40 years after Altamont, rock music's darkest day - San Jose Mercury News:
"It was supposed to be 'Woodstock West' — a free concert that would draw hundreds of thousands of fans, feature some of the biggest names in rock and solidify the still-blossoming Flower Power movement.
The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was also envisioned as the most famous music event in Bay Area history. It became just that, but for all the wrong reasons.
'It was just a big mess,' says Rock Scully, the longtime manager of the Grateful Dead and one of the primary organizers of the festival.
About 300,000 fans turned out on Dec. 6, 1969, to the racetrack outside of Livermore to see the Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and others. What they found was a venue ill-equipped to handle such a large crowd and a scene that devolved into a violent antithesis of the peaceful gathering in Woodstock 3½ months earlier.
By the time the night was over, four people were dead — two from hit-and-run accidents, one from drowning in an irrigation ditch and, most notoriously, one from repeated stab wounds at the hands of a Hells Angels member during a confrontation in front of the music stage."
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Sunday, November 29, 2009
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