A Brief History of the Altamont Free Concert - 47 Years Later

Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s music outlet, takes a brief look back at what went wrong during the 1969 festival

Today marks the 47^th anniversary of one of the most disastrous music festivals in history, the Altamont Free Concert. The show was plagued by intense violence, ending in the stabbing death of a concert-goer, a drug-induced drowning, two car accidents and a myriad of other injuries to the crowd and performers.

Following four months behind the cultural phenomenon that was Woodstock, Altamont was designed to be a “Woodstock West” of sorts. Conceived of by Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, it was supposed to be a large-scale, free rock show to bring people together for the love of music. Aside from the organizing bands, other artists recruited for the festival included Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and The Flying Burrito Brothers, thinking that this was going to be a bigger, better Woodstock.

But Altamont turned out a bit differently. There was no peace and unity like there was at Woodstock.

The show ended up taking place at Altamont Race Track (which was usually reserved for demolition derbies) after numerous other venues turned organizers down. It was an inadequate venue by all standards, with a small stage that was uncomfortably low to the ground and situated at the bottom of a hill. The artists playing were afraid that concert goers impaired by drugs and alcohol would charge the stage and harm them, a logical fear. And since the venue was booked so late, there was nothing that could have been done to fix it.

That led to the most important problem, the Rolling Stones hiring the Hell’s Angels to protect the stage. The Angels were paid in $500-worth of beer to surround the stage and hold off the audience. And when things did start to get a rowdy, the only thing they did was create more violence. Drunk and armed with sharpened pool cues, metal chains and their own fists, they turned scuffles between concert goers into full-blown altercations. People left the venue bruised and bloodied. One Angel even stabbed a disgruntled concert goer to death (though it was reported that the concert goer was pulling out a gun). After what he had seen, pop culture writer Greil Marcus, who was working for Rolling Stone at the time, called this the “worst day of [his] life.”

Between the inadequate venue and the hiring of a violent biker gang to secure it, Altamont ended up being a low point for 1969. According to Rolling Stone’s reporting of the event, “Altamont was the product of diabolical egotism, hype, ineptitude, money manipulation and, at base, a fundamental lack of concern for humanity.”

Altamont remains a dark spot in music festival history nearly five decades later. What was supposed to be a concert extending the Woodstock feeling into the coming decade instead became one of the worst festival disasters of all time. While many other disastrous music festivals have occurred  since then, usually due to weather or drugs, Altamont still manages to remind us how the mishandling of an event can quickly turn into chaos.

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Altamont may have been a wash, but you can still find music from the event’s legendary performers and more at Vinyl Bay 777, Long Island’s top new independent record shop. Browse thousands of titles on new and used vinyl, CD and cassette, as well as music DVDs, memorabilia and more in store at our Plainview location or online at vinylbay777.com. More titles are always being added to our selection, so you never know what you might find at Vinyl Bay 777.