The event is remembered for its use of Hells Angels as security and its significant violence, including the killing of Meredith Hunter and three accidental deaths: two from a hit-and-run car accident, and one from a drowning incident in an irrigation canal.
[7][8] The concert featured performances (in order of appearance) by Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY), with The Rolling Stones taking the stage as the final act.
[13] According to Jefferson Airplane's Spencer Dryden, the idea for "a kind of Woodstock West" began when he and bandmate Jorma Kaukonen discussed the staging of a free concert with the Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones in Golden Gate Park.
Referring to the Stones, Dryden said, "Next to the Beatles they were the biggest rock and roll band in the world, and we wanted them to experience what we were experiencing in San Francisco."
The concert was originally scheduled to be held at San Jose State University's practice field, as there had recently been a three-day outdoor free festival there with 52 bands and 80,000 attendees.
Dirt Cheap Productions was asked to help secure the property again for the Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead to play a free concert.
However, a previously scheduled Chicago Bears–San Francisco 49ers football game at Kezar Stadium, located in Golden Gate Park, made that venue impractical, and permits were never issued for the concert.
[14] However, a dispute with Sears Point's owner, Filmways, Inc., arose over a $300,000[citation needed] up-front cash deposit from the Rolling Stones and film distribution rights, so the festival was moved once again.
"[23] The deal was made at a meeting including Cutler, Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully, and Pete Knell, a member of the Hells Angels' San Francisco chapter.
[18]Stefan Ponek, who helped organize the event, hosted a December 7, 1969, KSAN-FM radio broadcast of a four-hour, "day after" post-concert telephone call-in forum, provided the following for the 2000 release (the four-hour recording is included) of the Gimme Shelter DVD: What we learned in the broadcast was pretty much startling: These guys—the Angels—had been hired and paid with $500 of beer, on a truck with ice, to essentially bring in the Stones and keep people off the stage.
And it seemed like there was not a lot of disagreement over that; that seemed to emerge as a fact, because it became rather apparent that the Stones didn't know what kind of people they were dealing with.The Gimme Shelter DVD contains extensive excerpts from that broadcast.
Sonny Barger, who also called into the KSAN forum, states: "We were told by one of the [other Hells Angels] clubs if we showed up down there [and] sat on the stage and drink some beer ... that the Stones manager or somebody had bought for us."
She also described a general uncaring attitude toward people who clearly needed help; a girl who was dragged across the stage by her hair, another who was on a bad acid trip and bystanders kicked and walked on her.
[24] Emmett Grogan (founder of the radical community-action group the Diggers), who was intimately involved in the organization of the event (especially at the two earlier-planned venues), confirmed the $500 beer arrangement on that same KSAN forum with Ponek.
"Pete" also tells host Ponek that the Angels were hired by Cutler because of some rowdy, anxious on-stage incidents during the Stones' Oakland and Miami concerts weeks earlier.
Altamont Speedway owner Dick Carter had hired hundreds of professional, plainclothes security guards, ostensibly more for the purpose of protecting his property rather than for the safety and well-being of the concertgoers.
Political scientist and cultural critic James Miller believes that since Ken Kesey had invited the Hells Angels to one of his outdoor Acid Tests, the hippies had viewed the bikers unrealistically, idealizing them as "noble savages"[22] and thus "outlaw brothers of the counterculture".
"That's another canard foisted on the world by the press", he said,[18] but Rock Scully remembers explaining to the Stones what the "real" Angels were like after watching the Hyde Park concert.
However, Denise Jewkes, lead singer of the local San Francisco rock band The Ace of Cups, six months pregnant, was hit in the head by an empty beer bottle thrown from the crowd and suffered a skull fracture.
Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane jumped off the stage to try to sort out the problem, only to be punched in the head and knocked unconscious by an Angel during the band's set.
[28] Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, who had already been punched in the head by a concertgoer within seconds of emerging from his helicopter,[19][20] was visibly intimidated by the unruly situation and urged everyone to, "Just be cool down in the front there, don't push around."
During the third song, "Sympathy for the Devil", a fight erupted in the front of the crowd at the foot of the stage, prompting the Stones to pause their set while the Angels restored order.
"[18] Following his initial scuffle with the Angels as he tried to climb onstage, Hunter, as seen in concert footage wearing a bright lime-green suit, returned to the front of the crowd and drew a long-barreled .22 caliber revolver from inside his jacket.
Footage shot by Eric Saarinen, who was on stage taking pictures of the crowd, and Baird Bryant, who climbed atop a bus,[30] appears in the Gimme Shelter documentary.
[12] In Esquire magazine, Ralph J. Gleason observed, "The day The Rolling Stones played there, the name [Altamont] became etched in the minds of millions of people who love pop music and who hate it as well.
Sragow pointed out numerous errors in the Rolling Stone coverage and added that the Maysles did not make "major motion pictures" in the traditional way; instead, a variety of factors contributed to the tragedy.
[40] The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards was relatively sanguine about the show, calling it "basically well-handled, but lots of people were tired and a few tempers got frayed"[12] and "on the whole, a good concert.
"[39] The Grateful Dead wrote several songs about, or in response to, what lyricist Robert Hunter called "the Altamont affair", including "New Speedway Boogie" (featuring the line "One way or another, this darkness got to give") and "Mason's Children".
In 2004, Australian electronic psych group Black Cab released their debut LP Altamont Diary, a concept album based on the concert and its cultural fallout.
Within the context of the song, Altamont served as the culmination of a period that had begun with the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in February 1959, during which "things (were) heading in the wrong direction" and life was "becoming less idyllic.