. Blood had stained what Rolling Stone Magazine rushed to call "Rock & Roll's Worst Day," and there was no washing it out. Woodstock had morphed into something ugly in its slouching crawl westward, a beast borne of its mere crossing of the American landscape.

Well it's not accurate to say or even imply that the Stones just stood by while a kid was being knifed. The Stones as the movie "Gimme Shelter" makes clear had no way of seeing or knowing what was happening twenty feet into the crowd.

It stuck, as bloodstains do. The myths surrounding Altamont as curtain-closing generational bummer were as easily debunked as those that anointed Woodstock the apex of the dream – for one thing, the dream was never more than that: a vision of peace that flashed briefly in a violent time and age. But the convenience was simply too neat and compact to resist. A rise had to be followed by a fall, a revolution with its reckoning.

Despite the fact that wreckage of the '60s idealism was everywhere evident even while the decade was playing out, a certain comet-streak trajectory was needed for purposes of pop mythological convenience.

Once again, a bit overstated but I can't disagree.

Something had to bring the fall. What better than Stones and Angels?

Well certainly not the Bee Gees or Crosby, Stills & Nash and whoever else.

 

[LG]

I saw a documentary about the whole Altamont tragedy, and I agree the Stones couldn't have done anything to prevent what happened, and anyone who pulls out a gun at a public event is playing with fire, especially with the Hell's Angels as security at the concert.

 

[Dave78]

The Stones concert did indeed make a statement for the rest of America that day, but the statement wasn't what the chroniclers thought. It was that all this flower power business was just a sham and had been so all along.

Interesting comment. Grace Slick recently admitted how naive they all were back then in the 60's for thinking they could actually change the world- not realizing that their mentality was fueled by LSD and acid.

But there was a lot to change back then in America, both politically and socially, and at least they tried to make a difference. At some point though, the Hippie movement became more about getting high than for political and social causes so they sort of torpedoed themselves.

Timothy Leary, Ken Keysey and The Stones using Hell's Angels as crowd control in exchange for free beer didn't help their cause.

 

[LG]

The main point about the documentary I watched, that has remained shrouded in controversy was whether the Hell's Angel instigated the confrontation first causing Meredith Hunter to draw his weapon or vice-versa. There is another part to the story but I'll leave that for someone else to comment on.

 

[Dave78]

The main point about the documentary I watched, that has remained shrouded in controversy was whether the Hell's Angel instigated the confrontation first causing Meredith Hunter to draw his weapon or vice-versa. There is another part to the story but I'll leave that for someone else to comment on.

It's been more than 25 years since I watched "Gimme Shelter" so I can't honestly say I remember the exact sequence of events. But if I had to guess, I would guess the former. Drunken Angels kick ass first, and don't ask questions second. Just ask Marty Balin. That much I do remember from the movie.

 

[rollingstoned]

I think my favorite song performed at Altamont would have to be I'm Free.

Such a great tune, one of my favorite Stones songs all-time. Really fun to play on guitar as well.

 

[snakes&ladders]

Interesting comment. Grace Slick recently admitted how naive they all were back then in the 60's for thinking they could actually change the world- not realizing that their mentality was fueled by LSD and acid.

That's funny....I heard the direct opposite from Grace.....she's not the kind that backs off from what she reprersented way back then.....I think there's more to her alleged words you quoted above (there's usually a brain between the ears and the eyes to filter these things)

 

[snakes&ladders]

I say HAIL THE ANGELS AND WHAT THEY REPRESENT!!!!! It was Meredith's f**kin' problem if he carried a gun to a concert (why should anyone carry a gun to a concert anway!!) and pulled it out amongst a group of Angels......they were there to stop armed culprits like Meredith

 

[Foxhound]

Snakes & Ladders:

It was Meredith's f**kin' problem if he carried a gun to a concert (why should anyone carry a gun to a concert anway!!)....they were there to stop armed culprits like Meredith.

I agree. I don't see any legitimate need, i.e. self-defence, to carry a gun to a rock concert.

I say HAIL THE ANGELS AND WHAT THEY REPRESENT!!!!!

The problem is that the Angels have evolved completely away from what they represented up to about the mid-sixties. By 1969 they were well on the way to transforming themselves from a group of hard partying comrades-on-bikes to an outright criminal organization. Club president Sonny Barger realized in 1968 that there was more money to be made selling drugs to hippies than in bashing their heads for fun - and the future road for the Angels was set.

The most violent bikers in the world have been in the province of Quebec since the mid-seventies. That's when the Popeyes agreed to bury their colours and become Angels and went to war with the Outlaws in Quebec. Yves "Apache" Trudeau of the Angels' North chapter in the Montreal suburb of Laval admitted to killing 43 people from September 1973 to July 1985. Quite the toll for a fellow who stood only 5'6" and weighed just 135 pounds but guns and bombs do their jobs all too well. So wild were the Angels of the North chapter and so uncontrollable was their drug use that the other Hell's Angels in Quebec and the Maritimes decided to liquidate the chapter, and killed all the members! Yves though missed the meeting at which his clubmates were executed by his fellow Angels and decided to turn police informant.

The latest installment saw 162 deaths between 1994 and 2002 including that of an eleven year old boy as the Hell's Angels battled the Rock Machine for control of the drug trade in and around Montreal.

Quebec Biker War

Toronto and Ontario as a whole were blessedly Angel free until the early part of this millennium. That's when the Angels finally succeeded in inducing almost every outlaw motorcycle gang in the area including both the Para-Dice Riders, the biggest club in Toronto, and Satan's Choice, the biggest club in the province as a whole, to bury their colours and become Angels. For obvious reasons the Angels didn't want Quebec style bloodletting to erupt in Ontario as well if one or the other of the two big gangs didn't agree to become Angels.

No, these fellows are no longer just hard partying, bike riding blue collar working stiffs - and there is certainly nothing "romantic" about biker gangs these days.

 

[PinkFreud]

Yeah, Altamont could've been something great, had they not involved the Hell's Angels...