The Tragic Altamont Festival Happened 55 Years Ago. What Have Mick Jagger & the Rolling Stones Said About It?
A free Rolling Stones concert turned violent melee that left four dead and many others injured, the Altamont Speedway Free Festival occurred 55 years ago today — a disaster that is often considered the “end” of the hippie Woodstock era. But what actually happened on what Rolling Stone magazine once called “rock and roll’s all-time worst day”? And what did the Rolling Stones — who headlined a concert bill that also included Jefferson Airplane, Santana, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — have to say about it?
What Was Supposed to Happen?
Photo by William L. Rukeyser/Getty Images
The concert that eventually came to be known as Altamont was originally planned as a “Woodstock West,” to take place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The Rolling Stones wanted to play a free concert to respond to fan concerns that their recent concert ticket prices had been too high. They recruited San Franciscans the Grateful Dead, and a festival began to come together. Most of the bands involved were on tour at the time and left the planning to local promoters.
Golden Gate Park was an epicenter of the city’s counterculture and often the site of concerts for hippie bands. But mere days before the planned festival, relations between the festival organizers and the city broke down, and the concert was left without a venue. Scrabbling, the concert’s promoters ended up securing the Altamont Speedway, a venue far out of town.
This didn’t feel like a red flag — Woodstock also had a last-second venue change. But Altamont Speedway had many problems, including minimal security and a stage that was too low. Due to the low stage, which was barely above the audience, a local chapter of the Hell’s Angels was asked to provide additional security to prevent audience members from jumping onstage.
Exactly who secured the Hell’s Angels as the show’s security force is a subject of great dispute — while many claim the Stones hired them, the Stones’ U.S. tour manager has denied it, saying the Angels were only hired to make sure that no one touched the venue’s generators. The motorcycle gang had also previously provided security at other local rock concerts, so it is not as out-there an idea as it sounds.
However, paying the Angels with $500 worth of beer proved to be a poor decision — the motorcycle gang became very inebriated, which same blame for the violence that followed.
What Actually Happened?
Photo by Jeff Hochberg/Getty Images
Though the concert began smoothly with a set by Santana, the situation quickly degraded. The crowd became aggressive, as did the increasingly drunk Angels. Audience members were hit in the head by flying bottles. Fights began to occur in the crowd. Jefferson Airplane member Marty Balin jumped offstage during the band’s set to try to sort out a conflict in the audience and was knocked out by a Hell’s Angel. During CSNY’s set, Stephen Stills was allegedly stabbed in the leg with a bicycle spoke by a Hell’s Angels member.
The Grateful Dead, seeing how quickly things were going wrong, opted to not play their set, leaving only the Stones to perform. But the Stones’ set was delayed — some reports say because Bill Wyman was running late to the venue, others that the band simply wanted to wait till sundown to play. Either way, the crowd was highly agitated by the time Jagger & Co. took the stage, with many fans attempting to jump onstage with the band.
During the band’s set, the crowd was almost immediately out of control. In the documentary Gimme Shelter, Mick Jagger can be heard telling the crowd, “Just be cool down in the front there, don’t push around.” The band had to pause playing “Sympathy for the Devil” because too many fist fights broke out in the crowd.
Crowd member Meredith Hunter repeatedly attempted to climb the stage and got in repeated scuffles with the Hell’s Angels. Eventually, he removed a gun from his jacket and was stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angels member mid-concert. Mick Jagger, unaware of what exactly happened, called out, “We’ve really got someone hurt here … is there a doctor?” But the band returned to playing.
Ultimately, four people died at the concert — in addition to Hunter, two died in a car accident, and one person drowned in a nearby ditch.
What Did the Rolling Stones Have to Say About It?
Photo by GAB Archive/Redferns
Though many bands played the Altamont Free Festival, the Stones are the ones considered most closely linked to the event, because they were the headliners, and because they were playing when Meredith Hunter was killed. They were also the focus of the 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter, which recorded the violence and horror of the day.
So what did the Stones have to say about the tragedy that is permanently linked to their name? In 1972, Mick Jagger sat for an interview that touched on his feelings after Altamont (though the tapes were only released in 2023). In the recordings, Jagger discussed how Altamont made him consider whether he should retire from touring:
“Either I stopped touring or I didn’t, it was as simple as that. A few people said don’t go — friends of mine. They said, ‘You’ve really gotta be more careful, you can’t go.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s more or less what I do, so I gotta do it!’ Either I do it or I don’t do it.’ If I don’t do it, what am I going to do? There was a few places that it did get scary and there was a lot of guns confiscated and stuff like that. Don’t say I wasn’t scared — I was scared @#$%less!”
In his 2010 memoir Life, Stones guitarist Keith Richards reflected on the day 40 years later. He recalled an unnerving vibe on the festival grounds before the concert even began: “You could feel it in the air, that anything could happen … once the sun went down it got really cold. And then a Dante’s hell began to stir.”
Though the band was aware of trouble in the audience, they did not know about the death of Hunter or the others, or of the seriousness of the audience’s injuries, until later. Still, Richards said, given the toxic mix of inebriated Hell’s Angels, lack of proper security and agitated fans, “I was amazed that things didn’t go more wrong than they did.”
1968 Retrospective
January 2018
This special expanded issue celebrates all things pop culture in 1968.
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