Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Stone's Touring Party is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Welcome to San Francisco. It's June nineteen seventy two. The
Rolling Stones are here to play their first show in
the Bay Area since nineteen sixty nine, and they're nervous.
The last time they were here, they emmittingly provided the
soundtrack for a murder that took place near feet in
front of them. It occurred on a cold December day
(00:31):
in a speedway called Altamont. The free concert was intended
to be their way of saying thank you to America
after wrapping their nineteen sixty nine tour and cred repair
after many hippies complained about their steep ticket prices about
eight bucks plus. It would give them a chance to
generate some of that San Francisco magic they'd heard so
much about but never experienced. Upon the advice of the
(00:55):
Grateful Dead, the Stones managers arranged for the Hell's Angels
to provide security in exchange for five hundred dollars worth
of beer. San Francisco people will sure the Stones management
that the Hell's Angels can be trusted, but on the
day of the concert, they get as loaded as anyone
else and use salt off pool cus to enforce their law.
(01:18):
By the time the Stones go on, it's dark. A
crush of people in front of the three foot stage
is terrifying. Their eyes are crazed. They're pushing, trying to
get forward, closer, trying to reach up and touch the
magic source. Sporadically, angels leap into the crowd, beating anyone
and gets in their way. Jacker pleads with the crowd,
(01:41):
brothers and sisters, who's fighting and what for? But it's hopeless.
They're angels sitting on drum cases and freaks going mad
by the amplifiers, literally foaming and clawing at their faces
as though they're possessed by the gods and some classic
Greek tragedy. It's the Stone's last gig of the tour.
(02:03):
They want to go home. There's only one helicopter available
for the ride out. It has room for only nine
people and gas enough for just one trip. Eighteen people,
the Stones among them, jam onto the copter, and just
before it takes off, they see a young girl crying bitterly.
(02:24):
An eighteen year old man has been stabbed to death
by a Hell's angel who saw him rushing towards the
stage with a revolver in his hand. The gun was
later found to be unloaded. The copter takes off at
a forty five degree angle and limps away, motor fluttering
and coughing for life, like the very last flight out
of Vietnam. It's only when the Stones get back to
(02:52):
the relative sanity of their hotel rooms that the awful
horror of the day dawns on them. Only then does
it all become real. Those words come courtesy of Robert Greenfield,
the legendary rock journalist who was Rolling Stone Magazine's anointed
Stones correspondent as a twenty something in the early seventies.
(03:16):
He was there that night at Altamont, bearing witness to
what's often characterized as the death of the sixties. More importantly,
he was the death of a man, and to some
justice hadn't been served. Many, including the Hell's Angels, blamed
the Stones for the tragedy. Tempers remained high when they
(03:38):
returned to San Francisco on their Exile on Main Street
tour in nineteen seventy two. Greenfield accompanied the band as
they revisited the scene of the crime, chronicling the experience
in his highly influential book stp the journey through America
with the Rolling Stones. The entire tour was marred by
rumors that the gang would seek murder's revenge for the
(03:59):
disaster that bloodied their hands. San Francisco was where it
would likely go down. Every precaution had been taken, but
in the end there was only so much that could
be done. If sitting presidents and senators could get gunned down,
so could Mick Jagger, and he knew it. Now for
the first time, Greenfield is sharing his tape archive, allowing
(04:22):
you to sit in on intimate chats with the Rolling
Stones in their prime. These tapes have gone unheard for
half a century. Consider the show on all access paths
that takes you from the front road to backstage, and
from the private jets to the private after show affairs.
We're going on the road with the greatest rock and
roll band in the world, on the tour that showed
(04:43):
us what it means to party like a rock star.
Each episode will take in the sites, sounds, riots, bombings,
drug busts, and other assorted mayhem from this pivotal moment
in American history. My name's Jordan Runtog, and welcome to
Stones touring. As the Rolling Stones jet taxis down the runway,
(05:13):
the stp entourage are already high off the two strong
shows they've just completed in Seattle. Champagne and Orange Juice
make the rounds, and the feeling on the plane is
that the tryouts are over San Francisco. Where they're heading
is where the big time starts. They burn off nervous energy,
regaling each other with battle stories from the night before
(05:34):
during the first post show rager of the tour. As
was the fashion, it got out of hand and nearly
torpedoed the whole track. The hotel where they stayed was
notorious in rock and roll circles. Located directly on the
Puget Sound, it afforded marvelous views of the harbor and
the unique opportunity for guests to fish directly from their windows.
(05:56):
This quaint feature directly led to one of the most
fouls and music history. Robert Greenfield explains.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
The only good thing about the Seattle gig. We stayed
at the Edgewater Inn, which is the evolution of mud shark.
Need I go into detail. Zeppelin stayed there and the legend.
I I don't know why I'm stuck with having to
explain all this stuff that the groupies. It is horror
(06:26):
to say this, but that the object of sexual penetration
used on one of the groupies because you could fish
off the balcony. This sounds like I'm making it up
even to me, but that with someone in some band
I think it was Zeppelin used a mud shark as
(06:47):
a sexual device. I'm not even happy that I just
said that. Well, but the Stones didn't fish. We just
kind of hung out there.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Mercifully, this post gig party didn't involve sea life. There's
a bit of smoking, a little bit of music from
the cassette player, and a lot of people watching each
other waiting for something to happen. A few young kids,
seemingly still in their teens, managed to infiltrate the gathering.
One of them pulls an envelope out of his pocket.
(07:17):
He takes a snort, passes it down a line of
his friends. Eventually it winds up in the hands of
one of the SCP coterie. Rolling Stones Records Chief Marshall
chess what's in the envelope? Marshall asks, Smack comes the reply.
He hands the envelope back unopened. A blonde girl with
a broad smile. No older than seventeen makes a grab
(07:40):
for it. Marshall tells her what it is. She grins
and nods her head eagerly before taking a hit. Marshall stunned.
He's been around musicians all his life. Pills, smoke and
booze or commonplace. Musicians, after all, are high people. But
the casual way these kids take hits off an envelope
(08:01):
somebody tells them is full of heroin give some chills.
The party is abruptly interrupted by the Stones' bodyguards, Leeroy
Leonard and Stand the Man More. They gestured at the
band with a jerk of the neck and bark, let's go.
The Stones know what that means and slip out the door.
(08:21):
The gathering has drawn noise complaints. The police are on
their way up the elevator at that very moment. Getting
caught in the hotel room with heroin and a bunch
of kids who are most likely underage would be high
on a list of very bad things that could happen
to the Stones. The SDP entourage are still laughing about
it on the plane ride. Just imagine what the cops
(08:43):
would have done if they'd found the most famous band
in the world in that room instead of these kids
who just flush their stashes the stones totally in is
sit and positively clean this time around. Hand to God
would have been right back in the headlines with the
tour over barely after it began. But they got away
with it, and the story gets better with every retelling.
(09:06):
And yet Mick Jagger is freaked out, not by the
run in with the law. He's used to that, like
Marshall Chess. He's also disturbed by the casual way these
kids consume hard drugs. For him, it seemed emblematic of
a deeper malaise that he noticed throughout America during the
nineteen seventy two tour. Here he is talking about it
(09:28):
with Robert Greenfield, courtesy of our friends at the Northwestern
University Archives.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
There's just a lot of people doping up, you know.
I think it's fucking I mean, it's all the dope.
He's got to stop for starn before anything else, you know.
I mean everyone's taking all that smacking. I mean, okay,
that's their thing.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Man.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
If you want to take smack and downers and two
gowners of chemic cool wine, you know that's around million.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
You're never going to do you know what I thought
people was going to do on that. And I don't
blame people for wanting to get fucked up. Everyone likes
to getting fucked up once in a while.
Speaker 7 (10:11):
You know.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
I mean, you know you can't. You can't go through
your life getting just fucked up. It's stupid. You can't
flo it out. You can's coming back. It's coming back. Man,
You're just in the end, you just kill yourself, you know,
trying to blot it out.
Speaker 6 (10:25):
You know.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
That's certain people have said. You know that that all
that dope on the street. You know, it's stopped people
being active.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
I mean, I just think you've got to make your
country somewhere a better place to be in, a better
place to think, in a better place to bring out
kids in, you know, and like sitting at home taking
smack and listening to representing ways to you do it,
you know, and like that's old fashioned, you know maybe,
but I think it's true that you know that, And
you've got to take the bull by the horns, and
(10:52):
it's a huge fucking bull America, and the horns very nasty.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
The consciousness was apparent to Mick during their second show,
at the Seattle Center Coliseum. That afternoon, the civil rights
activist Angela Davis was freed after spending sixteen months in
jail on trumped up murder and conspiracy charges. Her incarceration
became a cause celebra for celebrities and the radical left.
(11:19):
Aretha Franklin reportedly offered to pay Davis's bond, and John
Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote a song about her. Angela
Mick did the same with the Exile on Main Street
stand out Sweet Black Angel. It seemed only appropriate to
honor her release on stage. Halfway through the show in Seattle,
Mixed steps up to the mic and asks the crowd,
(11:40):
who got free today? He sounds like a patient schoolmaster,
waiting for a reply. When there is none, he helpfully offers,
Angela Davis got free today, in a tone that comes
dangerously close to patronizing. The lackluster response contributed to Mixed
disappointment about the state of America.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
There's no revolutionary feeling anymore. I didn't feel no. I
think that's sadly, and I find that a bit sad.
You know, you know, fucking know, you noisy bastards.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
Though the one half of me just wants to be
you know that make a lot of money and spend
it or the other half of me is giant enough
to really want to see it.
Speaker 5 (12:22):
All happen, you know, I do, and I think it will,
you know. I think it's going to come eventually.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
But it's gonna it's gonna weigh it's gonna have to
wait again, which is a big drag, you know, because
the back time America had a hand a revolution, and
one revolution in America history is not enough.
Speaker 5 (12:38):
You must have had a very strong feeling about Anchel
Davis on that trial. Yeah, well, no, of course I didn't.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
I just wrote a song about it, just for topical interest,
that's specific question. No, yeah, suren't cared about it, and
everyone everyone cared about that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Jagger wore many guys as as the front man of
the Rolling Stones, from James Brown to Lucifer. In the
summer of sixty eight, he responded to the violent uprisings
in North America and Europe with yet another street fighting man.
The mix of rock and roll in politics has always
been a strange one. After all, the stage is no
(13:21):
place to find out what's going on in the street.
Many fans and even some close to the band were
left to wonder was mixed flirtation with radical politics sincere
or just another pose? Robert Greenfield has his suspicions.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
You know, politically. The question is that you asked this
is answered on some level by street fighting man, which
he had written, Was he in the street? Was he
demonstrating in Grosvenor Square where the American Embassy was in London?
Speaker 7 (13:53):
No.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
In fact, one of the few times he'd marched at
a rally in Paris, free Angela Davis, just before the
Stones fled their French tax haven in nineteen seventy one.
He was horrified by what he saw. To him, symbols
of Soviet opression have been bastardized and co opted by
the radical left. It was a similar dilemma faced by
(14:17):
John Lennon, who hedged his bets on the nineteen sixty
eight Beatles track Revolution by singing, if you talk about destruction,
don't you know you can count me out in.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
There was a big rally in France and Angela Davis's
sister kind of start from the place, Bestie and everyone
want to walk in a fucking long line.
Speaker 5 (14:40):
And my lady was pregnant, very pregnant. And we will.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
But the funny thing was that all these people in
the French Commedist Party were carrying hamsical flags, you know,
and sometimes these guys, what the fuck you know, you're
car Angela Davis, you know, and like and karind of
Russian flag.
Speaker 5 (15:00):
You've got to be out of your mind, you know, go.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Back to the Thursdays for getting man the twenties. I mean,
Russian put more Angela Davises in prison.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
Than anyone else. You know.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
I ain't going to carry a Russian flag for no one,
and I ain't going to carry no American flag either,
you know.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
Now, I ain't going to carry.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
Amer and sickle for Angela Davis because the ammer and
sickle was cut.
Speaker 5 (15:21):
More fucking people down.
Speaker 4 (15:23):
In Russia are Angela Davis type figures than it has
ever in America.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Keith Richards agreed that the revolutionary spirit seemed to have
diminished since the Stones last visited the States in nineteen
sixty nine, but unlike Mick, he wasn't so sure it
was a bad thing. At least the vibes were better.
Speaker 8 (15:43):
It was more like touring in the in the earliest
early sixties, middle sixties. People just seem to be a
good time and look to watch their big single perform.
You know, just seems to be like you saying too
tween they came to see a shirt you know, America.
To me, it's seemed much more like us from like
(16:04):
art and this year than it did in.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Sixty nine year happier.
Speaker 9 (16:10):
Yeah, it's a certain extent. I mean, whether it was
that they just don't care as much anymore. Then they're
resigned the establishment thing to a certain extent. I mean,
it's like the campuses and the college the universities in America,
you know, I mean all that rioter. It seems a
new university generation they don't give a damn about those things,
(16:34):
or they're working on in a different way, you know,
from within the system.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
The you know, the revolutionary spirit was certainly gone from
San Francisco about the summer of seventy two. It had
been five years since that magical summer when the young
and acid enlightened flocked to the hate Ashbury district with
flowers in their hair. The idea had been to live communally,
(17:00):
simply and freely. Now, half a decade later, most of
the magic was gone. It had seeped out of the
city to the country. These days, the streets were choked
with scam artists praying on teenage runaways. The psychedelics had
given way to hard drugs like heroin and methamphetamine. A
(17:20):
flyer that made its way through Hate Ashbury seemed to
crystallize the ugliness and disillusionment. Rape is as common as
bullshit on Hate Street. It read. The only thing that
was left in any sort of tangible sense was the music.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
It wasn't as though it was tragic to be in
San Francisco. You know, the hate was over, but the hate,
you know, was in miasma as well. If you had
a million kids come that summer, Manson was there and
everything had gone to grief. But the spirits still lived
in San Francisco, you know, the music things. San Francisco
(17:55):
was still an astonishing music city, and they loved playing
there like they loved playing in Nashville. They knew where
they were always, you know.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Ian Stewart, a one time Rolling Stone turned to Loyal
Roady and banned Confidant by nineteen seventy two, was a
little less generous in his take on the city. When
speaking of green Field some fifty years earlier, I.
Speaker 7 (18:18):
Think San Francisco is just that's a nice price, but
there's nothing particularly special about it. In San Francisco is
just the calls bullshit. You know, it's really yeah, he's
terribly overrated. Loud Man's people.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
For the Stones, the magic of San Francisco had really
dissipated following their last visit back in nineteen sixty nine
at Altamont. The Free Concert at Altamont was the stones
(19:02):
attempt to get in on the good vibes that had
largely eluded them from the San Francisco freelove scene. It
would pair them with hometown heroes like the Grateful Dead
Santana and the Jefferson Airplane. Micked it his best to
embrace the Age of Aquarius jargon and a press conference
for the event, telling the assorted journalists that they intended
(19:23):
to quote create a microcosmic society which sets an example
to the rest of America as to how one could
behave in large gatherings far out man Woodstock West was
the phrase everyone used, and like the actual Woodstock, it
was a practical and logistical nightmare. No one wanted to
host this influx of stoned, unwashed humanity, resulting in a
(19:47):
constant change of venue. First it was Golden Gate Park,
then it was Sears Point Raceway, the practice field that
San Jose State was also briefly considered, and then, finally,
two days before the concert was set for December sixth,
they chose Aultamont's Speedway, a barren patch of ranchland fifty
miles east of San Francisco. Given the tight deadline, preparations
(20:11):
were minimal. No we're close to what was needed to
host three hundred thousand kids safely. Toilets and medical tents
were in short supply, and the hastily assembled stage was
barely three feet off the ground, far too low to
be seen by most of the audience or prevent them
from invading when they became too frustrated by the poor visibility.
(20:32):
The only protective barrier for the bands was a line
of string run at chest height in front of the
stage to mark where the crowd should theoretically stop. Clearly
something more was needed. Enter the Hell's Angels. To say
they were hired as security isn't quite accurate, but they
(20:52):
were there. They were big, and according to them, they
were offered all the beer they wanted to keep on
the ruly kids off the stage. Unfortunately, this meant there
was no one there to keep the unruly Hell's Angels
off the stage. Four or five plain closed County sheriffs
surveyed the increasingly chaotic scene from backstage weapons and their holsters.
(21:15):
Aware they were outnumbered in the California desert by some
three hundred bikers, they backed down. For that day, the
Hell's Angels became law. The trouble really began in the afternoon,
(21:35):
when one concert goer, likely gone on bad acid and
chemical wine, knocked over one of the Angel's bikes. It's
no exaggeration to say that to an angel this was
on par with kicking their baby. You love that thing
better than you love anything in the world. Oakland Chapter
president Sunny Barger later said, and when you see a
(21:56):
guy kick it, you know who he is. And if
you got to go through fifty people to get him,
you're gonna get him. Retribution was swift and vicious. From
then on, relations between the Angels and the audience turned
an antagonistic They beat on lookers senseless with pool cues,
bike chains, and fists. They hurled cans of beer at
(22:18):
the crowd, resulting in fractured skulls and black eyes. Some
drove their motorcycles straight through the audience, unconcerned about the
people in their way. One woman was dragged across the
stage by her hair. Not even the artists were spared.
Singer Marty Ballen was in the middle of his set
with the Jefferson Airplane when he noticed the violence erupting
(22:40):
just feet in front of him. He dove into the
crowd to intervene and was promptly knocked unconscious by an angel.
Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, also on
the bill that day, was repeatedly stabbed in the leg
with a sharpened bicycle. Spoke the grateful they had arrived
in the midst of this melee. Though they would perform
(23:03):
over twenty three hundred concerts over the course of their career,
this would not be one of them. They took one
look around and immediately headed back to San Francisco. It
was simply too crazy for them. The Stones arrived shortly after.
According to guitarist Mick Taylor, they had no clue what
they were in for.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
No, because we.
Speaker 6 (23:24):
Only arrived there for forty five.
Speaker 5 (23:28):
Minutes before we went on, and we went into this.
Speaker 6 (23:30):
Tiny caravan behind the stage where we were tuning up
the guitars and getting ready to go on, and so
obviously we were completely unaware of all the.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Other things that have gone down during the afternoon.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Though they may not have been aware of specifics, the
hostilities were immediately in their face in a very literal way.
Just moments after exiting their helicopter at the site, Mick
Jagger was punched in the jaw by an agitated attendee, screaming,
I hate you, I hate The rude welcome was a
not so subtle sign of things to come. As they
(24:05):
made their way to their tent, the Stones see a
group of very Stones people standing around watching someone writhe
around on the ground, apparently in the midst of full
blown acid horrors. And then, of course there were the
angels everywhere they looked. Charlie Watts, the resident beat of
the Stones, was taken aback by seeing the San Francisco
(24:28):
biker gang live and in the flesh.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
The thing was an ultrame.
Speaker 10 (24:31):
The guys, I'm met, they're all living on the image
of San Francisco.
Speaker 7 (24:36):
He was angel man.
Speaker 10 (24:37):
And when you hit San Francisco and see this guy's
the that's the ones that's that's Jack Kerok. That's the
carect That's what he was talking about, man, you know.
And when I saw them, that was the real stuff.
Either when you get there with that fucking motorbike sweating
all that shit, guy, that's the real everyday of the world.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
The Stones took the stage just after sundown. The Grateful
Dead's no show left the gap in the schedule, and
by the time the band opened with Jumpin' Jack Flash,
the crowd had been waiting for over an hour, and
the restless at the point of hysteria. A crush of
Hell's Angels surged towards the stage, sending hundreds fleeing for safety.
(25:22):
When a fight breaks out in the middle of Sympathy
for the Devil, the Stones halt the song in an
attempt to restore order. For a time, things are cool.
Then Lucifer himself arrives in Altamont. Meredith Curly Hunter Junior,
an eighteen year old from Berkeley, climbs atop a speaker
(25:45):
cabinet the side of the stage, a point promising both
protection and the good view. But then a Hell's Angel,
either fulfilling his duty as security or merely excited at
the prospect of roughing up a black kid with a
pretty white girlfriend, grabs him by the ear and yanks
him to the ground, laughing as he does so. A
(26:05):
few more angels descend on Hunter, punching him and chasing
him back into the crowd. What happens next is difficult
to determine, even though it was captured by filmmakers David
and Albert Masel's documentary camera crews. The Stones launch into
the swampy samba of Under My Thumb. His Hunter's scuffles
with the gang of angels near the front row. Understandably
(26:29):
frightened and his temper frayed by the methamphetamines in his system,
he draws a long barreled twenty two Smith and Wesson
from his lime green suit and waves it in the air.
According to some witnesses, it was the last resort of
a desperate man. Others thought he was a zonked out
speed freak preparing to shoot Mick Jagger. Regardless of his
(26:50):
true intent, A pack of angels swarm and knock the
pistol out of his hand. Though disarmed, he stabbed in
the neck, back and kidney. The beating continues even after
he's down His last words were, I wasn't going to
shoot you. One angel stands on his head while others
(27:14):
kick him in the face, yet another hits him with
the garbage can lid. As they stomp off, one angel
tells a bystander don't touch it. He's just going to
die anyway he does. Before the Stones finish their set.
(27:36):
The band would always claim to be oblivious of the
murder taking place right before their eyes, but it was
obvious there was trouble. According to bassist Bill Wyman, they
felt powerless to do anything about it.
Speaker 11 (27:48):
We were terribly concerned.
Speaker 7 (27:49):
I mean we could say the same as.
Speaker 11 (27:53):
Another people could see what was going on, but it's
totally out of your hands. You cannot do anything. You know,
if you stop the music, if you don't play anymore,
it just gets worse. Instead about it, You know, as
long as you play, it does take their minds off
whatever's going on. It does some kind of we hope
stop it from continuing.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
But I was very affected by it when we were
on stage. But I mean I had no knowledge of
what had been going on all afternoon, and so I
saw the film.
Speaker 7 (28:23):
Were you very physically physically scared at scared for your safe.
Speaker 6 (28:27):
Yes, I think I was a bit physically scared, but I.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Was worried that it.
Speaker 6 (28:33):
May you know, if somebody didn't do the right thing,
it may escalate, you know, and violence get worse something. Yes,
because you know what it's like, one sort of violent
incident in a crowd of people and are verging on
hysteria can trigger off our own.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
Chain of the lens.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
The scope of the disaster wasn't apparent of the band
until after the show was over. Keith would go on
to say that at the time it was just another
gig where I had to leave fast. It was only
over the next few days, long after the Stones had
(29:22):
flown back to England, that the horrors became apparent. Scores
of audience members called into San Francisco rock stations bemoaning
the unchecked circulation of bad drugs, lack of proper facilities,
and random acts of violence perpetrated by the Hell's Angels,
(29:48):
and there were other deaths too. One young man drowned
in an irrigation ditch and two others were killed in
a hit and run after the show. Dozens of cars
were stolen in a band and hundreds of thousands of
dollars worth of property was damaged. Ultamont Speedway was banned
(30:08):
from having any further concerts again. The Stones became subjects
of scathing articles around the world, including an exhaustive twenty
thousand word report in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine,
Leave Together from the work of eleven reporters. Most of
these pieces blame the murder on the band's own arrogance
(30:31):
and carelessness hiring the Hell's Angels as security. What were
they thinking? Few outlets cared to mention the fact that
the event was actually planned by the Grateful Dead's management,
who'd often use the Hell's Angels as a form of security.
Correctly recognizing the Angels as threats that not even the
police were equipped to deal with, they thought it best
(30:52):
to pay them off, give them a privileged position with
a prime stage side view, and hopes that they behave.
This approach at all worked, and there never been any
serious trouble with them. Prior to Altamont, Jagger and co.
Steadfast resolved to finish the show in the face of
undefined but very apparent danger. May very well have prevented
(31:13):
a riot and saved countless more lives, but this was
also never commented on in these articles. The fact that
Altamont had been conceived by a whole crew of San
Francisco organizers as a multi group festival was quickly forgotten
(31:35):
in the press. Altamont became a Rolling Stones concert, produced
and arranged by the band themselves, or even micked personally.
For the Chronicles Ralph J. Gleeson, dean of San Francisco
music Journalists, Altamont symboled quote the end of rock's innocence,
a warning that the vast amount of energy contained in
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the music and its immense worldwide audience had elements of danger,
and it seemed significant that all this was presided over
by the greatest live performer in rock history, Mick Jagger.
The band even took flak from David Crosby of Crosby, Stills,
Nash and Young, who played at Aultmont immediately prior to
The Stones before high tailing it out of there. I
(32:19):
think the major mistakes were taking what was essentially a
party and turning it into an ego game and a
star trip, Crosby told Rolling Stone for the expose, describing
them repeatedly as quote snobs. Crosby added, I don't like them.
I think they have an exaggerated view of their own importance.
I think they're on a grotesque ego trip. The Rolling
(32:41):
Stone piece also criticized the Stones for seemingly fleeing the
country after a fan died just feet from where they
sang without a word of apology or even sympathy for
his family. Some display of compassion, however, restrained hardly seems
too much to expect. The Rolling Stone expose concluded, a
man died before their eyes. Do they give a damn
(33:04):
yes or no? For Bill Wyman? All the good will
that worked so hard to cultivate during the tour immediately evaporated.
Speaker 11 (33:13):
Such a shame that was in such a nice tour,
that whole show, and it wasn't a show we had
to do. It was to show me we gave to say.
Speaker 7 (33:22):
Thank you to America. That's all it was. It was
just a thank you, and.
Speaker 11 (33:30):
You know, it kind of blew up in our faces
just just because of thirty or forty people, and I
don't know how many were there, three hundred four winds
down and whatever it was for thirty of poorly people,
and that became the.
Speaker 7 (33:43):
Whole focus of the whole tour.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
You know, it was and it.
Speaker 11 (33:47):
Was that was a very unfair reflection on our tour
as well. But they were saying the Ultimate Tour or
the everybody that's the only thing they remember about it.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
For some of the Stones organization, like Roady Ian Stewart,
the tragedy was shamefully predictable, a disaster that had been
waiting to happen throughout the nineteen sixty nine tour.
Speaker 7 (34:10):
The thing about Ultimate was I expected something like that,
and I wasn't a loose bit surprised. It was no worse,
no better than I expected. And I mean if you
were going to gather together a crowd of a couple
hundred thousand idiots in the middle of the desert and
somebody gets killed, I mean, it's no surprise. It just
(34:32):
it hadn't happened before.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Meredith Hunter was laid to rest in Lot sixty three
Grave Sea at Skyview Memorial Lawns Cemetery in Vallejo, California,
for decades. There was no marker. If you didn't know,
you'd have no idea that he or anyone else was there.
The fact is grotesquely fitting. In the popular consciousness, the
(34:58):
young man plays a supporting role and his own murder
eclipsed by the gritty glamour of the Stones and the
mythologized meaning of it all. His name isn't even mentioned
once in the Mazles documentary Gimme Shelter, which betrays him
as a threat more than anything else. As music critic
Grio Marcus observed, in nineteen seventy seven, a young black
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man was murdered in the midst of a white crowd
by white thugs as white men played their version of
black music. It was too much to kiss off as
mere unpleasantness. In mid nineteen seventy, several months after the
Rolling Stone story appeared, the band sent the Hunter family
ten thousand dollars through their lawyers. To this day, the
(35:41):
Stones have never spoken to the Hunter family directly. A
twenty one year old Hell's Angel named Alan Pissarro was
charged with Hunter's murder after six camera crews documented the
knifing on film. In his defense, Passarrow told the court,
I think some fear came over me looking after my people.
(36:01):
A jury would acquit him on the grounds of self defense.
After viewing footage from the Masls documentary of Hunter waving
his pistol in the air. Pisarro threw back his head
and let out a whoop as the verdict was read.
By the time the Stones were back in San Francisco
in nineteen seventy two, he was a free man, angry,
(36:22):
armed and backed by a mobile militia. The Hell's Angels
were furious at the Rolling Stones for, as they saw it,
using them as Patsy's at Altamont, setting them up to
take the legal fall for what was they felt the
band's own irresponsibility and logistical shortcomings. The stones refusal to
(36:42):
cover Pisaro's fifty thousand dollars legal fees also didn't help.
In the days after the Ultimont concert, Sonny Barger, leader
of the Oakland chapter of the Hell's Angels, called into
the Kaisson radio station to make his displeasure known.
Speaker 12 (36:58):
I ain't no cop. I ain't going to ever pretend
to be a cop. And you know what, I didn't
go there to police nothing. Man. They told me if
I could sit on the edge of the stage so
nobody would climb over me, you know, I could drink
beer until the show was over. And that's what I
went there to do. This Mick Jagger like he used
us for dupes. Man, you know, and as far as
(37:20):
I'm concerned, we were the biggest suckers for that idiot
that I can ever see.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
The Hell's Angels demanded some form of compensation for the
trouble at Altamont. If they couldn't get cash, they were
determined to make the Stones pay another way with Mick
Jagger's life. According to rumors percoltting up from the underground,
(37:57):
the Hell's Angels were planning all manner of bottle harm
as vengeance against Mick and co. For the disaster at Altamont.
The Stones got the message loud and clear. As far
as they were concerned, it would be a miracle if
they made it through their four San Francisco gigs without
having the rumble with the most fearsome motorcycle gang known
to humankind. Making matters worse, the band could also run
(38:20):
a foul of Bill Graham, and having Bill pissed at
you is just as scary as the Angels. Bill Graham
is arguably the most powerful musical figure and the Hippos
rock town in the country. To call him a promoter
isn't the half of it. Graham is a San Francisco fixture,
the godfather of Marin County's musical landscape. Much like the Stones,
(38:44):
He's outlasted everyone who wants a threat to him, and
continued through good times and bad until there's hardly anything
more to say about him the matters except that he
exists and he's in total control. As Robert Greenfield writes
in STP. Graham himself is a total a man who
has always insisted on the absolute right to just be
(39:04):
himself to the exclusion of all else. He gave a
lot of people, a lot of music, and he made
a lot of money. Raised in a Berlin orphanage, Graham
was shuttled out of Germany following the rise of the
Nazis in the late nineteen thirties, where his mother was
murdered in Auschwitz. He arrived on American shores at age ten,
(39:25):
settling in a Bronx Foster home. He remembers being in
New York City staring hungrily through a store window at
a pair of thirty four dollars dancing shoes he couldn't
possibly afford. Now, Graham lives in a tree surrounded Marin
County home, the basketball court in the back. His life
is very much a realization of the American dream showbiz style.
(39:48):
Until recently he presided over a pair of theaters, both
called the Fillmore, the Fillmore East in New York City's
East Village and the Fillmore West in San Francisco. This
by coastal empire showcased a whole new era of popular
music as important in career defining as Ed Sullivan's Variety
Show had been for a previous musical micro generation a
(40:09):
half decade before in the mid sixties. After closing both
fillmore As in nineteen seventy one, Bill briefly contemplated retirement.
Then he bought a new theater, the Winterland, and went
right on promoting more shows than ever before. Graham balanced
an innate understanding of the free love ethos with the
New Yorker's street wise business sense, sometimes a hilarious effect.
(40:33):
Even during the groovous days of San Francisco communalism. Bill
wouldn't hesitate to inform anyone who asked that the hall
was his house, and anyone who failed to follow his
prescribed rules could get their ass right back out in
the street where they belonged. If you were unwise enough
to pursue the matter further, he would accommodate you by
chasing you onto the asphalt himself, with the failings of
(40:54):
security guards struggling to keep up. Sure, he provided a
crucial platform that brought African American acts like Otis Redding,
Wretha Franklin, and B. B. King to white audiences and
treated them in a way that members of the industry
rarely had. But Bill Graham was also a son of
a bitch. He fought with patrons, He fought with light
show unions. He fought with the Grateful Dead. For a time,
(41:16):
he managed the Jefferson Airplane. Then he stopped managing them
and fought with them instead. He even fought with the
Hell's Angels, ultimately refusing them admission to his shows after
a lengthy series of incidents. For this, he received the
first of seven bullets indicating that he was a marked man.
Needless to say, he also fought with the Stones for
(41:38):
reasons that included, but weren't limited to the disaster at Altamont.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Bill called Altamont the pearl Harbor of rock and roll.
And then he said stuff about Mick in Rolling Stone
that I'm not gonna quote. Okay, you can look it up, kids, Okay,
it's words. My daughter wouldn't like me using he just
said things about them.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Okay. It indeed got ugly, as Graham condemned Mick by
name in the pages of Rock's bi weekly Bible. In summation,
he offered Mick fifty thousand dollars, perhaps not coincidentally the
cost of the Hell's Angels legal fees that they refused
to cover, to debate him on national television for an
hour about the events at Altamont. Then he chastised the
(42:22):
San Francisco authorities for not putting a stop to the
half baked event before it happened. They should have taken
mister Jagger, twisted his arms behind his back, put him
in front of a radio, and said, mister Jagger, if
we have to break your arm, call it off. Bill
continued to rage with the venom of a man who
seems certain he'd never work with Mick or the band
ever again. Every gig he was late on that tour,
(42:45):
every gig he made, the promoter and the people bleed,
what right does this god have to descends on this
country in this way? Then Bill signed off by calling
Mick the C word. As you may have guessed, it
was more personal than just the disaster at all. To Mott,
they had had a test the encounter a few weeks
before it, when Graham was overseeing the Stones show at
(43:06):
the Oakland Coliseum.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
The relationship between Bill and the Stones is of such
interest that indicates who they were in sixty nine. He
had them at the Oakland Arena. Ik and Tina were opening,
and Jagger didn't want to come out right after I Cantina.
That's how good they were, and so he would delay.
The Stones drove Bill crazy. They spent an hour waiting.
(43:30):
Show started late, and it was the second show, and
Bill always the kids were in the street standing and
waiting for hours for the second show. So at one
point during the show, Bill found himself on stage wrestling
with Sam Cutler under the piano, Stones tour manager, hitting
each other, screaming during the set.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
Okay, However, Ian Stewart, an original Rolling Stone turned Roady,
an occasional pianist, denied that the band were shaking in
their boots off stage. Instead, he blamed their tarready set
on an explosive tech problem. Truth or just sign of
his devoted loyalty to the Stones. You'd be the judge.
Here's his account of Robert Greenfield back in nineteen seventy three,
(44:13):
courtesy of our friends at the Northwestern University Archives.
Speaker 7 (44:17):
I thought Bill Graham's behavior that night was atrocious. Well,
you see, roughly what started it was in the first show,
Monk had a broken voltage stabilizer. The result was a
bloody great voltage size which blew all the amplifiers. So
the whole cancer just grout little hole. I mean, when
something like that as a facult, we can do about
(44:38):
of stuff. And that caused the start of the row,
you know, because I mean Bill Graham started saying their
own professional with this.
Speaker 5 (44:44):
Then bloody lot ah.
Speaker 7 (44:47):
As far as I can see, it was nothing that
couldn't have been settled in a little bit of reasonable talk.
But instead of that, you know, they were going to
have a fight about it, you know, and it was screaming,
and you.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Know, whatever the case. The fight spilled off stage after
the gig, and during.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
The break, Bill charges into the dressing room and he
says to them, you're amateurs. The worst I've ever seen,
says is to the Rolling Stone, and so the Stones
trash the dressing room once again.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
Loyal Rolling Stones, roady Ian Stewart remembers it differently. He
says that the trashing was an inside job.
Speaker 7 (45:23):
At the end of the very end of the concert,
Phil Grim had put out a lot of nice food
and stuff. And this is what I thoroughly disapproved of,
is that after the Stones had left, that dressing room
was smashed out. But not by the Stones, not like
the story that people thinks. No, because I was in
that dressing room when the Stones left. I really think
(45:44):
that there was a put up seam by you Graham's paper.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Regardless of who throw what and when and why, the
end result was bad blood between the Stones and Bill
Graham that lingered for years. Then Peter Rudge, the band's
tour manager, came calling when it was time to put
the nineteen seventy two trick together.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
They're never going to speak again. This is the greatness
of rock and roll. Three years later, during America, Bill
would say to Peter, I can pass. I can always pass.
Bill never passed on anything.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
A cynic might say that Bill Graham simply understood the
value of a dollar and the band's ability to mint
money for everyone in their orbit, except notably themselves, But
in truth, Graham understood the value of the Stones to
the culture at large. Here he is talking to Robert
Greenfield in nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 13 (46:35):
Youth today, for the first time in history, a mass
of people we're talking about millions around the world have
read onto something which they consider the unilateral language music
in the.
Speaker 7 (46:46):
History of mankind.
Speaker 13 (46:46):
You've never had that. Sinatra never had one tenth of
the audience that a Mitgiana and the Rolling Stones are
very special thing. And if it gets another group angry,
I'd have to say, well, maybe not to you, to
me the very special.
Speaker 11 (47:00):
I spoke to.
Speaker 13 (47:01):
Manager and had a raging argument about who the Stones were,
and he said, me, talking about his audities, my artist
is the biggest one.
Speaker 7 (47:07):
And listen to what I'm going to say to you.
Speaker 13 (47:09):
Swallow it slowly so you can digest it and then
answer me again. I said, the Stones, if they wanted to,
could sell out Madison.
Speaker 5 (47:19):
Square Garden every night for a year.
Speaker 7 (47:22):
But swallow it for a year, at least a year.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
For all of his bravado. Bill Graham had the same
fears does everyone else in the Stones camp. With the
Hell's Angels attack. Bill doesn't share these concerns with the Stones,
but then again, he doesn't need to. They knew. You
could sense it in the way Mick move through crowds,
taking care to look both ways whenever he exited a building.
(47:48):
You could sense it in Keith's gallows humor when he
ominously told the friends, maybe they'll do me next time
I'm out there. You could sense it in the way
tour manager Peter Rudge obsessively poured over blueprints of every
venue you with the band played, studying every conceivable access
point and vulnerability, or in Rolling Stone Records chieved Marshall
Chess's constant insistence on traveling with loaded handguns. To them,
(48:13):
the danger was abstract that Bill knew something the group doesn't.
There was an incident that occurred at an outdoor California
concert just a few weeks before The Stone's arrival in
San Francisco. At June twenty one, thousand people turned up
to see a fellow English band perform. Halfway through the set,
one biker goes over to a rival gang member and
(48:34):
puts two bullets through his head with a pistol. The
murder is arrested on the spot, a concert continues without incident.
The crime receives almost no coverage but it lingers in
the back of Bill's mind. All necessary precautions were taken,
but he could never be certain it was enough.
Speaker 13 (48:53):
You know, to me, security is always a defensive mechanism.
But you know, you could go the other way.
Speaker 7 (48:57):
You could say, I'm not going to have any securities. Well,
what if you needed and.
Speaker 13 (49:00):
As a result of you're not having it there, he
would have had a disaster. I had to protect myself
against one thing, a retaliation from some source for yarning Altamont,
if it was either the bikers or the public, the
family of someone who has heard of there, friends of
I mean, I can say it now, and I got numerous,
numerous threads. I mean strong, strong threads.
Speaker 7 (49:19):
I mean not the Angels himself.
Speaker 13 (49:21):
I mean nobody said I am an Angel, I'm the
president of and we're going to do this. There are
some friendships that I have that have lasted over the
years of supposedly enemies. There are some bike clubs, there
are some Chicano boys, some black from these elements, she
was definitely going to be a major rumble.
Speaker 5 (49:40):
They were gonna come on it.
Speaker 13 (49:41):
Someone who was going to do it do it quote unquote.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
The mood on the rolling Stones Jet turned tents as
it touched down in San Francisco. This was the belly
of the Beast. If someone died the last.
Speaker 14 (50:01):
Time they were here, would it happen again? If so,
would it be one of them?
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Stone's Touring Party is written and hosted by Jordan Runtalk,
co executive produced by Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk, Edited
and sound designed by Noel Brown and Michael Alder June.
Original music composed and performed by Michael Alder June and
Noel Brown, with additional instruments performed by Chris Suarez, Nick
Johns Cooper, and Josh Thane. This episode also contained original
music by Rowan Newby Vintage Rolling Stones. Audio courtesy of
(50:44):
the Robert Greenfield Archive at the Charles Deering McCormick Library
of Special Collections in Northwestern University Libraries. Stone's Touring Party
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
(51:06):
your favorite shows.