Comments
The Day the Music Died
“People are getting weird, and sometimes you need people like the Hell’s Angels to keep people in line.”
Huh? What’s that? The mouthings of some neoconservative loudmouth, or shaven-head neo-Nazi punk?
No, that bizarre statement was uttered more than 30 years ago - spouted from the mouth of none other than Grace Slick, leader singer of Jefferson Airplane, a band that typified peace, love and understanding San Francisco-style.
The Date: December 6, 1969. The Place: The Altamont Speedway. The occasion: A free concert headlined by the Rolling Stones. Slick, whose band preceded the Stones, uttered that rationalization while, all around her—even on the stage—members of the notorious motorcycle gang were assaulting over-excited attendees with fists and sawed-off pool cues.
The incident was recorded by filmmakers Albert and David Maysles and can be seen in “Gimme Shelter,” a grim and powerful documentary first released in 1970 and now available on DVD and in Blu-Ray. Subsequent editions include deleted scenes restored and improved sound and video quality.
True, Slick wasn’t condoning the savage beatings; she was only trying to help calm the crowd. However, her well-intentioned message sounded ludicrous, and it showed her as the condescending—yet dimwitted—proselytizer she was in those days. And the captured moment exemplifies just how bad anyone involved with the event comes out looking.
The Maysles brothers’ cinema-verite is a stunning depiction of the downside of the late 1960s spirit, as it reveals what went wrong with the badly organized affair and how the notion of offering a free concert headlined by an act the stature of the Rolling Stones proved to be naively unrealistic.
And it was tragic naiveté that led the Altamont festival organizers and performers to think it was a good idea to hire the Hell’s Angels as a security force for the free concert. By the end of the night, four people were dead, one stabbed by a dark Angel — a lethal assault disturbingly replayed in “Gimme Shelter.”
As first conceived, the film was intended as a celebratory documentary depicting the Rolling Stones’ 1969 American Tour that would culminate with a free concert in San Francisco. But circumstances perverted the original intentions. Instead, the film became a chronicle of a fatalistic journey — a fall from grace that starts in New York City and concludes at the hellish Altamont spectacle. A sense of impending doom prevails throughout, as the Maysles expertly foreshadow what is to come. By the time we reach the speedway, death is palpable, even before the on-film murder.
Viewers follow the Stones on tour, and the itinerary eventually leads to the free concert, where San Francisco organizers have hired the Hell’s Angels to guard the stage. In return, the gang members get to drink all the beer they want — a lunatic barter if ever there was one. But it was all part of a larger plan, you see, to bring together the differing factions of the youth movement.
Right.
Well, the “anything goes” spirit prevalent at an event attended by a California subculture whose annoyingly self-centered outlook was reinforced with indulgence would test the limits of the most open-minded. And the Hell’s Angels (not an especially even-tempered lot) found the do-your-own-thing attitude a little hard to endure, especially when the insistent crowd started intruding on their territorial imperative (as well as knocking over a few of their bikes). The Maysles provide a strong sense of the pre-concert atmosphere: Altamont is revealed as a patch of ground where 300,000 individuals descended, each with his or her own private agenda in mind.
During the day, scuffles break out as soon as the music starts. By the time the Stones perform at night, a full-scale war has broken out. The scene in front of the stage makes a mosh pit look like a game of musical chairs. The Stones open their performance with “Sympathy for the Devil,” but, before they can finish the number, fights spill onto the stage. And Mick Jagger never looked more pathetic and ridiculous than when he tries to take control of the situation: “Brothers and sisters! Brothers and sisters! Why are we fighting? … Let’s cool out, everybody… that means everybody! Cool out!”
More fights break out and the music is halted once more. Again, Jagger tries to calm the crowd. Even though it’s obvious that some people are seriously injured, the band goes into another song, “Under My Thumb” — hardly the sort of musical material to soothe a raging crowd. Still, the music unintentionally provides a stunningly appropriate score for the film’s most riveting moments: As Jagger minces about, the camera focuses in on various faces down on the ground and
