Altamont Speedway Music Festival as a Symbol of the Decade

          The music of a specific era can tell us about the generation for whom the music was created, especially in the mid-twentieth century and beyond.  For example, the music of the 1960s with its psychedelic sound and rebellious lyrics relate the ideals of the counterculture who were vocally defying the traditional norms of the past generation.  More often than not, the Woodstock Music Festival held in August 1969 is thought of as a symbol of the counterculture era, culminating the entire 1960s decade as it came to a close.  However, Woodstock as a symbol of the 1960s generation is misleading.  The Woodstock Music Festival portrayed a communal feeling of peace, cooperation, tolerance, and community spirit during its three-day run in upstate New York and was actually the exception instead of the norm.  The counterculture represented a defiance of the 1950s rigid standards of an older generation and was often accompanied by resistance and violence rather than peace and cooperation.  The 1960s counterculture protested the war in Vietnam, fought for civil rights for oppressed African Americans, resisted conformity and authority, and created a new generation of vocal Americans bent on making changes from the expected conformity of the past generation.  In the decade of the 1960s, three major political figures were assassinated, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. highlighting the decade of hostility.  Additionally, brutality was associated with racial riots and violent war protests.  A more appropriate representation of the 1960s then would be one that incorporated that hostility and violent behavior.

               Although less well known, the Altamont Speedway Music Festival is a better representation of the 1960s decade.   The Rolling Stones performed as part of the free concert at Altamont Speedway in northern California on December 6, 1969, literally at the close of the decade.  This concert displayed violence at the hands of the Hell’s Angels who were hired as security for the free festival.  Instead of providing that security, Hell’s Angels created more brutality by stabbing an unarmed black man while the Rolling Stones performed “Under My Thumb.”  The Hell's Angels in San Francisco were known for drug use, alcohol, and violent behavior.  Their stint as security at Altamont was no different. The Hell's Angels had already caused an altercation during the Jefferson Airplane concert before The Stones took the stage.   

               The documentary Gimme Shelter details The Rolling Stones' involvement with the concert and covers the specific incident at Altamont. It is interesting to see Mick Jagger's reaction in the documentary as he watches back the concert footage because he couldn't see what was happening on the ground while it unfolded. Jagger said he thought it was just another scuffle on the ground at the time and he really had no idea that the man was being stabbed. Granted, the documentary is long in its entirety, but it is worth the watch, even if just for the section while the Stones perform while the Hell’s Angels stab the man.   You can jump to 1:20 and see the incident and Jagger's reaction.

              We can't undermine the importance of this concert at Altamont, not only because of its violence which completely contrasts with the love and peace of Woodstock, but because of the symbolic peak and decline of the counterculture era and the end of the 1960s decade.  Therefore, the symbolic culmination of the 1960s era was the Altamont concert as opposed to the Woodstock Festival.  The 1960s created a generation of young people who survived in a world of violence created by rebellion against conformity.  Although Altamont’s legacy is contrary to Woodstock’s, it reveals more about the reality of the culture created during the 1960s than that of Woodstock’s dream of peace and love.