Altamont part 2

“There’s always someone you can bleed on”

“There was a miniature society set up of upwards of 300,000 people. It was supposedly a society of the new generation, the love generation, the brave new world, the children of the future. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to live in a society like the one I saw at Altamont.“

That was Wes ”Scoop“ Nisker, KSAN-FM News Director, the evening after the Rolling Stones Free Concert at Altamont Speedway. In a state of shock, like everyone else who had been there. Me, too. The article in the last issue was written, because of deadline pressure, less than 24 hours after it all came down, when everything was still swirling around unclear and scary. It’s been over two weeks, now, and although some things have been clarified it begins to look as if a lot of what went down will never be completely clear. It was a bum trip for sure, but definitely a trip. Can you remember all the stuff that happened to you the last time you dropped acid?

But if the whole stupid mess isn’t going to be a total loss, we have to try and get it together. So it comes down to this:

1) What happened?

2) Why?

3) What does it mean? Can we learn anything to keep it from happening again?

OK, we will now wade into the deep water. Hold onto your heads, boys and girls.

Everybody thought it would be a gas. Naturally. Woodstock was a magic word, and everybody had een waiting for Woodstock West. Mick Jagger had this to say, the night before: ’’The concert’s just an excuse. The thing is, it’s just like everybody comes in and has a good time. The concert’s not like the proscenium of a theater, it’s like an excuse for everybody to get together and talk to each other, and sleep with each other, and ball each other and get very stoned and just have a nice night out and a good day.“

A good day. Robert Altman, a photographer who got caught in the crowds crushed up near the stage: ’’After a while, I felt that Rolling Stones or no Rolling Stones I would have liked to have gotten out of there, but I couldn’t. We were sardined, we were all packed together. First of all, we were standing up and we couldn’t really move. Then everyone said, ‘OK, sit down,’ and where can you sit? You couldn’t do anything, you just couldn’t move. If you wanted to get out it was just impossible. Some people told me that it took them several hours to extricate themselves from the crowd.“

A doctor: ’’The main thing we saw all day was bad trips and freakouts. It was really heavy. It seemed like there were bad vibrations from the start. I sat down near the end of the evening, talked with Rock Scully, the manager of the Grateful Dead, and he had the same impression. There was really something going on right from the start, before even Santana started playing.“

The same story comes out no matter who you talk to. The trip began to go bad early on in the day, and the crowds and the Angels just made it worse. ’’The spirit of Woodstock was a kind of getting Together. The spirit of Altamont was ‘The hell with you, brother. I’m on my trip and you’re on yours.’“

But specific incidents are not easily agreed upon. Marty Balin got beat up in front of 300,000 people, but nobody can get together on exactly how it happened. The general concensus seems to be that Balin tried to stop an Angel from beating on someone, and got beat on himself. But Emmett Grogan, one of the original Diggers and an organizer of the concert, saw it this way:

”1 was right there when it happened. The Hells Angel--a very small Hells Angel--was on the stage. One of the Airplane’s staff had asked him to stay by the truck, ‘cause everybody had been running into the truck wanting to get hold of Grace Slick’s...anything. So he was standing there, and Marty Balin comes bouncin’ up. And the Angel doesn’t know who Marty Balin is. So he said, ’Wait a minute, man, who are you?’ And Balin said to him, “Fuck you,” and pushed him in the chest, and knocked him halfway off the stage. So the cat calmly and very slowly got his balance back, tapped Marty Balin on the shoulder, and said, ‘You know, man, when somebody asks you a question you shouldn’t treat ‘em that way.’ Balin said, “Fuck you,” again, so the guy just punched him, once, on the top of the head. Just grazed him. And he fell down.“

The Angels. The Angels were an obvious ”out“ in front, and a lot of people put the weight right on them: ”1 think a lot of the violence was precipitated by the Angels,“ said one girl. ”1 went to the concert believing they would be good cops, you know, that they would help and do right. But it turns out they were the ultimate cops. They seemed to cause more trouble than they helped.

Want to hear another one? ”A friend of ours took a picture of an Angel, and the Angel grabbed his camera and ripped out all the film. A friend of mine stepped on an Angel’s hand, and the Angel threatened to kill him. It was very frightening--we were all in terror of them. I was gonna criticize them, and everybody hushed me up because they were afraid that they would be beaten. Out of the five fights I saw, an Angel was involved in every one of them.“

OK, Hells Angels dig to fight. And bears dig to shit in the woods. But the people who badmouth the Angels are conveniently ignoring the fact that things were getting pretty crappy before the Angels even showed up. The Friday Nighters--who had staked out their turf the night before--were probably responsible for at least as much hostility as the Angels.

A chick: ”At Woodstock, I walked from the front of the crowd and found a place about twenty yards away from the stage. And nobody was hostile. People were making places for those who had come late. But I think if anyone had tried to do that at Altamont, they would probably have been smashed to the ground. “

So the tensions were there already, and the Angels reacted to them in their own way. The Angels usually do. But why were the Angels there? Who was responsible for making them the stageguardian? Listen, now, to the voice of authority:

Pete (Vice-President, Frisco chapter o the Hells Angels): ’’About two weeks ago, Sam Cutler, the Stones’ road manager, came and said they were a little nervous about the crowd. He asked us would we come and keep the people off the stage. Now we ain’t into that “security” thing, but he was a sincere fella and he offered us $500 worth of beer to go there and take care of the stage. The man came here, and he was panicky over his people. He said there was some trouble in Oakland. He was talking about their guards--they must have their paranoia, or they wouldn’t have the guards and stuff. They’re one of the only groups I ever seen with that...ultraparanoia or something.44

So Sam Cutler is responsible, and the Angels were just following instructions. The lousy dogs. But, then, there is the matter of the gun. Which some people saw and some people didn’t. Remember Meridith Hunter, the black man who was stabbed to death? Here’s Pete again:

”I’m sorry about what happened. But look, there are a lot of people who just get it because they’re lookin’ for it. I don’t think my brothers were that much out of control. What I feel about the roughness is that if we say we’re gonna do this thing, we do it. That’s our whole thing. If we decide to do it, it’s done-no matter how far we have to go to do it. I feel very badly about it, I really do. I’m sorry it happened. But I feel that there were six bullets in that gun, and six people could have been killed. We’re not the bad guys. If we hadn’t of been there, maybe it would have been a lot worse. Maybe six people would have got shot.

Another Angel: “I didn’t see the knifing, but I saw this guy five feet away from the left side of the stage, walking on top of people. He was really intent on getting up on top of the stage. A couple of guys said, ‘Nobody can get up here because it’s shaky, it’s going to collapse,’ but the guy wasn’t listening to anything. He makes a rush, and we just pushed him off the stage.

’The next thing I know this guy flips around in the air and reaches under his coat, and out comes a revolver. It looked like a cannon. As it came up past my face I hit the deck and the gun was pointed at Jagger. I thought he was gonna get shot right there. Then the guy was grabbed and flung to the ground and the gun flew and people milled around like a

swirl, and he was just shoved down to the side and away.

Jagger looked across at me and said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ’I don’t know. It’s people.’ Why is everybody so hungry? We looked.at each other for a long minute, and then he got back into his thing."

Emmett Grogan: ’’That black guy, he threw a punch at me. He kept taking off his shirt and flexing his muscles. And all of a sudden he pulls that gun out, and he’s screaming, Mick Jagger! Mick Jagger!’ and he turns around because he sees someone coming at him, and he’s waving the gun at everybody. Tim Leary and his wife Rosemary hit the deck, Chet Helms dove behind the amplifiers, and the whole business.44

So maybe (just maybe) the Angels are heroes. Are you ready for that? I mean, it has to be recognized that the Angels were handed a really shitty, dangerous job: keeping people off the stage. Given the mood of the crowd, and the fact that the stage was only a couple of feet off the ground, it’s remarkable that the Angels did as well as they did.

Cont. Next Page

Another Angel, Andy: ’’The way I see it, people were just mobbing each other. They asked us to keep people off the stage, and we tried and tried, but they just came up there and start pushing each other, stepping on people, just to get up on top of the stage. I asked ‘em nice: ‘Would you get back? Would you, get down?’ and they didn’t want to hear it. They just wanted to climb right up on the stage, even if they had to fight to get up.“

Finally, this from Sonny Barger, President, Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels: ”We pulled up in front of the stage, and parked where we were told we were supposed to park. We were supposed to sit on the edge of the stage and keep people off. So I went up on the stage, and there’s this cat (Sam Cutler) running around on the stage pretty frantic, like he’s hysterical, I would say. Like he don’t know what to do, and there’s a lot of people on the stage besides Angels, and he’s blowin’ it, you know, and he says to us, ‘Get these cats off the stage or the Stones won’t come out.’ And I told him, ‘Hey, they ain’t gonna come out for a half hour anyway, they’re back there tuning.’

“I didn’t go up there to fight—I go there to sit on the stage and drink beer. Finally the Stones come out and they start playing. Everybody’s having a good, good time. And all of a sudden somebody down in front, where there’s one bike parked right in front, is yelling. The wiring had shorted out somewhere, and the bike had caught fire. I pulled the wires off the battery and the bike was in flames in a couple of places, and we were trying to put it out and the people were packed right up to and onto the stage. I kept telling them, ‘Back up a little bit so we can get this fire out!’ and nobody would back up.

’’Some of the Angels on the stage finally caught the action of what was happening, and they came off the stage. And when they did, people started backing up. We got the fire put out on the bike, and in the process, you know what, some people got hit. And some of them people were maybe those Friday Nighters that got that front row, and they didn’t want to give up that spot to let us put the fire out. They come back fighting, and they got thumped. A lot of times there were six or seven Angels on one guy, and a lot of times there wasn’t.

“But after we got the fire put out, out of all them people in the front area there was three or four people that come over to where the bikes were, kicked a couple of bikes over, broke a couple of mirrors off. I don’t know if you think we pay $50 for those things, or steal them, or pay a lot for them, but most people that’s got a good Harley chopper got a few grand invested in it.

’’Ain’t nobody gonna kick my motorcycle. And they might think if they’re in a crowd of 300,000 people they can do it and get away with it. But when you’re standing there looking at something that’s your life, and everything you got is invested in that thing, and you love that thing better than you love anything in the world, and you see a guy kick it, you know who he is. If you have to go through 50 people to get to him, you’re gonna get him. And you know what, they got got.

“I’m not no peace creep by any sense of the word. But if a cat don’t wanta fight with me, and don’t wanta hassle me, I wanta be his friend. If he don’t wanta be my friend, then outta sight, don’t even talk to me. But if he don’t wanna be my friend, and he’s gonna get in my face, I’m gonna hurt him or he’s gonna hurt me. And it really doesn’t matter if he hurts me, because I’ve been hurt before. I’ve been hurt by experts. But over the years I’ve learned how to get up and do it again.

’’There might have been somebody that didn’t' deserve it, somebody that was there really looking for a good time, that got caught in a rush and got hurt, and for them people I’m sorry. But for them lousy suckers that were out there trying to kick over our bikes and throwing wine bottles at our bikes, I hope every one of them got it. And you know what, we tried to give it to them.“

Sam Cutler had this to say: ”If you’re asking me to issue a general putdown of the Hells Angels, which I imagine a lot of people would be only too happy to do, then I’m not prepared to do that. The Angels did as they saw best in a difficult situation. As far as I’m concerned, they were people who were here, who tried to help in their own way. If people didn’t dig it, I’m sorry.“

OK, so much for the Angels. The only reason I’ve given them so much space here, is that the tendency to use them for scapegoats --explaining away what happened at Altamont purely as a function of their presence--has already begun to obscure the real problems. The Angels are not the bad guys, and trying to put it all on them is a cop out.

The physical layout of the site at Altamont-an environment that confronted Angels and non-Angels alike--was very poorly thought out. The stage was so low, and the sight-lines so bad, that if only one or two people were standing up between you and the stage you couldn’t see a thing. So, naturally, people tended to surge forward hoping for a glimpse of the action. The stage-area and backstage-area were cordoned off by ropes alone, and when 300,000 people are pushing you, you don’t have much choice in the matter: you move. I doubt very much if the people in front even wanted to break down the ropes--but they went down the second Santana started to play. Once the crush got really bad, given a stage only a few feet high, it was obvious that the crowd would take it over~it was the only direction in which the pressure could be eased at all.

But even rapping about crowd dynamics and the height of the stage is missing the real point: energy. When you have 300,000 people (many of them stoned) with all their attention directed to one small stage, you develop an energy focus-an energy focus of frightening intensity. If the focus had been perceived early in the day, and the energy channeled in a groovy direction, things might have been different. But no one in charge of the stage was into energy, and the bad vibes of the Friday Nighters, the savage music of Santana, and a few bad incidents early in the day (like a stage hand yelling, ’’Fuck you!“ at the crowd) tended to channel the energy in a violent direction. Once the flow started, it was far too powerful for anyone to stop or re-direct it. It got to the Angels, but it got to the gentle people, too.

Cont. on Page 30

Altamont Cont. From Page 12

The Woodstock Festival had three months on their site before the crowds came; Altamont had 24 hours. Under the circumstances, it’s not too surprising that the set-up didn’t work. Chip Monck and his crew of volunteers worked like motherfuckers, but the situation was just too tight for anything but a miracle to help. And a miracle wasn’t about to come down. Why did they have only 24 hours? Ah, yes, it’s an interesting story. Maybe we can get a villain out of this yet.

Emmett Grogan: ”We talked to Mick Jagger in Los Angeles about nine weeks ago. Originally, he asked me and a few other people to try to arrange a free concert at some prison, but it didn’t come off. And he said, ‘What should we do?’ I said, ’Why don’t you allow the people of San Francisco to throw a gigantic the Park, aparty covering the whole of Golden Gate Park? With stages all over the Park, and you’ll just come on one of the stages, like any other band. And this way there’ll be no concentration of people and no madness.’ OK, he agreed.

I went to talk to the New York office: Allen Klein, Ron Schneider and a fella named John James. I told them that the only problem would be getting a permit for the park, since they put a ban on music. Schneider and James jumped up and said “Oh we’ll have no problem getting permits, we’ll get them in two days.’ So I went back to San Francisco.

’’Well, what happened was they strung us out. I called them in two days. ‘We have some trouble here. We’ll take care of it within the week.’ Finally, it was, ‘We’ll call you, don’t call us.’ I said, ‘OK, fine, we’ll forget it.’ And the people were pissed off by now, because they couldn’t get to the site and construct their thing. So finally Jagger got angry at New York and demanded that they get down to business. So they came through, through some connections in Alioto’s office. (Joe Alioto-Mayor of San Francisco.) They couldn’t get a permit for the Park, so they got sites that were owned by the Bank of America, some insurance company, and some private guy. But these places weren’t big enough.

“So finally we got hold of Sears Point Raceway. And the President of the racetrack and all the people there said, ‘We’d love to have you,’ and were' very enthusiastic about it.* Until their bosses heard about it. Filmways - run by a guy named Martin Ransohoff-owns Sears Point. And as soon as they saw that the Stones were going to put on a free concert, and after we had constructed everything at Sears Point, these guys fly in and say, ‘No, unless you fulfill our conditions.’ The conditions were more or less as follows: posting $250,000 in cash at the bank, and they wanted the rights to all recordings and films being made there. And if there'"were no recordings and films being made, they, were gonna make them and distribute them.

”So we had to walk away. And this guy, who lived, in Livermore, heard about it. So he invited us there, and we had one day to construct this damn thing. But the people of San Francisco couldn’t make it any more, it was just too much for them. It had turned into a free rock and roll show, and what it was intended to be was a gigantic party. All we needed was three weeks in Golden Gate Park, and we had nine weeks. But people kept singing us out on the site, in New York, to keep control of the concert. They wouldn’t trust us to do it.“

OK, we’ll make a list. A villain list: the Hells Angels, Sam Cutler, the Friday Nighters, the New York office, Martin Ransohoff-you pays your money and you takes your choice. If you really want a villain, one of these will probably do.

Except that, obviously, there just isn’t a villain. Sorry. If you will agree that bad judgment isn’t the same thing as villainy. There were lots of bad, judgments made-possibly the worst judgment being the decision to try for another site when Sears Point fell through with only 24 hours to go. But the radio spots and word-of-mouth were so heavy that if the concert had been cancelled at that point it probably wouldn’t have made any difference-hundreds of thousands of people would have showed up anyway.

Next time the Hells Angels will probably not be around (at least in an official capacity), but that ain’t gonna cut it. Two things must be understood. One: even members of the ’’love generation" (whatever that is) will turn into animals when they are pushed and crowded and shoved and hassled enough. A human being needs room to breathe. Two: a large group of stoned people develops a lot of energy, and that energy has to be dealt with. Energy is neither good nor bad--it’s just energy. But if you ignore it you can get into trouble.

After the concert, someone came up to Mick Jagger and said, “Well, it’s too bad about all the violence, man, but you were beautiful anyway.”

“No,” said Jagger, “if 1 had been beautiful it wouldn’t have happened.”

But that isn’t really where it’s at, either, because by the time Jagger and the Stones came on, Jesus Christ himself would have had a rough time cooling the vibrations. A gathering of 300,000 people has to be guided as tenderly and lovingly as a first trip, and in much the same way. We need energy-brokers. We need trip guides.

We need a whole lot more of Jesus, and a lot less rock and roll.

I don’t know, man. The rainy season has started in California, and things are getting kinda grim. I hope we learned something. I certainly hope we learned something.

Michael Goodwin