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40 years after Altamont, rock music's darkest day
By Jim Harrington
>@bayareanewsgroup.com
Posted: 11/28/2009 12:00:00 AM PST
Updated: 11/29/2009 03:51:26 AM PST
It was supposed to be "Woodstock West" — a free concert that would draw hundreds of thousands of fans, feature some of the biggest names in rock and solidify the still-blossoming Flower Power movement.
The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was also envisioned as the most famous music event in Bay Area history. It became just that, but for all the wrong reasons.
"It was just a big mess," says Rock Scully, the longtime manager of the Grateful Dead and one of the primary organizers of the festival.
About 300,000 fans turned out on Dec. 6, 1969, to the racetrack outside of Livermore to see the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and others. What they found was a venue ill-equipped to handle such a large crowd and a scene that devolved into a violent antithesis of the peaceful gathering in Woodstock 3½ months earlier.
By the time the night was over, four people were dead — two from hit-and-run accidents, one from drowning in an irrigation ditch and, most notoriously, one from repeated stab wounds at the hands of a Hells Angels member during a confrontation in front of the music stage.
Forty years later, organizers and witnesses still shake their heads over the string of bad decisions that added up to one of rock music's darkest days. While the tragedy was aired to the world in the Stones' documentary "Gimme Shelter," Scully says the 1970 film only hints at the horror that played out.
"Visually, I don't think anything could really nail down how terrible it was."
Concert nobody wantedThe Altamont story begins in London, where Scully had gone in mid-1969 to scout locations for a free concert featuring the Dead and the Airplane. He talked to the Stones, who were about to roll out on a North American tour, and wanted to do a free West Coast concert.
"They were taking some flak for their high ticket prices, and I just suggested that they play in Golden Gate Park," recalls Scully, who now lives in Monterey. "That's where it all started."
Scully, who'd helped with many free shows in the Bay Area, secured a concert permit for the park. One of the conditions, however, was that it couldn't be announced until 24 hours beforehand. Jagger, for whatever reason, spilled the news to the media, and the permit was instantly revoked.
Organizers found a new option in Sears Point (now Infineon Raceway) in Sonoma County. Work crews picked a small hilltop where they could erect a stage, which would have allowed bands to perform some 10-to-15 feet above the crowd. It could have been a vital safety feature.
"If (the Rolling Stones) had played at Sears Point, nothing would have happened," says Dennis McNally, longtime Grateful Dead publicist.
But Sears Point owners became peeved when they learned that the Stones planned to make the concert a pivotal scene in "Gimme Shelter." The festival again found itself without a home.
With just two days until showtime, Altamont Speedway owner Dick Carter offered his track, and organizers began a mad scramble to get it ready. By now, the momentum to put on the concert had attracted the likes of prominent San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli and Woodstock co-creator Michael Lang as organizers. But Bill Graham, the most experienced concert promoter in Northern California, wanted no part of it, says Gregg Perloff, co-founder of the Berkeley based concert promoter Another Planet.
"He said it was unsafe," says Perloff, who worked alongside Graham for more than a decade.
The day of the festival, Scully recalls, was a "doomsday scenario." The venue lacked the proper medical staff, parking space or other facilities to host a crowd that size, he says. Traffic was snarled for miles, as concertgoers simply abandoned their cars.
Arguably the most infamous decision was to invite the Hells Angels to the party. Although the popular perception is that the bikers were hired as security, the arrangement was in reality much less formal. Scully and others say that in exchange for $500 in beer, they would park their hogs near the stage to provide a visual deterrent to anybody who might rush the stage or equipment. Hells Angels members have said the club had done the same for Grateful Dead shows in the past.
But by the time the second act, Jefferson Airplane, took the stage, trouble had started. The Hells Angels and members of the increasingly unruly crowd began to fight. The film "Gimme Shelter" shows Airplane singer Marty Balin being knocked out by a Hells Angel.
"There were 30 to 50 (bikers), and however many hundred thousand people in front of them," McNally says. "There were a lot of very crazy, drug-addled people."
Deadly encounterWitnessing the security problems, the Grateful Dead declined to play. But the show went on with performances by the Flying Burrito Brothers and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Then the Rolling Stones took the stage, and within minutes, chaos ensued. During their third number, "Sympathy for the Devil," the Stones had to stop playing.
Although Jagger begged fans to "just be cool down in the front there," the scene grew uglier. Eighteen-year-old Meredith Hunter reportedly tried to get onstage and was knocked back by the bikers. He returned with pistol in hand and was knifed by Hells Angel Alan Passaro — a scene captured in "Gimme Shelter."
"I saw the guy, Meredith Hunter, with his gun out, and I thought, 'Oh, crap, this is not good,' " Scully says. "He was just running around the crowd — it was sick — just stepping on people. I just prayed that somebody would stop him, but who is going to wrestle a guy to the ground with a gun at a concert like that? "... Had (the Angel) not been there, there would have been havoc."
Hunter died from his wounds, and autopsy reports showed that he was on methamphetamines at the time. Passaro was acquitted of murder charges after the jury viewed concert footage and decided that he had acted in self-defense.
The Stones, who may or may not have known that Hunter had died, returned to play eight more songs. According to Alamo resident Bob Matthews, who recorded the performance and still holds the tapes, the band delivered an inspired second set that closed, ironically, with "Street Fighting Man," a song that might have rung the closing bell on the Woodstock era.
"There's more than a grain of truth to that," McNally says. "The whole point of Woodstock was, you put 400,000 people together in a somewhat stressful situation and everyone behaves beautifully. Then, "... you get Altamont."
"That was such an awkward, horrible place to end up," says Scully, the anguish still evident in his voice 40 years later. "We had such lofty ideals going into the whole thing. It was awful."
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