Altamont meant the end of an era – or the tragic end of the 1960s. The Altamont Speedway Free Festival It took place on December 6, 1969 at the abandoned Altamont Speedway in Northern California. This was one of the three best-known festivals of the time. However, it was this framework that saw the rise of music festivals flourish. With him Monterey Pop Festival of 1967 during the Summer of Love and the Festival of Woodstockculminating moment for the countercultureAltamont loomed like a dream and the end of an era. However, that dream ended up turning into a nightmare. December 6, 2019 marked the fiftieth anniversary of this tragic episode. It did not, however, have the same commemoration as the anniversary of Woodstock, celebrated in the summer of the same year.
The most important novelty of youth culture in the late 1960s came with the change in the role of popular music, and the relationship between a widespread youth culture and political radicalism – especially student ones – was much closer in the United States ( Vinen, 2018: 77-78).
California as a counterculture mecca
Since the fifties, California It was already considered one of the most liberal US states of the moment, as well as a refuge for the emerging counterculture. the battle of the psychedelia I would end up winning it San Francisco thanks to an incalculable wave of bands born to do the honors to what years later would be recognized as the hippie legend (Guillén and Puente, 2007: 55). The city of San Francisco or Frisco, as the beat generation in their stories, it was a place of residence for the poets beatshippies –especially in the neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury– and the cradle of the emergence of psychedelic rock.
“San Francisco (and the state of California in general) was a hive in which hundreds of musical proposals within rock emerged and coexisted. However, and as expected, only a few transcended their time and are fervently remembered today. Others were overshadowed by the big bands and never managed to overcome the barrier of ‘cult’ group status” (Guillén and Puente, 2007: 46).
With the exception of Woodstock, held in upstate New York, the other two big festivals of the decade – Monterey and Altamont – took place on the West Coast. Altamont was intended to be the “Woodstock of the West.” These festivals were born in a context in which rock music was normally associated with the consumption of alcohol and drugs. Monterey was the hippie dream come true, without altercations and with the “good vibes” that would be attributed to the hippie movement. With Woodstock, despite being remembered as the great festival of the decade, there were some problems. Among them, the lack of resources or insufficient infrastructure due to the large number of attendees, among others. Altamont, on the other hand, would be the one to cast a shadow over this series of festivals and tarnish the end of the “peace and love” decade.
But California’s advantageous situation began to change with the election of the Republican ronald reagan as governor in 1967. The election of Reagan, belonging to the Republican Party since 1962, occurred in the midst of a countercultural boom. It also coincided with the beginning of the student protests that would reach their peak in May 1968. Reagan was characterized as the scourge of hippies, drugs and student protests. However, it is curious that Altamont was held with Reagan as governor of the state and Richard Nixon – also a Republican – as president of the country.
In turn, the bad press of rock concerts and bands was due to the fact that many of the artists gave interviews talking about the consumption of LSD. That was the case of beatles Paul MCCARTNEY in his controversial interview for the Independent Television News on June 19, 1967, where he claimed to have consumed acid about four times. His former bandmate, John Lennonalso granted a few years later, specifically in 1970, an interview for the magazine rolling stone talking, among other things, about the first time the Beatles they took LSD thanks to their dentist. In general, American society was moving at that time between the conservatism of its government and the countercultural explosion that its society was experiencing.
The Hell’s Angels: The Conservative Counterculture
“Fashion and musical taste divided and united young people in equal measure, and those who believed themselves to be leaders of the youth were sometimes plunged into a kind of civil war that transcended the younger generation. In the US, biker gangs – especially the Hells Angels – had been present in youth culture manifestations since the 1950s. However, many of these groups were far-right, if they had any ideology, and they were also violent” (Vinen, 2018: 80).
The Hell’s Angels either Angels from Hell is the name by which a group of American bikers founded in California in 1948 is known. They usually own Harley-Davidson motorcycles. The band has come to be regarded as criminal organization by the United States Department of Justice. These were one of the parties involved in the festival incident, as they were hired as security for the event.
Although the club claims not to be a racially segregated organization, there are several cases of racism in which they have been involved. One of them is the one that occurred during the Altamont Festival. However, the group began to appear on the psychedelic scene of the sixties thanks to the writer, LSD guru and founder and guide of the merry pranksters, Ken Kesey. He was dedicated to organizing parties at his house in La Honda California and guiding the LSD “trips” of his participants. According to Tom Wolfe in his book Lysergic Acid Punch (1968):
“Kesey was introduced to the Hell’s Angels one afternoon in San Francisco through Hunter Thompson, who was writing a book about them at the time. Anyway, Kesey and Thompson were having beers and Thompson said he had to go to the Box Shop Garage to see some Hell’s Angels, and Kesey walked him to the date. Kesey was just as tough a guy as they were. He had just been arrested for possession of marijuana, which, in the eyes of the Angels, certified that he was Good People. They explained to him that one could not trust people who had not been in jail” (Wolfe: 177).
Apparently, in 1965 the fame of the Angels of Hell had increased and there were many who requested them. They appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines as Life either Saturday Evening Post, as well as writing books about the band. It was this rapprochement that caused Kesey to hang a giant sign on his house that read: “The Merry Pranksters welcome the Hell’s Angels.” The trip of the Angels was the motorcycles, and that of the pranksters LSD, but both constituted an incredible means of access to an orgasmic moment, the now (Wolfe, 1997: 179).
To everyone’s surprise, the bikers fit in with these hippies. Allen Ginsberg was also at the party. Ginsberg, who would witness the riots at the Stonewall Inn a few years later, left the Hells Angels completely stunned. He embodied many of the things that the Angels hated: he was a Jew, an intellectual, a New Yorker…, but he was “too much” (Wolfe, 1997: 182). The party lasted three days. From this moment, the Angels began to enter the Californian countercultural scene. They were reportedly hired by the psychedelic rock band The Grateful Dead, regulars at Kesey’s parties and the Merry Pranksters.
The Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter”
the british band The Rolling Stones, known as their Satanic Majesties, were the other protagonists. They were in his American Tour 1969 and it became his best-known tour. It was written, recorded, filmed and documented almost entirely in November of the same year.
Despite the great reception by the American public, the tour became the worst of all for the band. His last concert –in addition to being free– was the one held at the Altamont Festival, thus closing his tour of the country. In this macro-concert, they were presented as “the best rock n’ roll band in the world”. Their performance at the festival ended up becoming a documentary whose title is the same as one of the band’s songs, “Gimme Shelter”, from his album Let It Bleed of 1969. The theme talks about the horrors of the Vietnam War, which are “just one shot away”. In fact, it is considered one of the best songs of the band and of rock in general terms.
The documentary Gimme Shelter (1970), directed by the Maysles brothers and Charlotte Zwerin, shows much of the American Tour 1969 of The Rolling Stones. But, above all, it focuses on the disastrous Altamont incident, which took place during the action of the British. In the documentary, Sonny Barger, a member of the Hell’s Angels, claims they weren’t interested in policing the event, and had been told by the organizers that they would have to do little more than sit on the edge of the stage, drink beer, and make sure there are no murders. no rapes. Another member of the gang who identifies himself as “Pete of the San Francisco Hell’s Angels” claims on the tape that they were offered $500 worth of beer for the job.
Murder in Altamont: Bikers, beer and a lot of drugs
The Hell’s Angels, hired as security for the concert, were paid in beer. They ensured that Meredith Hunterthe 18-year-old African American who was murdered by one of the gang members, was pointing a gun at Mick jagger. In return, they stabbed him five times in total and kicked him to death. The culprit of the homicide, Alan Passaro, was arrested and tried during the summer of 1972 and was acquitted for acting in self-defense.
The documentary shows part of the murder. The Rolling, who had already interrupted the concert several times, decided to end it completely. In turn, at the festival there were three other accidental deaths, two of them caused by car accidents and another by drowning in a canal. “What happened was that there were a lot of drugs and alcohol,” he confirmed. grace slickof the Jefferson Airplane (the sixties, Episode 7). Unlike the accidental deaths at Woodstock, this one involved one homicide, and a racially charged one, too. However, the Hell’s Angels were, as mentioned, close to the extreme right. To this we must add that the movement by the Civil rights, which had already started in the 1950s and 1960s, was still of considerable importance.
Critics claim that Altamont was “the death of the woodstock generation”. Conspiracy theorists believe it was all a CIA plan to wipe out subversive youth movements from within. The one known as…