Just a Shot Away_Peace, Love, and Tragedy With the Rolling Stones at Altamont

by Saul Austerlitz

  Jefferson Airplane’s sharply differing responses to Balin’s beating were telling. Kaukonen and Kantner blamed the Hells Angels for their violent intimidation, while Slick preferred to depict the crowd as equally responsible for the violence. Was the growing misadventure of Altamont entirely a product of the Hells Angels’ presence, or was it caused as well by the crowd’s mischief? Slick was sensitive to the Altamont crowd, and the anger and hostility that so many in the audience had felt. But her appeal sounded like a passive acceptance of the Hells Angels’ own warped viewpoint, in which they were the arbiters and interpreters of the unwritten law, able to impose judgment on rule breakers at a whim. The fact that so many people—whether due to drugs, alcohol, or just a general desire to act out—clearly did need to be kept in line did not make the Angels the appropriate figures to do so.

  Jerry Garcia, his girlfriend Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Adams, and the other members of the Grateful Dead had gingerly stepped out of their band bus to watch Jefferson Airplane perform. The Dead had arrived earlier that morning via helicopter. One of their roadies had driven their bus, which was now parked backstage and serving as the Dead’s dressing-room-cum-drug-den. A tent had been pitched nearby for an impromptu hospitality suite. Looking out beyond the stage, and into the vast crowd crawling up the hill, they saw glimpses of the unrest to come, with Angels angrily protecting their motorcycles from the crowd, and handling their security duties with brutal efficiency. The level of hostility between the audience and its putative security force far exceeded anything they had seen in the peaceable San Francisco shows they had headlined, but only after Marty Balin decided to confront the bikers did the Dead fully comprehend the enormity of what they had helped to unleash.

  Garcia and his bandmates helplessly took in the grisly sight of their longtime friend Animal, resembling nothing so much, they thought, as an animate piece of roadkill, attack Balin, yanked away by firm hands as he sought to crunch his boot into the face of a musician there to entertain three hundred thousand fans. Garcia blanched, raising both arms, as the band’s manager Rock Scully would later describe it, “in an involuntary gesture of keeping back some unseen host of demons.”

  The Maysleses’ cameras would catch up with Garcia on the mostly empty speedway track as he received further reports of Balin’s beating: “Oh, that’s what the story is? Oh, bummer!” Garcia’s tense body language contradicted his bland tone as he nervously glanced around, his eyes pulled away from the camera’s interrogating gaze. The band, anxious to avoid being pulled into the violence, hastily beat a retreat back to its bus. The day’s bill had the Dead scheduled as the final openers for the Stones, bridging the gap between the opening acts and the headliner. It would be Garcia and his bandmates who would soon have to face the Hells Angels. And there was little opportunity for coordination or planning; Garcia only spotted Jagger briefly as the Stones entourage swept past, exchanging a few brief words and little more.

  Balin roused a few minutes later in the band’s truck, and was taken aback to see the enormous Hells Angel looming over him again. “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t mean to knock you out,” Animal told him, “but you can’t say ‘fuck you’ to a Hells Angel. Don’t you know that?” Balin, undaunted as ever, responded pithily: “Fuck you.” Animal knocked him out again.

  7. Whippin’

  Jerry Garcia returned to the Dead’s bus after Balin’s beating and lay down on the floor, his teeth chattering, shaking uncontrollably. Garcia’s body unconsciously responded to the chaos roiling near the stage even before his brain could fully compute the import of what he had just seen. “Oh, maa-aan, no way are we doing this,” Garcia told Rock Scully. “The inmates have definitely taken over the asylum. Rock, go sort it out, man. Talk to the Angels or something.” Garcia’s girlfriend, Mountain Girl, called out for some marijuana. Garcia’s bandmate Ron “Pigpen” McKernan was at the back of the bus, unable to summon a coherent response to the nightmare unfolding outside. Here, the hippie aesthetic of laissez-faire planning slammed into brute reality. Here were the Dead’s erstwhile friends choosing one of the biggest days in the band’s career to prove a point: that they could not be managed, could not be corralled into playing the part of mascots for peace and love. The vision must have been shattering, and Garcia appeared to retreat within himself, intent on blocking out the spectacle taking place just outside his windows.

  Garcia crouched next to Mountain Girl, struggling to understand what he had just witnessed, and increasingly certain of one thing: “No way am I playing, man, no fucking way am I going out there!” The Grateful Dead had not only played a crucial role in the planning and coordination of Altamont, but they also had been the ones to plump for the Hells Angels. Now the utter naïveté of their stance was being exposed with each fresh assault by the bikers they had insisted were peaceful, law-abiding members of the counterculture.

  Garcia’s bandmate Phil Lesh was the only one on the bus with the courage to part the curtains and peek at the stage. He issued a steady stream of dire proclamations to his bandmates: “Jesus Christ, there’s this three-hundred-pound naked guy, and—oh God!—the Angels are beating him to a fucking pulp!” The Airplane’s set was coming to a halt, the band doing their level best to play even with Balin now unconscious. But Garcia was not prepared to face the chaos he had helped to unleash. “This show is like some kind of runaway train,” he said, “and we best get the fuck out of here before it runs into us.” Fear had led Garcia and the Grateful Dead to contemplate fleeing from the very concert they had been instrumental in putting together.

  The Dead’s soundman Dan Healy poked his head into the bus door: “The Airplane are coming offstage, what do you guys want to do?” They hastily called a band meeting. The band was increasingly hysterical, panicked by the vision of hell visible through the parted curtains and fearful of being forced to face the chaos. There were concerns that the encroaching darkness, now only a few hours off, would only worsen the situation, and with the slate of bands having run long, the Stones might not be able to go on until well after dark. Self-preservation was the order of the day, and excuses were hastily sought to keep them from facing the consequences of their poor decisions.

  There was nothing the band could do, they believed, to salvage this misbegotten day, and it was now time to seek refuge. The band had not yet even taken the stage; instead they huddled in a defensive crouch, seeking to spin their flight as an attempt to placate the crowd by giving them what they wanted. If this was a Rolling Stones show, they argued to themselves, best to put the Stones on as soon as possible. “Let the Stones go on, this is their madness,” Lesh argued. Garcia agreed, providing further justification by contending that they would hardly be capable, under these circumstances, of entertaining their fans: “No way we’re going to play good, anyway. We’re just gonna give our enemies more ammunition.”The Grateful Dead would happily cede the stage to the headliners.

  Whether they intended it or not, the Grateful Dead’s decision not to play began a process of erasure, whereby the band that had played a central role in planning and organizing Altamont, and on whose home turf the concert had been scheduled, became the show’s invisible men. Their footprints were being deliberately scrubbed, leaving the Rolling Stones as the sole owner-operators of the debacle called Altamont.

  * * *

  The maelstrom instigated by the Hells Angels transformed Altamont from a joyous celebration to a crime in progress, and the filmmakers present believed themselves to have an artistic responsibility to capture it for posterity. People would need to see what had taken place here. As Balin and Animal were having their first tête-à-tête, cinematographer Stephen Lighthill moved from the right-hand corner of the stage to the center, hoping to film their fight. When he returned to the corner, an Angel gruffly told him, “You don’t film us anymore.” As the situation spiraled out of control, the Hells Angels did not want their reckless behavior recorded. But the Angels were too distracted by the tumult to devote much attention to Lighth
ill, whose casual, hippie-style clothing and low-key manner allowed him to blend in unnoticed.

  Lighthill took in the chaotic scene, increasingly horrified by the Angels’ violent raids on the crowd. He was back on the right side of the stage, ideally positioned to film the Angels, but his bulky, shoulder-mounted camera could hardly be hidden. The bikers had already approached Lighthill numerous times, threatening him with bodily harm if he attempted to film them, and he had reluctantly agreed to comply. But his inflexible, bulky camera—the same one that had doomed him to the relatively boring assignment of filming from the stage—had a hidden advantage: Lighthill could close its viewfinder while filming, preventing it from leaking light. To a casual observer, he would appear not to be recording. Lighthill craftily turned away from the scene at his feet, swiveling to chat casually with sound recorder Nelson Stoll. He looked entirely relaxed and nonchalant, even as his camera recorded the turmoil below.

  The sheer scope of the task the Hells Angels had been entrusted with—overseeing the conduct of three hundred thousand concertgoers—was daunting for a band of bikers with little experience with crowd control or peacekeeping. The Angels were overwhelmed, the bands having saddled them with work far beyond their capabilities or their numbers. A small crew of bikers was the only separation between the performers and hundreds of thousands of concertgoers, and even Sonny Barger, newly arrived at the concert in the early afternoon, was unsettled by the vastness of their mission. Lashing out was the most comfortable response. The Hells Angels instilled terror in those near them through the unpredictability of their moods. The threat of being hit cowed the overwhelming majority of the crowd. For the rest, there were the pool cues, and the knives.

  This was not the day to underestimate the size of the security staff that would be needed to keep the peace. People could be kind and compassionate and decent, just as the hippies were always arguing. But it was probably best not to give a large, unruly audience too many opportunities to lash out, or to empower men like the Angels to keep the peace.

  It required courage, and more than a touch of foolhardiness, to confront the Angels. And those who did often found themselves facing the bikers’ wrath. Backstage, an Angel, his eyes pinwheeling from methamphetamine, crouched atop a hapless concertgoer, punching him again and again as a crowd of thirty or so people gathered in an enormous circle to watch. No one intervened. No one wanted to be the next to trigger the Angel’s temper. Perhaps, too, some spectators enjoyed watching the real-life cage match being staged just a few feet away from them.

  Young journalist Kate Coleman, horrified by the violence, leapt forward, grabbed the hulking Angel by the collar, and began to pull him off, telling him, “That’s enough, you’ve made your point. Now let him go.” The Angel stood up and turned to face her, his meth-addled eyes slowly meeting hers. He grabbed Coleman, yanked her roughly, and began thumping her into a nearby VW van. He pointedly avoided punching her, his delicacy presumably due to Coleman’s being a woman. His chivalrousness did not keep him, however, from repeatedly slamming Coleman’s head into the van.

  While Coleman was being beaten, some bystanders dragged away the Angel’s first victim, moving the bloodied, dazed man to safety. Even as he beat her, Coleman was stunned that no one else exhibited the courage she had in intervening. Why wouldn’t anyone attempt to rescue her?

  Finally, Coleman was rescued by an elfin journalist for a local underground newspaper, The Tribe. She stepped near Coleman, grabbed her hand, and told the Angel, “I’m taking her away now.” The Angel, too dumbfounded or drug-addled to reply, let them go.

  Fear prevented others from being as daring—or as reckless—as Coleman had been. This backstage moment would serve as a capsule version of the day: a story of violence and domination, of an impassioned minority running roughshod over a cowed majority.

  The audience, too, had proven itself incapable of looking after itself. There was such a thing as too much trust, and too many of the people at Altamont seemed to exhibit a blind faith in the goodwill of others, and the organizational abilities of the behind-the-scenes impresarios of rock ’n’ roll. Community, for many of the people in attendance, meant a casual assumption that all would be orderly, all would come together, all would be harmonious.

  * * *

  Word of the day’s excesses began to trickle back to the Huntington Hotel in San Francisco, where the Rolling Stones were spending a lazy afternoon before flying out to the concert site. What had been a highly anticipated peak to their American tour, and to their careers, was rapidly devolving into a catastrophe, and the band was developing second thoughts about participating. The Rolling Stones would have loved to escape from their commitment to Altamont, but it was simply too late. The show would have to go on. The band began to mentally prepare themselves for what would undoubtedly be an unusually trying day. The helicopter would be leaving soon.

  The Stones finally arrived at the festival by helicopter at around 2:45 p.m., accompanied by Albert and David Maysles. As they exited the chopper, a swarm of fans approached, dashing up the hill toward the band, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mick Jagger. Albert filmed one bellicose young man, likely emboldened by drugs, as he rushed the Stones’ lead singer and proceeded to punch him in the face. There would be no Altamont honeymoon, even for the day’s headliners.

  Jefferson Airplane’s set was immediately followed by the country-rock stylings of the Flying Burrito Brothers, whose debut album The Gilded Palace of Sin had come out earlier in the year to ecstatic reviews and minimal sales. The band was an outgrowth of the Byrds, led by former Byrds collaborator Gram Parsons and ex-bassist Chris Hillman, and their mellow sound played a role in momentarily calming the overheated crowd. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards emerged from their trailer during the Burritos’ performance, briefly taking to the stage and signing autographs for the crowd, on everything from album covers to draft cards. The Hells Angels were there to provide security for the headliners, clearing a path for Jagger and Richards wherever they roamed.

  The crowd was like an eyeless beast, thrashing about in its mindless frenzy to approach the stage, and unable to restrain itself in its headlong charge to the front.

  As fans pressed forward, they nudged the concertgoers nearest the stage in the direction of the Hells Angels’ motorcycles, parked just in front of the stage. The bikes were being toppled, knocked over by the pent-up weight of three hundred thousand people, their pedals and mirrors crushed by the knees and elbows and shoulders of the crowd. Some of the Angels’ motorcycles had their wires cut, whether by saboteurs in the crowd or simply from the jostling of so many pressing bodies, no biker could say. The motorcycles were sacred property, though, the physical manifestation of a biker’s heart and soul. No Angel would let his motorcycle be manhandled any more than he might allow himself to be maimed bodily. A line had to be drawn.

  As with so many crowd panics, the people at the back could not see what was happening at the front and continued crowding ever closer, unaware of the ripple effect of their efforts. The crowd pushed fans back against the Hells Angels’ motorcycles, and this time the pent-up force shoved over a wave of bikes, five of the Angels’ prized possessions toppling over in one fell swoop.

  The Angels righted their motorcycles, but the panic only highlighted their territorial feelings regarding the contested space near the stage. They were not only doing their job; they were guarding their treasures, and no one was going to damage their most precious possessions. The Hells Angels had never been particularly kind, or inclined to treat others gently, but at their previous concert gigs, they had been relatively placid with interlopers and stage trespassers. Perhaps the danger posed to their motorcycles—along with the copious drugs they had already consumed, and the scope of their responsibility, abandoned as they were to the task of providing security for so large a gathering—helped to tip them over in the direction of full-on violent hostility toward the fans they were allegedly protecting. The failures of foresight during the planning fo
r the concert were having disastrous consequences. Why had the planners told the Hells Angels to park their motorcycles in front of the stage, of all places?

  The Angels’ bikes would not be wrecked by a shoving crowd. The wires could easily be repaired. Minor infractions would have to be counteracted with the threat of overwhelming force. Bystanders who had stepped out of line would be faced with a flying Angel, leaping from the stage to confront them.

  To be an Angel was to be inflexible, unwilling to overlook a violation of the rules. It meant denying the power of the rules that governed others’ lives while insisting, with niggling precision, on the universality of one’s own personal code. To be a Hells Angel was to act out a parodic version of American freedom, where freedom itself was an amoral act, unkind and selfish. It required tuning out the quiet voices that insisted on the inherent dignity of others, and amplifying the ones that demanded that others respect yours.

  The Hells Angels lashed out, but were comfortable with others’ violence as long as it respected their authority. Stones bodyguard Tony Funches beat two bikers who were fighting onstage, coming dangerously close to the bands’ equipment. Funches thought he would head off any potential trouble by finding Animal, whom he rightly judged the ringleader of the biker circus. The fox-head hat was disconcerting, but Funches gamely pressed on. “I’m a dead man,” he told him. “I just cold-cocked a couple of your buddies, because they were fighting each other and knocking over the equipment on the stage.”

  Animal didn’t flinch, and didn’t shout. He calmly gazed down at Funches and said, “Hey, man, we’ve got no problem with you. You’re just doing your job.” Funches treated the Angels—or at least the lead Angel—with deference, acknowledging his authority. The Hells Angels demanded respect, and shows of deference would be the dividing line between those passed over by the Angels at Altamont, and those doomed to face their wrath.