Sunset on the 1960s: the four deaths at The Rolling Stones’ Altamont gig
There’s an argument to be made that the best horror movie of 1970 is actually a music documentary. Possibly because 1970 was a rough year for horror cinema, but also because there are few more harrowing music films one can see than Gimme Shelter, the documentary of the catastrophic gig The Rolling Stones played at Altamont the year before.Anyone partially familiar with The Rolling Stones knows the story by now. Mick, Keef and chums got in a big row with the public about the ticket prices of their US comeback tour. Jagger, in his infinite wisdom, got bullied in a press conference into saying that they’d host a free concert for all the people who were priced out of seeing them on the tour. The year before, they’d held their proper comeback show for free in Hyde Park, so they had experience in this.
During that gig, the security had been handled by a number of London branches of the Hell’s Angels, so when the time came to play Altamont, they thought they’d do the same. This proved to be a disastrous mistake as the California branches of the Hells Angels were a very different beast from the London branches. They were even more violent, even more racist, and much more likely to not so much solve a problem with violence as act like a Black man existing was a problem, and “solve it” by murdering where they stood.
This directly led to the most infamous casualty of Altamont, an 18-year-old Black man by the name of Meredith Hunter. Hunter had a checkered past away from the concert and carried a gun for his own safety. As a Black man in 1960s California, this was a smart move. He was also doing absolutely nothing untoward in the concert. He was simply enjoying a rock ‘n’ roll show in the company of his white girlfriend. This was completely unacceptable to the Angels.
They pestered him all night, and after he tried to move away to get a better view, a biker punched him in the face. Hunter tried to run and turned to find several bikers sprinting towards him. He pulled his gun. The resulting stabbing was caught on camera and is shown to the mortified Stones in Gimme Shelter. The glint of the abhorrent, racist’s knife in an errant spotlight will stay with me for a long, long time. Hunter could have been saved had he been airlifted away in the Stones’ helicopter, but their management shouldn’t have let them.A murder like this would be an unconscionable tragedy. This was only the most high-profile death at Altamont. One of the truly horrific deaths on site.
Who else died at The Rolling Stones’ gig at Altamont?While the death of Meredith Hunter is a horrifying act of racism, the first death at Altamont is a very different kind of horrible. Instead, this is one case of a life snuffed out because of youthful stupidity. The festival site had a canal adjoining it. As the first band on the bill started playing in the early morning, one attendee of the show, 18-year-old Leonard Kryszak, decided to go swimming in said canal, giving the finger to a police officer waving frantically at him not to get in the water.
Turns out, this was one of the vanishingly few occasions that day that someone in charge of keeping the public safe would actually try to keep the public safe. The canal had a current. One much faster and choppier than Kryszak was expecting. That and the shock of the freezing cold water caused him to drown. He was found two hours after he went into the water, while Santana were playing on the main stage. He was due to turn 19 the next day.
Even after the gig was finished, death was still abundant. Rather than brave the traffic home the same night, a number of people stayed the night on site. Two of these people made a fire for warmth and sat together, possibly reflecting on the absolutely putrid vibes that came off the whole concert and wondering why their acid trip was going so horrifically wrong. They were hit by a car that swerved off the road on the way out of the speedway and were killed instantly. The driver was never found.
You might have heard the myth that, yes, there were four deaths at Altamont, but there were also four births there too. Sunrise, sunset, the cosmic ballet continues and all that? Yeah. No. That was part of The Rolling Stones’ desperate PR campaign to save some face after their shoddy standards killed four innocent people. The births were made up, but the deaths were very, very real.
Not only that, they were very, very preventable too.
Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles. With Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor.
Gimme Shelter Blu-ray (Amazon) https://amzn.to/4bVtit1 Gimme Shelter Blu-ray (Criterion) https://criterion.com/films/637
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