The next night, after drinking half a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and playing country songs on the piano, Keith high-strung a guitar in a Nashville tuning. Prompted by Mick for a song (“C’mon, you must have hundreds”), Keith disappeared into an office and worked out the melody line to “Wild Horses” and the words of its chorus, thinking of Anita and baby Marlon back in London. Plugging into Keith’s riff, with the “dull aching pain” of his own love life in mind, Mick wrote out the song’s verses of regret and his unwillingness to let his graceless lady slide through his hands. Stu hated any song with minor chords, so Jim Dickinson played piano, and by dawn the Stones had their newest love song, a conflated portrait of their feelings for the wild, untamed blondes in their lives.
At the dawn end of these sessions, mindful of bootlegging, Mick Jagger carefully erased all the extra tapes of their work before he left the studio. On December 4, the Rolling Stones flew to San Francisco and their shared destiny in the cold, empty hills south of the city.
* * *
The Battle of Altamont Speedway
December 1969. While the Rolling Stones were in Alabama, their halcyon free concert in the Bay Area was on its way to hell. San Francisco’s main rock promoter, Bill Graham, still angry with the Stones, queered them playing Golden Gate Park by bad-mouthing the show to the cops and mayor’s office. Another site was found at Sears Point Raceway. The Stones, the Airplane, the Dead, CS&N, the Burritos, and Santana were all set to play. The national press ran with the story, and thousands of Stones fans were heading west for the final mammoth rock festival of the sixties, a groovy tribal gathering that would make Woodstock look sick. Then, three days before the show, with the stage already built, the raceway site fell through when its film studio owners demanded movie rights to the concert. At the last minute, another site was offered by the owner of a demolition derby track in the barren hills of Alameda County, thirty miles south of Oakland, in a place called Altamont. The name seemed to indicate a pinnacle of some sort, perhaps an auspicious new height.
Working overnight, the crew organized by the Grateful Dead’s office dismantled the stage, trucked it down to Dick Carter’s Altamont Speedway, and rebuilt it at the bottom of a wash in treeless hills covered in sand-colored winter scrub. This high desert landscape was immense, empty, and unforgiving, looking like the arid bled in northern Morocco, traversed by gigantic power lines and drainage ditches. A perimeter was set up backstage amid heaps of wrecked cars that recalled Godard’s junkyard sets in One Plus One. The Oakland, San Jose, and Frisco chapters of the Hell’s Angels were invited by the Grateful Dead’s organization to protect the stage, much as they had done, peacefully, at previous San Francisco festivals. This was no big deal. Payment was said to have been a busload of beer, but this was later indignantly denied by the seething Angels after they’d been blamed for what happened at the Battle of Altamont Speedway.
The wan, crescent-shaped moon—and much was later made of this—was in Scorpio.
The Rolling Stones flew into San Francisco on Friday, December 5, and checked into the Huntington Hotel. That evening, Mick and Keith drove out to Altamont with the film crew to check out the scene. They found an immense hippie encampment surrounding floodlit scaffolding and the stage being built. Chip Monck was on the job, as were hundreds of volunteers who labored through the night. Volunteer medical teams were setting up field clinics. It seemed like San Francisco was working overtime to show the world what could be done for free. Beyond the perimeters, friendly campfires burned in the darkness as hundreds huddled together for warmth. Jugs of California wine were proffered, joints, good vibes: so good that Keith decided to stay the night and crash in one of the trailers behind the stage.
By noon the next day, December 6, an estimated 300,000 carpeted the hill in front of the stage. Roads were blocked ten miles around Altamont, so the only way in and out was by foot, motorcycle, or the helicopters landing on the nearby racetrack. There was weak sunshine, and all the bands were supposed to play in daylight. Santana went on first, jammed a set of their conga-driven Chicano rock, played “beautifully,” according to Charlie. Young Carlos Santana watched in alarm as knife fights and stabbings broke out at the side of the stage while he was playing. A naked fat man was badly beaten when he tried to approach the stage, which was only four feet high. Then the Flying Burrito Brothers started their pure country rocker, “Six Days on the Road,” with Gram Parsons up front as the hero of the rodeo.
Excited by the young Burritos, the girls in the crowd surged to the edge of the low stage—some guys too—and the Hell’s Angels in their black leather jackets and greasy denims lost control. Fights broke out in front of the band and the music stopped. Gram tried to soothe it—“Let’s not hurt each other”—but some people were bleeding badly.
The Stones arrived early in the afternoon by helicopter—without Bill Wyman, who missed the flight. Mick got off the ship, accepted some flowers, and was punched in the face by an acid-crazed kid. He found Keith in his trailer, getting briefed by Gram Parsons on the vicious fighting the Burritos had seen during their show. Wary of the whole thing, Charlie Watts chatted up a couple of the Angels minding the trailers and found them quite pleasant. Waiting for Wyman, insulated from the growing chaos outside, the Stones and Gram Parsons spent the afternoon smoking weed and yodeling country tunes.
Out front it was a bummer. The acid, the mescaline, the DMT, the alcohol had a death grip on the afternoon. A thin greasy line of stoned bikers under the watchful eye of the formidable Oakland Angels chieftain Sonny Barger faced an increasingly hostile mob of freaks and suburban high school kids. Crazed Stones fans fought to get up close. Tripping kids who’d gotten rid of their annoying clothes and were only trying to hurl their shivering naked bodies onstage were beaten with pool cues the Angels had thoughtfully packed for crowd control.
In his most soothing tones, Sam Cutler, the Voice of Hyde Park, announced that a baby had just been born and appealed for blankets. Nothing. More fights in front of the stage as the Jefferson Airplane started up. Grace Slick vainly appealed for calm. Singer Marty Balin saw a Hell’s Angel savagely punch a black man and leaped off the low stage into the crowd to stop the fight. The Angel stepped back and knocked Balin out with one punch. They got him back on the stage, where he sat dazed while his band played “Volunteers.” When Balin came to, he cursed at the Angel who’d hit him, and the enraged biker smashed Balin in the head and knocked him out again.
When the Grateful Dead’s helicopter landed, Jerry Garcia and the others ran into Michael Shrieve, Santana’s drummer, who told them what was going down. The Dead got right back on their chopper and didn’t play that day.
Crosby, Stills and Nash went on late in the afternoon with their fey songs about Judy Blue Eyes and the Marrakesh Express. They watched, horrified, as the bikers continued to defend the stage, and the line of Harleys now parked in front of it, with their pool cues. When some poor victim went down, brained by a cue, the Angels stomped him bloody, and crew people watching from the stage assumed that people were being beaten to death. There was no official police presence anywhere at Altamont.
After CS&N, there was a long wait as the sun sank behind the hills, the evening turned cold, and the crescent moon shone with a baleful light. Sam Cutler kept announcing the Stones wouldn’t appear until the stage was clear of everyone, including the Angels who occupied it like a drunken crew of pirates. One of these, a saucer-eyed devil wearing a wolf’s-head hat, even whipped out a flute and played into the microphone for a few moments of horrifically apposite Boujeloudiya.
Bill Wyman finally turned up after dark; he had been shopping with his girlfriend. The Stones tuned up in a tent behind the stage. It was late and very cold when the Rolling Stones finally came out and played one of the musically better shows of the 1969 American tour.
Seven p.m. Suddenly the hot lights flashed on, a harsh splash of current in the cold black night. Sam Cutler: “I’d like to introduce to you, everybody—from Britain—the R
olling Stones!” Dull roar. Bright white floodlight outlined the packed stage against the gloom. Mick appeared in an orange and black satin suit, a little drunk, with silver satin pants tucked into knee-high velvet boots with three-inch heels. The “Omega” on his chest was the last letter of the Greek alphabet, signifying The End. Keith was in a tight red leather jacket and ruffled lace shirt, Jack Daniel’s at hand on the drum riser. Mick whooped it up, Charlie hit the drums and into “Jack Flash.” Then “Carol” and “Sympathy,” where the Stones’ invocation to Lucifer broke down as a motorcycle exploded in front of the stage and a mini-riot flared up. Mick stopped the band. “Hey, people, sisters and brothers . . . Come on now, will you cool out, everybody.” After a while, Charlie and Keith started up again and Mick said into the mike, “Okay, we can groove—something very funny always happens when we start that number.” The Stones kept playing “Sympathy” while the Angels pushed a guy off the stage, then cut him down with their cues, then gang-stomped him. It looked like they’d killed him and Keith stopped playing, really upset. Mick: “I mean, like people, who’s fighting and what for? Why are we fighting? Why are we fighting? Every other scene has been cool . . . We’ve gotta stop them right now, you know, we can’t, there’s no point . . .”
Tumult. Leather in swirling motion. Sound of heads cracking. Sam Cutler took the mike, trying to talk to the Angels as the pool cues were raised and smashed down horribly.
Keith, livid, pointing: “Either those cats cool it, or we don’t play. I mean, there’s not that many of them.” Sonny Barger looked at Keith. The Stones’ security men, impassive New York cops in windbreakers, moved in closer to the band. Another fight in front of Keith: “That guy there! If he doesn’t stop it—”
An Angel grabbed the mike, an ugly brute, and addressed the night: “Hey! You don’t cool it, you ain’t gonna hear no more music! You wanna all go home, or what?!” After a woman on the stage, a member of the local band Ace of Cups, was cut by a thrown beer bottle, the Stones’ cops suggested to Jo Bergman and the women in the Stones’ entourage that they leave. The Hell’s Angels had assumed control, and the cops could smell what was coming.
Stu took the mike: “We need doctors down here now, please. Can we have a doctor down now to the front?” Mick gazed at the Hieronymous Bosch tableau in front of him and said, “Keith, man . . . these scenes!” Nearby sat Timothy Leary, apostle of LSD, looking scared and pale, aghast.
Keith called for some “cool-out music” and the Stones launched into “The Sun Is Shining,” a Jimmy Reed blues, trying to calm things down. Then Keith called “Stray Cat” as small pockets of mayhem continued to erupt in front of them. Then “Love in Vain,” with Mick Taylor’s inspired guitar solo soaring into the blackness. Bill Wyman hit the bass line of “Under My Thumb,” and things actually began to cool out a little.
A flurry on the left side of the stage. All night a tall black kid in a lime-green suit and a black pimp’s hat had been grooving away, irritating the Angels near him. His name was Meredith Hunter, known as Murdock on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. He was eighteen. Halfway through “Thumb,” he pulled a gun out of his pants and pointed it at an Angel who was grabbing at his throat. There was a scuffle, and the kid pointed the gun briefly at the stage. An Angel stabbed him in the head, pushed him out of sight of the stage, and stabbed him twice more in the back. When he was down, a dozen more Angels stomped him to death. Then they stood on his head. Witnesses reported his last words: “I wasn’t going to shoot you.”
The band quit and Keith started yelling again, but stopped when the Angels told him they’d taken a gun off a guy who was shooting at the stage. They finished “Under My Thumb,” and Mick Taylor, who’d come to play, suggested the brand-new “Brown Sugar.” No one knew they’d just seen someone killed.
“ ’Brown Sugar’?” Keith asked, incredulous.
“Wot?” Charlie said.
Jagger: “He wants to do ’Brown Sugar.’ ”
Keith switched guitars, and the Stones’ new rocker was given its premiere performance under the hot movie lights as the Maysles brothers’ cameras rolled. The Stones played the rest of their usual show, with a truncated “Rambler” and the band bearing down as it blasted its way through. At the end of “Street Fighting Man,” two Hell’s Angels threw baskets of roses into the writhing crowd, and the Stones left fast.
The Stones’ whole entourage piled into one waiting helicopter, desperate not to be left behind. The pilot was afraid to take off, but Cutler was screaming at him to fly as an unruly crowd surged under the whirling rotor blades. The pilot got his overloaded ship off the ground, and the Rolling Stones lurched into the night, leaving the damned and blasted heath of Altamont behind them, along with any lingering illusions of Woodstockian groovyness and a significant piece of their reputation.
* * *
Pearl Harbor for Woodstock Nation
The Stones gathered in Keith’s hotel suite in the early morning of December 7—Pearl Harbor Day. A tape of moaning old blues songs was playing. Keith was furious at the Hell’s Angels for wrecking the day. Emeretta was doing her best to console him, and Mick was trying to get Miss Pamela and Michelle Phillips down to his room for a threesome. Gram Parsons was nodding against the wall in black leather and eye makeup, while Keith was wearing flash cowboy duds; Miss Pamela had the impression Keith and Gram were turning into each other. Gram was bummed because he thought Michelle, radiant ex-Mama, was with him. Keith cheered him up by giving him a demo tape of “Wild Horses,” only days old.
There was powder going up noses, serious gloom and doom. Mick thought he’d been shot at, and talked about quitting while he was alive. He told them he blamed himself, that it shouldn’t have happened. “I’d rather have had the cops,” he sulked. Miss Pam noticed Mick was a nervous wreck. “I thought the scene here was supposed to be so groovy,” he said. “If Jesus Christ had been there, he would’ve been fucking crucified.” No one could believe what had gone down. For years, the Rolling Stones had seen weird scenes in front of them while they played, but this was the first time one of their concerts had featured human sacrifice. They tried to follow the radio reports of multiple deaths, beatings, overdoses, and other casualties. Bitter callers were blaming the Stones and the Angels equally, and it was clear that an almost infinite bummer and hassle was coming. Time to get out of town. Sam Cutler was delegated to stay behind and try to patch things up with the locals. He met with the Hell’s Angels after his personal safety was guaranteed. The Angels demanded the incriminating films made at Altamont, meaning the Maysles’s footage, and weren’t thrilled when Cutler explained the film was back in New York already, and the Stones were gone too. Real gone, as Sam Cutler soon found out. From then on, his phone calls to the Stones or their office in London were never returned.
Later on December 7, Mick and Jo Bergman flew to Switzerland to deposit the Stones’ tour money, almost a million dollars, in a Geneva bank recommended by Rupert Lowenstein. When they arrived, they were escorted by Swiss police to the rubber glove room, where their body cavities were searched. From Switzerland, they went to the south of France to look for a house for Mick to rent. Marsha Hunt was waiting for them. Facing ruinous taxes, drug charges, and total lack of privacy, Mick had decided to leave England and live, at least for a while, the life of an exile.
When Keith arrived at Heathrow airport, he was greeted by Anita and baby Marlon. “Keith!” she cried when she saw him. “They’re throwing me out of the country!” Her Majesty’s government had indeed seized Anita’s passport and threatened to deport her unless Keith married her immediately. So Keith made plans to get out too.
When Mick arrived in London a few days later, Marianne and Nicholas met him at the airport. “Hullo, girl,” Mick said to her when he got off the plane. “Wop in yer bed, eh?”
Four people died at Altamont. One executed, two run over by a Plymouth, one drowned in a drainage ditch. About a hundred victims were treated for stabbings and beatings by the Angels. Seven hundre
d bad trips. An awful day for everyone, including the Hell’s Angels.
The national media ignored Altamont. Time and Life, still rhapsodizing about Woodstock, didn’t mention it. The New York Times ran a small story in a late Sunday edition. Newsweek ran a piece three weeks later. San Francisco, however, was trauma city. PEARL HARBOR TO THE WOODSTOCK NATION, read a headline. The Berkeley Tribe: STONES CONCERT ENDS: AMERIKA UP FOR GRABS. The Airplane and CS&N said they wouldn’t play any more outdoor festivals. The Grateful Dead went into hiding. When the Stones appeared to criticize the Hell’s Angels for the disaster at Altamont, the Angels went public, with Sonny Barger furiously claiming that his bikers just did what they were asked to do, and that the dead guy was pointing a gun at the stage. “We told ’em,” Barger rasped, “we told ’em we weren’t gonna play cops for the Rolling Stones.” Barger later claimed he stuck a gun in Mick’s ribs to make him finish the show at Altamont. According to court testimony years later, unknown members of the Hell’s Angels put a murder contract out on Mick Jagger as a result of the confused events after Altamont.
Old Gods Almost Dead Page 35