The Rolling Stones Altamont 6 December, 1969

6 December

Altamont Raceway, Livermore CA

1.      "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
2.      "Carol"
3.      "Sympathy for the Devil" (stopped when fights breaking out)
4.      "The Sun Is Shining"
5.      "Stray Cat Blues"
6.      "Love in Vain"
7.      "Under My Thumb" (stopped when fights breaking out)
8.      "Brown Sugar" (first live performance)
9.      "Midnight Rambler"
10.      "Live with Me"
11.      "Gimme Shelter"
12.      "Little Queenie"
13.      "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
14.      "Honky Tonk Women"
15.       "Street Fighting Man"

It was a much different scene that the Rolling Stones would return to after a three year gap in touring. One story has Mick Jagger calling Pete Townshend to ask what to expect in the way of modern sound and production. The Stones had seen the departure of Brian Jones and his subsequent demise. The four studio albums released after their 1966 tour showed a dramatic evolution in the band's sound. The arrival of ace guitarist Mick Taylor would give the band the solid musicianship required to perform on such a large scale.  The half hour sets heard in 1966 would no longer be considered acceptable by a new audience accustom to much longer performances.

Not taking any chances, the 1969 tour would be a generous package tour that would feature BB King, Ike and Tina Turner and Terry Reid as opening acts. The three week long tour opened on November 7th, with a warm up gig in Boulder, Colorado before the official start at the LA Forum. The third stop would be at the Oakland Coliseum for two shows on the 9th of November.

My brother, a couple of friends and myself booked tickets for the late show, which was meant to begin at 9pm. Of course this was wildly optimistic. The brand new Ampeg amps built for the band failed during the early show, causing a long delay. The Grateful Dead supplied the amps for the second show, but these had to be trucked in from the Dead's warehouse across the Bay in San Rafael. It was probably closer to midnight when we were finally let in to the arena. I asked my girlfriend if she wanted to call home and let her parents know the shows were running late. She declined and paid the price when we returned at dawn.

Terry Reid opened the show with a short three song set. It was quite enjoyable, and made me a fan for life. I don't know why this relative unknown was chosen for this high profile tour, but he was fully up to the task. BB King's set was good but maybe a little slick. This tour did a lot to advance his career and put him in front of a new audience.

Ike and Tina Turner weren't all that familiar to the rock and roll crowds before this tour, but that all changed and gave these veteran performers a whole new career. It was also a very hard act for the Stones to follow. There was at least an hour gap between Ike and Tina's set and the appearance of the headliners.

We had no idea what to expect from the Stones. My first impression was that everything was played slower than the records. The addition of I'm Free to the set list was probably the biggest surprise. More than half the set was drawn from the two most recent albums, Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. Satisfaction, Under My Thumb and Carol were the only other songs performed from their early catalog. I can still remember the incongruous site of the Stones playing in front of the Dead's tie-dyed Fender amps. I think they had some problems with the borrowed gear, but got through the show with out any interruptions.

Rolling Stones - "Prodigal Son" Oakland November 9 1969 Late Show

At the end of the tour, talk of a "free gig in the park" began to circulate. This was quickly nixed by the city fathers. An alternate plan was to hold the show at the Sears Point Raceway, in Sonoma, north of San Francisco. Just two days before the December 6th date,  the event was moved to the Altamont Raceway, between  Livermore and Tracy,  east of Oakland. This last minute change was probably a warning sign that all would not go well, but we and 300,000 others chose to ignore it.

The night before the show, my brother and his friends would be going to see the Dead and Humble Pie (making their SF debut) at the Fillmore West. The plan was for them to drive back to San Jose to pick my girlfriend and myself up with all the necessary supplies and head back up the other side of the Bay to the gig. Visions of Woodstock were still dancing in our heads, and we all expected a day of peace, love and the Rolling Stones.

Sam Cutler tries to make some sense of it all

Altamont is not a place you'd want to go unless you were really in to stock car racing. The dry rolling hills of the interior of Central California didn't offer much except wide open spaces. The early December weather was mild if not warm. The relocation of the concert meant there were no sort of preparation for 300,000 attendees. The stage and PA were hardly up to the standards one had come to expect. The low stage compounded the problems that were to erupt later in the day.

The Trail Of Tears

I remember driving out to this desolate location well before the sun had come up. It wasn't hard to find our destination. Seems like once we got off US 580, we drove as far as we could, then got out and walked. It was pretty surreal. The first hint that all was not well came as we neared the race track. People were headed the other way saying 'things are pretty weird". As if on cue, a couple of longhairs attacked at hapless program vendor screaming that he was a rip off. Yikes.

View from the top

There was already more than 100,000 people when we got to the performance area. Clearly, we weren't going to be getting a spot anywhere near the front of the stage. We ended up setting up a little behind the stage, on the left side. As we were on the side of a hill, we did have an ok view. It's just what we were seeing wasn't your standard rock gig behavior. A lot of people seemed to have decided this was going to be a good time to take a lot of drugs and get really wasted. Some one near us seemed to be going into violent convulsions. His friends pinned him down, shoved some reds down his gullet followed by a large dose of jug wine. This was not an isolated incident.

I'm pretty sure Santana was the first band to play. I managed to dose off, only to be woken by the commotion on stage. Marty Balin, from Jefferson Airplane had waded into a crowd of Hell's Angels in an attempt to stop some sort of violence being committed on a member of the audience. Marty got knocked out for his trouble, and the rest of the band was pretty unhappy. I'm surprised we didn't pack up and leave at this point. My brother and his friends decided to wander away to see what they could see. I don't know what they might have been thinking. A dose of acid probably didn't help their judgement.

I do have a vivid memory of the Flying Burrito Brothers playing Six Days On The Road, but that's all. Gram Parsons was there, but I don't have any way to prove it. I didn't have any sense of time either. At some point I thought I'd walk down to the out houses for a pee, but one look at the overflowing honey buckets dashed any urgency. A friend from high school who was also there had similar memories:

.....my clearest recollection was going down to the hollow where they'd set up porta-potties.  guys (i must presume it was at least mostly guys) had been urinating on the ground rather than wait in line, so it was all muddy with pee.  There was a guy wearing nothing but a pair of jeans who was having a very bad trip, and was screaming and writhing around in the mud while people ignored him.  I thought, "ugly...so not Woodstock." 

At some point several Angels decided they needed to park their bikes right in front of the stage. The sight and sound of them forcing their way through the packed crowd down in front was plenty disturbing.

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were the next band on stage. Again, there isn't anything I remember about this set, and I'm sure they were sorry they signed on. The Stones decided they wanted to wait until the sun went down before they would play. This meant a very long delay between CSN&Y and the Stones. Not a good idea when the crowd was already in the early stages of Lord Of The Flies. Before long, bonfires were lit around the rim of the natural bowl we were situated in. This was very unsettling, and give the proceedings an air of some strange pre-historic gathering.

A promising start

There was a bit of hope when the Stones hit the stage. From our vantage point, we had a good view of Charlie Watts' head and we could see Mick when he'd jump up. You'd like to think music soothes the savage, but this wasn't going to happen today. By the third song, Sympathy For The Devil, things started to erupt. The band stopped and Mick pleaded with everyone to cool down. If you've seen the Gimme Shelter movie, you can get a pretty good idea at the chaos of a very out of control situation. A few songs later, just into Under My Thumb, I saw the most incredible thing I think I've ever seen in my life. In a blink of an eye, the whole crowd in front of the stage flew back 100 feet or more in a cloud of dust. The crowd let out an audible gasp, wondering what just happened. Again, the band pleaded with the audience to calm down. If they had stopped now, I think things would have just exploded.

Thing turning weird

They tried to restart things with a debut performance of Brown Sugar. Due to the pathetic PA, I thought I was hearing "Crap Shooter". Amazingly, they continued on with this and another seven songs to complete the set with out any more interruptions. By this time I was sitting on the grass with my head in my hands. I was concerned that we hadn't seen the rest of our group for several hours. Everything going on around us was just not pleasant. Sitting in the cold and dark with the possibility we might not find our ride home was not my idea of fun.  I imagine everyone was happy when the music stopped and a few lights came on at the race track, which was behind the stage. There were no calls for an encore, just the realization it was over and time to go. The Dead were suppose to play, but it was clear that this wasn't going to happen.

Much to my relief, my brother and friends appeared out of the darkness and helped gather up our little camp. It was like a defeated army in retreat as we all made the long long trek to the car. We walked at least two hours each direction. I had no idea where we were, or where we parked. The familiar buzzing of the power transmission lines overhead were the only indication we were nearing our goal.

I don't think I went to many concerts in the next year and with few exceptions avoided the football stadium gigs that were the norm in the 70's. Watching the documentary of the tour and this gig, Gimme Shelter still brings back some very unpleasant memories and emotions. Needless to say, I never went to see the Stones again.



This piece was commissioned by Deniz Tek for his blog. This is the original unedited text.