Steerpike

Googling about for that film, came across this one - with the Stones -
but doesn't cover Altamont at all so obviously not that one. From reading this article: Sympathy for the Devil | 4Columns it seems the movie in question is 'gimme shelter' -
Looks like you can watch the whole of Gimme Shelter here -
at approx. 30 mins in, they start showing how the Altamont location was chosen (with Melvin Belli!). At 1hr in, the Stones take to the stage, and at 1:10 the real bad shit starts to happen. Hard to imagine.

Nutmegger

Duh, that will teach me to post first thing in the morning, before the brain is in gear! Absolutely right! Gimme Shelter is Altamont, Sympathy for the Devil is the somewhat unwatchable Godard movie wrapped around the recording of the song of the same name.

Steerpike

I'm glad of the inspiration to track down both movies. Yes, the Godard one does look a bit odd! To paraphrase Pulaski ... "That movie hasn't aged at all well - a lot of howling and wailing hippy nonsense."

I'm not actually a big fan of Jefferson Airplane; I just happen to find White Rabbit an amazingly powerful piece, and LOVE Grace Slick's vocalization.

Edit to Add - with the new EU Copyright law (Article 13), will it become impossible to find material such as this on youtube?
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/28/arti...-internet.html
"... the biggest source of worry for the people and companies protesting the new measures by far is Article 13. Currently, the onus is on rightsholders to flag copyright violations with tech firms, who can then take action to pull content if they find it’s in breach of copyright.

With the new rules, liability now lies with tech giants to ensure their platforms aren’t open to copyright breaches. Detractors have said this would lead to controversial pre-filter systems, where everything from memes to GIFs are blocked from online platforms."
I've always been amazed (and ecstatic!) that you can pull up virtually any piece of music on YouTube and find a good video for it. I would hate to see that disappear.

Nutmegger

The in-studio clips as the band works on the song are great -- Godard's existentialist stuff in between is impossible! So if you can zip between the parts, check out the band sections.

Hiro11

"Gimme Shelter" is one of the greatest documentaries ever made.

Rock Scully, who was the Grateful Dead's tour manager, wrote a great autobiography about his years with that band called "Living with the Dead". In the book, Scully discusses Altamont and the absolute idiocy of the Stones' plans. The guys in the Dead knew all of the local Hell's Angels chapters and knew it was going to be a disaster to hire them. There's a brief but great scene in "Gimme Shelter" where Jerry Garcia lands at Altamont in a helicopter, takes one look and promptly re boards the helicopter and gets the hell out of there.

Steerpike

I did more reading about this today. Found this article: https://slate.com/culture/2018/07/ju...-reviewed.html that seems to contradict this.

In it, it says
"A free concert on the West Coast, the birthplace of the hippie movement, seemed like a fabulous idea. The Rolling Stones’ representatives took the advice of musicians from San Francisco’s psychedelic scene, particularly the Grateful Dead, and hired the Hell’s Angels to ring the stage and keep overzealous or tripping fans from climbing up and interfering with the show. In exchange, the Angels were given $500 in beer. If this sounds daft, know that the Angels had a good long-standing relationship with the Dead, who used them to provide security for their free concerts in Golden Gate Park.."
I'll have to read more about it ...
ETA - interesting tid-bit from the article above: "What no one who organized Altamont seems to have fully reckoned with was the sheer toxic potency of the Stones’ fame and its ability to blot out the easy hippie equanimity that typically prevailed at the free concerts in Golden Gate Park. To top it all off, some idiot instructed the Angels to park their Harley-Davidsons around the base of the stage, and when the mass of concertgoers got pushed up against the Angels’ sacred bikes, some kind of violence was inevitable. Needless to say, almost everybody involved, included the Angels, was drunk or on drugs."

Another article here - not sure of the quality - https://pleasekillme.com/disaster-at-altamont/
"Months earlier, their tour manager, Sam Cutler, had met with Rock Scully, the Grateful Dead’s manager, to discuss a free Stones/Dead show in northern California. Experts in producing free concerts in the Bay Area, Scully and the Dead offered advice and suggestions about how to put on the show, including using the Hell’s Angels to provide security. "

ETA again - further reading on the above page, they have some footage of Santana, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young playing earlier. And then it goes on to quote Garcia: "But Garcia pushed back on the claim the Dead suggested the organizers hire the Hell’s Angels. “Nobody hires the Hells Angels for anything,” he said. “The Hell’s Angels aren’t for hire . . . It’s not a question of hiring or not hiring; it’s a question of who is it that’s gonna say to the Hell’s Angels, “Go away”? Nobody’s gonna say that to the Hell’s Angels, man.”"

ETA again - found this little gem ... Sonny Barger - the head of the Hells Angels involved in the show - speaking on a radio call in show, with Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts being filmed listening to him. He makes it clear that it was the crowd's effect on the bikes that got things going out of control ...

ETA ... as I keep reading more about Altamont, I keep finding gems!
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...ing-lit-71111/
Grace Slick: " it was partially our fault. Paul and I were talking to Jagger about how we’d done a bunch of stuff free in Golden Gate Park and the Hells Angels had been our security. And they never hurt anybody. And they were good at it because people were afraid of them. So we said, “We’ll get the Hells Angels to do security,” and Jagger didn’t know and said OK. But it turned out to not be right. There was speed and alcohol and those two things are God-awful. I would do coke to keep the alcohol going — but not during the day. But I guess it wasn’t too early for the Angels. "

Giantaxe

I like that song too, but apparently Grace Slick now has "issues" that haven't endeared her to her neighbours.

I saw them in '74. By far the loudest concert I've ever been to. I felt positively drunk when I left the venue and I hadn't imbibed in anything...

Hiro11

Really interesting stuff there.

Yeah, in his autobiography, Scully places the blame for Altamont squarely at the feet of the Stones. He says that Jagger and the Stones were more familiar with the Hell's Angels from Britain who Scully labels a bunch of poseurs. Scully talks about the Stones like they were a bunch of children who thought it would be cool to be associated with a notorious California biker gang. Meanwhile Scully says that the San Francisco Hell's Angels were a bunch of "Visigoths", many of whom had recently returned from combat in Vietnam as hardened men. Scully absolves himself and the Dead unequivocally of any responsibility for Altamont in the book. "living with the Dead" a great book, BTW. It well written, doesn't take itself or the Dead too seriously and is rammed full of amusing stories of the Dead's run-ins with various famous bands and promoters during the 60s and 70s.

I think everyone agrees that Sam Cutler was completely f%^&ed over by the Stones after Altamont. The Stones headed back to Europe and left Cutler there to fix the problem with no support. Cutler lost his job, his reputation and all of his money in the shuffle. Cutler wound up taking the fall for Altamont regardless of the fact that he was not involved in the planing of the concert and would never have supported the idea if he had been. It was hardly a fair shake for him. In the aftermath, Cutler befriended Garcia and worked with the Dead and Scully for the rest of his career. Cutler is notably prominent (and hilarious) in the excellent "Long Strange Trip" documentary series that Amazon recently produced on the Dead. Cutler seems like a fascinating guy.

It's interesting to see Grace Slick's comments there. In the clip I posted you can see the guitarist for Jefferson Airplane get knocked out by the Hell's Angels. That was actually the incident that persuaded the Dead to get the hell out of there. I didn't know that Jefferson Airplane actually had a pre-existing relationship with the Angels. What a mess.

Nutmegger

Actually it was their lead singer, Marty Balin, who got knocked cold. Paul Kantner and Keith Richards both told the Angels to knock it off, but Sonny Barger was a law unto himself in the Bay Area in those days, and the Angles didn't give a damn what they did, and to whom.

Steerpike

Cool - so I've learned something else in this thread ... I didn't realize Amazon had such a documentary - I will most definitely track it down!

From all the reading I've done on this over the past few days, coupled with my long-standing fascination with the Bay Area and the 60s, it seems like everyone (well, most people) simply thought 'peace and love' would prevail and had a 'what could go wrong?' attitude. I'm sure the recent success of Woodstock just a few months earlier was a big influence. It seems like Altamont was a wholly unsuited venue for so many reasons (no parking, no public transport, no toilets, no shade, and nowhere 'obvious' to put a stage that could be meaningfully 'defended'). They had less than 48 hours to plan the whole thing. One interesting observation was that both the Hells Angels and the 'youth of the day' were seen as rebels against conventional society and that this would somehow bond the two together. Another interesting observation is that both camps were totally out of their boxes on all manner of drugs, which weren't just 'freely available' but also virtually required.

As an aside ... there was a thread here on BE a few weeks ago in which someone complained that 'there's no history in the US'. I argued that there's a lot of history, but it's more 'recent' history and more about social issues, not building castles and fighting with swords. The whole '60s' phenomenon in the Bay Area, which spread across the nation to some extent, was an amazing historic event. You had the anti-war movement (which I believe at the time was somewhat unique and novel), drugs, the hippies, the exploding music scene. You also had the moon landing, the cold war, the civil rights movement ... the JFK and MLK assassinations ... all of which were ground-breaking cultural events at the time. Other than the Beatles phenomenon, I don't think the UK had anything like that level of social phenomenon. I was only 10 at the time of most of the above events (and living in UK), and it wasn't until I hit my late teens that I became fascinated by all this. I truly feel that I was 10-20 years too late ... though I'd probably be dead of a drug overdose or something had I been a teenager during the late 60s ... .

Giantaxe

I think the history of the American West is fascinating, and not just the stuff that happened recently. The Gold Rush, for example.

I guess the nearest British equivalent would be London's Swinging Sixties scene. That saw a pretty remarkable change in sexual mores, fashion and music in a very short period. And let's not forget that Hendrix had to move to London to establish himself given the rampant racism he faced in the US.

scrubbedexpat099

I had a small snigger about that, they did not have a term for that, nowadays it is called Intersectionality.

A variance on my enemy's enemy is my friend, rarely works out well.

And everybody else is wondering, well what did you expect?

Steerpike

I did not know that about Hendrix; he's one of the few major artists from that era that I'm not particularly fond of (though his playing of the national anthem is mind-blowing!). (and of course it's available on youtube ...
).

Yes, the 'swinging sixties' was a UK equivalent I guess. Growing up in the grim, industrial northwest I didn't really experience much of that (perhaps no different in the US, if you grew up in a mid-western town). It seems, from a historical perspective, both the UK and US enjoyed economic recovery from WW2, the baby boom, and a general breakdown or re-think of cultural norms. I still find it fascinating that most music bands in the 60s were wearing 'jackets and ties' and sported well-cropped hair in the early part of the decade, ending up with total anarchy by the end!

Giantaxe

I have a friend who stuck out Woodstock until its muddy end and can pick himself out on that video. I'm very jealous.

Nutmegger

If you are interested in the period, the movie to see is Easy Rider (I had started seeing an American who, when he heard I hadn't seen it, immediately rushed me to a cinema in Piccadilly Circus where it was on view--he said it totally reflected what was going on in the country) and the book to read is Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (again, given to me by a US boyfriend!). All the guys I knew were waist-length-hair anti-war musicians, so others may have had a different view!