In December 1969, hippies, musicians, and everyone in between were still reveling in the magic of Woodstock, which had occurred only four months prior. Woodstock had epitomized the ideals of the new generation, welcoming peace and love, celebrating art, and deconstructing the metaphorical barriers that the previous generations had built. The festival had been a booming success, with three days of music and peace and people from all walks of life living in harmony. So, it’s no wonder that only a few months later, everyone wanted to experience that magic again - unbeknownst to them how much things had drastically shifted within those four months.
The original ideals of the hippie movement had been promising and alluring, seducing millions of the young generation and imploring them to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.” Unfortunately, some had taken the ‘drop out’ part a bit too seriously. Peace and love and the expansion of the mind were soon replaced with lazing about and substance abuse. The effects of this were palpable, most notably in places like Haight-Ashbury. Haight-Ashbury had been a hippie capital, home to leaders and revolutionaries, a city blossoming with innovation and ideas. It was full of life and color and promise and drew peace-lovers from all over the world. Haight-Ashbury quickly became filled with people who had abandoned their previous lives and claimed to support the hippie movement, with long hair and tabs of acid on their tongues. They hid behind the hippie masquerade to justify their substance abuse, neglecting the true meanings of the revolutionary movement. Soon enough, Haight-Ashbury was filled with drop-outs and addicts, no longer the blossoming city of hope and peace. Suddenly, it became a gruesome wasteland filled with bums and the harsh realities of addiction.
This shift in the hippie movement had dulled its shine and when a Woodstock II, or “Woodstock West,” came to fruition, it was no longer a peaceful festival of love and music. The new festival was called the Altamont Speedway Free Festival. It was to be held at, believe it or not, Altamont Speedway in California, and it had a star-studded line-up who all held high hopes for the concert. The concert was set to feature Santana; Jefferson Airplane; The Flying Burrito Brothers; The Grateful Dead; Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young; and end with a performance by none other than the Rolling Stones - and no tickets would be required. The Stones and Grateful Dead were the prime organizers of the event, and after many, many venue shifts and much squabbling, they finally decided on performing at Altamont Speedway on Saturday, December 6th. This decision came on December 4th, meaning the quick move would result in sacrificing facilities like port-a-potties and medical tents, and the stage wouldn’t be able to be on a rise. Instead, it would be about a meter tall and at the bottom of a hill - leaving the audience looking like a towering mass of people imposing upon the performers.
Because of the low stage, the safety of the bands was brought into question - there would be absolutely nothing between the small stage and the audience, which would end up being around 300,000 people. They would need security, and at this late in the game, finding that would prove difficult. So, like any rational thinkers, they hired the Hells Angels as security - for $500 worth of beer. The Hells Angels had been a notorious gang not exactly known for their gentility, yet as the 60s boomed, they had merged with the hippies and found their beliefs aligning. But, they were by no means police officers or security and had no intention of being that. Sure, they’d help people out, point them in the right direction or attempt to stop any fights, but they weren’t there to police the audience.
When the day came and the performances finally began, the crowd was full of excitement. It began rather smoothly, barring the incident in which Mick Jagger stepped off his helicopter and was immediately punched in the head. Santana and The Flying Burrito Brothers began the festival and performed without a hitch. As the hours dragged on, however, both the crowd and the Angels, who had been drinking their payment all day, grew restless, agitated, and violent. Small fights began to break out within the audience, and the Angels had armed themselves with broken pool cues and thick motorcycle chains to keep people off of the stage. Something was brewing, the entire crowd like a ticking-time bomb waiting to go off. Soon enough, disaster struck.
Someone in the audience had knocked over one of the Angels’ motorcycles, the first domino to fall in a chain of events in which everything seemed to go wrong. The Angels were enraged and became even more aggressive, and not only to the audience. When Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane jumped off of the stage mid-set to help sort out the problem, he was qucikly met with a fist to the head, knocking him unconscious. When the band sarcastically thanked the Angels for knocking out their singer, a Hells Angel grabbed hold of the microphone and began to argue with the band, verbally attacking them. Upon hearing about the rowdy crowd and violent Angels, the Grateful Dead pulled out of the event entirely and quickly left the venue, not long before they would have performed.
When Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young took the stage, Stephen Stills was reported to have been stabbed repeatedly in the leg with a sharpened bicycle spoke by a stoned Hells Angel.
By the time the Stones took the stage in the evening, the audience and the Angels were both in sour moods and just waiting for something else to set them off. As the Stones tuned their instruments and began their set, things already looked bleak. There were 4,000 people crammed up against the edge of the stage, attempting to climb onto it, the only thing blocking them being the unamused Hells Angels. The band was forced to stop multiple times, begging the audience to “cool down” and stop fighting each other, and soon enough, they found a groove and could perform without interruption. That is, until 18-year-old Meredith Hunter, decked in a lime green suit and so high he could barely walk, attempted to climb on stage.
A Hells Angel immediately grabbed Hunter by the head, punched him, and chased him back into the audience. Hunter became enraged and began to return to the stage, followed by his tearful girlfriend, who begged him to let it be. Irritated and irrational, Hunter ignored her pleas and returned to the front of the crowd, drawing a .22 caliber revolver from the inside of his lime green coat. Hells Angel Alan Passaro watched as Hunter drew the revolver and immediately pulled a knife from his belt. Passaro wrenched the pistol free and stabbed Hunter twice - killing him almost immediately.
Hunter’s autopsy confirmed he had been high on meth, and Passaro was acquitted of any charges after it was determined he had acted in self-defense.
All the while, the Stones were still onstage, completely unaware that anything more than a minor scuffle had happened until they were alerted that something was very wrong. The band stopped playing and Mick called out for a doctor, but the crowd was restless. Fearing a riot, the band felt they had no choice but to start up again and continue until the end of their set. In a twist of morbid irony, the set had featured songs from their new album that had been released the day before, with it's prophetic title "Let It Bleed."
This concert at Altamont had been set up to be another Woodstock, with high hopes of it being filled with peace and love. Instead, it marred music festivals and the hippie movement and brought the festering wound within the hippie community to light. It became very clear that the drugs they had once been using as an innocent way to see beyond the confines of the mind were now being abused and causing horrific atrocities. The hopes for what Altamont could have been were squashed and instead the festival left both the audience and performers traumatized as they struggled to understand what had happened. Altamont marked the death of an entire era and brought the swinging sixties to a crashing halt, 25 days before 1970 began.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert
"Gimme Shelter" Maysles, 1970 [Film]
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