#meredith hunter

ROLLING STONES TRIVIA: HELLS ANGELS

Jefferson Airplane’s Spencer Dryden and Jorma Kaukonen conceived of a “Woodstock West” free concert to capture the positive spirit the world had witnessed on Max Yasgur’s farm in August 1969. The Rolling Stones wanted to end their 1969 US tour with a big show, upstaging all the bands who had appeared at Woodstock. Golden Gate Park was announced as the venue, only 4 days before the concert was going to take place, but by 4 December, the city had pulled the plug. Jefferson Airplane was on tour (in Florida at the time) and unaware of the cancellation.

Promoters quickly found another venue, at the Altamont Speedway, where more than 300,000 people showed up expecting everything to go better than it had at Woodstock, instead, everything went wrong, quickly deteriorating into violence, chaos, and death. As Rolling Stone wrote in 1970, “Altamont was the product of diabolical egotism, hype, ineptitude, money manipulation, and, at base, a fundamental lack of concern for humanity.“

The Hell’s Angels had been hired by the Stones’ US tour manager (on recommendation of the Grateful Dead) as informal security guards (and paid them with $500 worth of beer), and they sat near the stage, drinking beer and brandishing pool cues.

The concert began on the afternoon of Thursday, 6 December 1969, and violence began almost immediately, during Santana’s opening set. According to Carlos Santana, “The fights started because the Hell’s Angels were pushing people around. There was no provocation; the Angels started the whole violence thing and there’s no fucking doubt about that.”

The Hell’s Angels beat up a photographer (who was trying to take pictures of the Hell’s Angels beating up people) who needed 13 stitches in his head. While the Angels kept their beatings confined to the audience during the opening act, they turned on the band during the Jefferson Airplane’s set, punching Marty Balin in the head during the band’s second song. Balin lay unconscious as the group continued through “Somebody to Love.”

The Flying Burrito Brothers were able to get through their set without relative calm, but the violence returned during Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s 5-song set. The Grateful Dead, afraid for their own safety, left and did not perform

The Stones refused to leave their trailer, and at 4:45 pm, their tour manager announced that they wouldn’t perform until “everyone gets off the stage.” Other accounts state that the band wanted to wait until it got dark, in order to enhance their stage presence.

By the time the Stones took the stage, violence was erupting throughout the audience and the band tried to calm everyone repeatedly, stopping songs and refusing to play until everyone “cool out.” During the band’s 7th song, “Under My Thumb,” 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by Hell’s Angels members. They argued that Hunter had pulled a gun and killed him in self defense, eyewitnesses stated that Hunter only pulled the gun after he had been stabbed (the film of the concert, Gimme Shelter, seems to support the Angels’ account).

THINK AND QUESTION

The Rolling Stones: Let it Bleed (1969)

50 years ago, on the 5th of December, 1969, The Rolling Stones unveiled their latest album, Let it Bleed, and on the 6th, they fulfilled its appellative prophecy at Altamont.

You simply can’t make this shit up!

My point being: that the album title would convey such callous, careless violence, just prior to Mick, Keith and co. inadvertently killing the ‘60s at an ill-planned music festival that proved the antithesis of Woodstock, is the sort of freakish, unfortunate coincidence from which rock legends (and countless blogs such as this one) are made of.

Adding to the high drama that surrounded the Stones’ career during this period (documented brilliantly here by the Maysleys brothers), the band had just discarded their one-time leader, Brian Jones, earlier that year, only for him to perish in a bizarre swimming accident, weeks later.

And, though Jones was expediently and very effectively replaced by the talented Mick Taylor, Taylor barely played on Let it Bleed, meaning that the crying guitars wafting over “Gimme Shelter’s” supernatural opening sequence are remarkably all Keef!

I personally consider this song one of Rock’s all-time masterpieces, and I encourage you to watch this clip from 20 Feet from Stardom to fully appreciate Merry Clayton’s impassioned, ragged vocal contributions in isolation, as well as its amazing backstory.

By contrasts, the listless cover of Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain” is a very disappointing comedown, threatening to derail things completely, and so is “Country Honk,” quite frankly, as it can hardly compare to the proper, absolutely kinetic “Honky Tonk Women.”

But the album is pretty much a five-star ride after that (“You Got the Silver” being the arguable exception), as the group recovers their spunk and their funk on “Live with Me” and “Monkey Man,” wallows shamelessly in the decadent title track, before peeling back successive, onion-like layers of murderous insanity and brutality on “Midnight Rambler,” until the tension is virtually unbearable.

And, for a grand finale, they pile on seven-plus minutes of weary resignation, if not temperance (it was a little too late for that) on “You Can't Always Get What You Want,” which gained all kinds of new meanings, references, and metaphors across The Rolling Stones’ career, following the horrific events) at that California speedway, none worse than the slaying of concert-goer Meredith Hunter.

Triumph and tragedy: that was Rock ‘n’ Roll a half-century ago, when it defined the zeitgeist, instead of Dad Music.

A BIT OF HISTORY: HELLS ANGELS

International motorcycle gang whose London branch peacefully policed the Stones’ free Hyde Park Concert on July 3 1969. Later on, the US West Coast division was called in to perform the same function at the infamous Altamont festival. The Angels did the job for $500 worth of beer, but generated tons of bad publicity. During the concert one of the Angels allegedly stabbed 18-year old Meredith…