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S I G H T S | review
Life and Death at Altamont
Thirty years after its initial release, Gimme Shelter, David and Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin’s film about the Rolling Stones” 1969 tour that culminated in the free concert at Altamont, retains its power and relevance. It reminds us of a time when there were pop culture heroes who didn’t exert a perpetual hammerlock on their image, and when idealism and anarchy rode together on the same horse and no one was quite sure which was holding the reins. It is simply a perfect documentary, and a perfect document of its times.
Gimme Shelter succeeds because of a combination of subject, circumstance and technique. The Rolling Stones in 1969 were a band at the height of their powers. Guitarist Mick Taylor had been successfully integrated into the band’s sound following the death of co-founder Brian Jones, and they were deeply exploring American blues and country idioms. Beggars Banquet had just been released (featuring, most popularly, “Street Fighting Man” and “Sympathy for the Devil”), the brilliant Let It Bleed was being polished and set for release, and the monumental Exile on Main Street was beginning to germinate. With the Beatles on the wane, the Stones were at the top of the rock n’ roll heap, exuding darkness and raw sexual danger. The songs performed on the Gimme Shelter soundtrack and during the 1969 tour read like a greatest hits package: “Jumpin” Jack Flash,” “Satisfaction,” “You Gotta Move,” “Wild Horses,” “Brown Sugar,” “Love in Vain,” “Honky Tonk Women,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Under My Thumb” and “Gimme Shelter.”
Even excluding the tragedy at Altamont, the 1969 tour was a perfect time to document the band. The era of complete control over media image had not yet kicked in, and the Maysles filmmaking team seems to have enjoyed a fairly unfettered access to the Stones. We see them moving in and out of various Holiday Inns (Keith Richards entering his room in a new city and jokingly(?) asking “Has my local groupie arrived yet?”), visiting the Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama to polish off songs like “Wild Horses,” and trying to find a way to step back into the spotlight in the wake of Woodstock, at which they didn’t perform. That forum would be a free concert in San Francisco sometime at the end of the tour, in December of 1969. When Golden Gate Fields fell through as a venue, the Altamont Motor Speedway, about 30 minutes east of the Bay Area, became the chosen site. What happened at Altamont has become rock n’ roll and social history: four people born, four people died, including one young man stabbed to death right in front of the stage by the Hells Angels, who had been hired by the Stones to act as security during the show. This chain of events in and of themselves would provide the subject matter for an important news story. What turns it into riveting history and a brilliant work of documentary art is the work of the Maysles brothers, Zwerin, and their team of cameramen, sound technicians, and editors. The film opens with a dark screen and an announcer calling out, “Everybody seems to be ready, are you ready? Is everybody ready? Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time in three years, the greatest rock n’ roll band in the world, the Rolling Stones, the Rolling Stones.” The first image? Not the Stones exploding onto the stage, but drummer Charlie Watts, he of the hang-dog face, the most regular bloke in the band, riding atop a donkey somewhere on a misty road. A red, white and blue top hat in one hand, banjo in the other, for a photo session that would be the cover photo of the concert album, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out. Mick adjusts the hat and runs off, as the photographer clicks away and Watts seems to enjoy the absurdity of the situation. And then, the concert starts: Mick strides onto the stage wearing that same top hat, a long sleeve black shirt with an “omega” symbol on the front - is this the beginning, or the end? The first song is “Jumpin Jack Flash,” a bastard child’s ode to his violent, anarchic life. The mood has been set for the film: the mundane, the comic and the epic will all co-exist in what we’re about to see. The first song ends, and the filmmakers again brilliantly intrude into the story. The camera pulls back to show Watts and Jagger sitting in an editing room with one of the Maysles brothers, viewing the film of the same performance on an editing machine. Time is fractured - the concert clip we’ve just seen is not happening in the moment, but has clearly already happened in the past. We’re watching a document of a past event, and we know that there is no uncertainty in what we’re going to see, because it’s presented before us. We hear over a radio broadcast what has happened at Altamont: the births, the deaths, the stabbing, the Angels. The film takes on a grim inevitability as it proceeds to the concert at Altamont.
The Maysles and Zwerin team is everywhere with their camera and sound equipment, catching moments of candor, comedy and tragedy. Twenty-two different cameramen were used in the course of the film, and wonderful, comic, horrible moments are captured. The film is made up of one indelible image after another: Mick and Keith huddled in the cold darkness beside a helicopter waiting to carry them somewhere; Tina Turner (who along with Ike was an opening act early in the tour) singing “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and lovingly stroking the microphone; speedway owner Dick Carter asking concert organizer Mike Lang on the Altamont stage if he could make sure to say “Dick Carter’s Altamont Speedway instead of just Altamont Speedway” during his announcements; Keith tapping the toe of his well-worn snakeskin boots during playback of “Wild Horses’ in an Alabama recording studio; Mick dancing to “Brown Sugar” in a hotel room while a member of the Stones’ entourage grimaces in the background as a filmmaker holds a light meter in front of the roadie’s face; Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Airplane, an opening act, getting into an argument over the open mics with a member of the Hells Angels on the Altamont stage; Jagger twirling in slow motion on stage early in the tour during “Love in Vain,” his face beautiful, bathed in red and blue lights, a classically constructed ideal of lips and eyes and tousled hair. But what raises the film to the level of great art are the contrasts between the start of the tour and the tragic events at Altamont. The images early in the film are of a band and its fans combining to form an ecstatic celebration. It’s the exact opposite at Altamont, especially during the performances of “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Under My Thumb,” when the violence comes to a head. The pictures are unforgettable: a pretty young blonde girl in front of the stage with a look of fear on her face and tears rolling down her cheeks; a young man staring at Jagger, begging him to do something to curtail the violence as the singer stands looking at him, not knowing what to do next; a nude woman, clearly altered on drugs, fighting her way to the stage. And then we see the murder itself: A member of the Hells Angels stabs a man holding a gun in front of the stage. Or, that is, we see it twice. It happens during the performance of “Under My Thumb,” but unless you’re closely looking, it’s hard to spot. Not so in the editing room, where the filmmakers show it to us and to Jagger, rolling it back and forth on their editing machine. Clearly stunned by the images, Jagger walks out of the room toward the camera, a blank look on his face, offering us no guidance, no verdict on what happened, how, or why. The final moments of the film show the morning after the concert, as flower children wander across the Altamont hills toward an uncertain future. “Gimme Shelter” plays in the background: “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away.” And with that moment, the ’60s effectively end, and pop culture will never be the same. Early in the film, we’re shown a news conference in which Jagger states that part of the reason for the free concert is to show how people can behave in a civilized manner in large groups. At Altamont, he pleads with the audience, asking, “Brothers and sisters, brothers and sisters ” who’s fighting and what for?” in a futile attempt to control the violence. Sure, the “60s had been scarred by violence - Selma and the Pettis Bridge, Vietnam, Chicago, the Kennedy and King assassinations, but it hadn’t yet hit rock n’ roll. Morrison, Joplin, Hendrix were all still alive, and maybe rock and roll could save the world. But not after Altamont.
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