Altamont: Fantasy Clashes with Reality

Peace, love, and understanding got a rude awakening in December 1969 at the Rolling Stones free concert at California's Altamont Speedway. Concertgoer Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death, another drowned, and two others were killed by a hit-and-run driver, not to mention the dozens of concertgoers who the Hell's Angels assaulted.

Altamont author Joel Selvin takes the reader on a detailed journey of the personalities and decisions that created the tragedy, projecting it all against the backdrop of the 1960s Summer of Love vibe.

Selvin notes: "As hopeful, optimistic, and encouraging as the perception of Woodstock had been in the public breast. Altamont struck a harsh, frightening, and discordant note. It was a bad day where tawdry reality clashed with innocent fantasies."

The free concert idea started in the drug-addled minds of Stones' guitarist Keith Richards and the Grateful Dead's road manager, Rock Scully. That alone should have been enough to derail the project. But, of course, it wasn't. Selvin provides a front-row seat to how bad ideas happen, even in the face of truth, logic, and common sense.

In 1969, the Stones were strapped for cash. To raise some much-needed cash, the band needed to tour. Mick Jagger envisioned a U.S. tour as the ticket. Scully and Richards saw a free concert in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park as the perfect ending to the tour. To make more money, a decision was made to film the tour—a film that would ultimately capture the horror of the Altamont concert.

Free concerts were popular in those days. Bands such as the Grateful Dead often played free shows in San Francisco. The Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park in July 1969 to acclaim. The British version of the Hell's Angels provided security, or at least that's what the Stones believed. In reality, the British Angels were play-acting toughs, leaving security up to the London police. They were nothing like their American counterparts.

The Altamont location was the third choice for the concert. City officials denied permits for Golden Gate Park. The second choice, Sears Point Raceway, was scuttled when the owners demanded $100,000 to allow the Stones to film on the premises. Mick Jagger didn't want to surrender the fee, so Altamont was chosen. Sears Point was well-equipped to handle the free concert: adequate parking, security, and infrastructure. Altamont had none of that.

As Selvin points out from the start, the concert was always destined for disaster, but hiring the Hell's Angels to provide security for $500 in beer took it to a new level. The chapter that was hired for the concert wasn't like the British Angels or even the San Francisco Angels, who liked the hippie vibe of the times.

The gang of Angels exploded in violence, much of it captured on film. Eventually, this resulted in Gimme Shelter, a documentary of the Stones' U.S. tour. Interestingly, the epitome of laidback, the Grateful Dead surveyed the scene upon arrival and decided not to play.

Selvin's honest and unflinching reporting takes everyone to task, especially the Stones, who are viewed as naïve, spoiled, and overly concerned with profits.

"A great many bills came due that day, as the axioms of the Summer of Love were put to test and failed like a wet paper bag. That they failed is perhaps not a surprising as that they got as far as they did—all the way to otherwise rational humans believing that they could erect a stage, pull together more than a quarter million people overnight in some cow pasture in the middle of nowhere, and have everybody come in peace. How pretty to think so."

This is a five-star book. Readers who enjoy history, music, or even business management will enjoy the sobering journey into the close of the 1960s when the era's rose-colored glasses were stomped in the mud at Altamont.