Turn Me On, Dead Man

Today is the 40th anniversary of the ill-fated Altamont Speedway Free Festival, a day-long music event attended by an estimated 300,000 people. The concert was headlined by the Rolling Stones, and featured Santana, Jefferson Airplane, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. It was supposed to be the West Coast's answer to Woodstock but things didn't quite turn out that way, as the Altamont festival was plagued by problems from the start. Unable to book Golden Gate Park, the Rolling Stones looked for an alternate venue. The relocation of the festival to Altamont Speedway was not announced until December 4th, two days before the event, and the Altamont Speedway wasn't well suited to the event. The area couldn't accommodate anywhere near the number of vehicles that arrived, resulting in a line of traffic that stretched for miles. Many people simply abandoned their cars on the highway. Also, there hadn't been enough time to arrange for the number of toilets and other facilities necessary for such a large crowd. The biggest problem, though, was the "questionable security" to quote the Rubinoos song "Altamont." The Hell's Angels were hired not so much for "security," but to keep people off of the stage, which was only four feet off the ground. The Hell's Angels were not paid in cash, but instead given $500 worth of beer for their efforts. As the day wore on the Hell's Angels clashed with the crowd, using pool cues to beat back unruly hippies, with both sides having ingested their share of drugs. At the end of the day four people were dead: three accidental deaths, along with the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter, which occurred just in front of the stage as the Stones played their set. The event was captured in the film Gimme Shelter, the documentary about the Stones 1969 American tour.

I highly recommend the film, which all too clearly shows how things got uglier at Altamont as the day wore on. A bootleg of the Rolling Stones' performance at Altamont called Killer Concert is readily available. The Stones interrupted their set during "Sympathy for the Devil," and again during "Under My Thumb," which is when Meredith Hunter was killed, though the Stones were not aware that anyone had been killed at that time. Mick Jagger ineffectually pleads with the crowd to stop fighting before resuming their set. Flex Unger provides an interesting mash-up of these two tracks that effectively captures how Jagger had no control over the situation.

"Flex Unger - Why Are We Fighting? (from the Internet Archive)

A number of artists have made reference to Altamont in their own work. The Grateful Dead commented on the Altamont debacle in "New Speedway Boogie" on Workingman's Dead. The Dead were supposed to play at Altamont but declined to go onstage because of the violence. Altamont Diary by Black Cab is a particularly ambitious album, a musical comment on the changing atmosphere of music and the counterculture through the late 1960s, which special focus on Altamont. On a less grand scale the Rubinoos take on the same theme in doo-wap harmony. Another interesting track is by Jack Logan, who claims to have been "Born at Altamont." Also, Don Mclean included a verse about Altamont in the sprawling track "American Pie."