Chris Hillman Calls Altamont a 'Complete Nightmare'
- Posted on Dec 4th 2009 2:00PM by Pat Pemberton
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After the Flying Burrito Brothers' first song at Altamont, a member of the band pleaded with the crowd, "Please, you people -- stop hurting each other." Chris Hillman, a member of the Burrito Brothers, had no idea that someone would be killed that day but he tells Spinner he had reservations before the concert even began. "I had a bad feeling about even doing it," says Hillman, whose bandmates included Gram Parsons and Bernie Leadon. "I said, 'I don't want to do this show.' Gram talked everybody into it because he was sort of kowtowing to the Rolling Stones at the time. But it was a complete nightmare for everybody involved."
Forty years ago on Dec. 6, the '60s music festival scene, which began optimistically with the Monterey Pop Festival and reached an apex at Woodstock, came to a violent end. It had been the Stones who came up with the idea of a free concert -- a gift to their fans -- at the Altamont Speedway in northern California. On the recommendation of the Grateful Dead, members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang were hired to provide security. But instead of protecting fans, they bullied them, along with the acts that performed there.
During Jefferson Airplane's performance, a biker knocked guitarist Marty Balin unconscious. Having seen that, the Grateful Dead refused to play. While the Burrito Brothers did perform, they didn't stick around.
"That was such an ugly day," Hillman says. "As soon as the last note was resonating off my bass, I handed it to the road guys and I left. We just got out of there as quick as we could."
Later, as the Stones performed 'Under My Thumb,' 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was stabbed and beaten to death by members of the Angels, a chilling scene later shown in the 1970 movie 'Gimme Shelter.' While the death would put an end to music festivals for many years, it had an even broader implication: Hillman, who had performed at Monterey with the Byrds in 1967, said it also marked the end of the peace movement.
"From the light of Monterey -- a perfect weekend -- to Altamont, where somebody was murdered, that was the beginning of the end for the social experiment of the '60s," he says.
- Filed under: Concerts and Tours, News, Exclusive, Holy Hell
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