On This Day: Remembering Rock n’ Roll’s Worst Day at the Altamont Speedway

If the day Buddy Holly’s plane went down was the “day the music died,” then the chaos of the December 6, 1969, concert at Altamont Speedway in California was the “day the counterculture died.” In the aftermath of the rampant violence, pollution, and general unease of the free music festival, Rolling Stone called it “rock ‘n’ roll’s worst day.” They weren’t exaggerating.

Multiple people died. Thousands more were injured. The Grateful Dead refused to take the stage due to the mounting tensions in the crowd, which they would later immortalize with their track “New Speedway Boogie.” For something that organizers lauded as the Woodstock of the West, the day was about as devoid of peace and love as one could get.

The Chaos Of The Altamont Speedway Free Festival

After fielding complaints of too-high ticket prices for their 1969 U.S. tour, the Rolling Stones decided to give back to their fans by putting on a free festival in San Francisco. Various logistical snafus resulted in organizers choosing the Altamont Speedway in Tracy, California, about one hour inland from San Francisco. The “Woodstock West” event featured the Stones, naturally, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. The Grateful Dead removed themselves from the bill.

Why would the ultimate festival jam band bail on a bill in their native California? As Jefferson Airplane vocalist Grace Slick put it, “The vibes were bad. It was that kind of hazy, abrasive, and unsure day. I had expected the loving vibes of Woodstock, but that wasn’t coming at me. This was a whole different thing.” Indeed, the vibes were…off. The speedway was full of dry, scratchy grass and burrs. There weren’t enough toilets or other necessary accommodations for the 300,000 people in attendance. Most notably, the Hells Angels were serving as the security for the stage, which provided no barrier between the rockstars and the increasingly rowdy crowd.

Fist fights ensued. The Hells Angels used sawed-off pool cues to “maintain order.” Women gave birth, prompting the need for immediate diaper and blanket drives. Drugs were abundant. Put that all together, and it’s no wonder that the Altamont Speedway Free Festival teemed at the cusp of a full-blown riot for the entire day. Neither artists nor audience members were safe from the festival chaos. A Hells Angel member knocked Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin out cold. For audience member Meredith Hunter, his fate was even worse, having been stabbed, jumped, and ultimately killed by security. Others died in vehicle or drowning accidents.

A Tragic Milestone In Musical History

The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a tragedy on a humanitarian scale, certainly, but the implications of the chaotic event stretched even further. Two years after the Summer of Love and mere months after the iconic Woodstock Music and Art Fair, the violence at Altamont Speedway seemed to signal an end to the counterculture movement. Society had shifted. Peace, love, and understanding were no longer doled out so freely.

Accounts varied following the festival’s close. Some blamed the Hells Angels; others blamed the Rolling Stones. More neutral observers merely blamed the show’s lack of organization and basic amenities. One concerned concertgoer blamed the stars, citing that Woodstock organizers had consulted astrologers before setting a date for the August 1969 festival. “Anyone can see that with the moon in Scorpio, today’s an awful day to do this concert. There’s a strong possibility of violence and chaos,” the concertgoer said, per Rolling Stone.

Whether you choose to blame the stars, the festival organizers, or society at large, the consequences of the Altamont Speedway Free Festival were long-lasting. The counterculture scene, if it ever truly existed afterward, would never be the same. Exactly one decade after the “music died” in 1959, rock ‘n’ roll culture as everyone knew it died on a dusty, trash-filled speedway, with the Rolling Stones providing a soundtrack that oscillated between their standard rock fare and Mick Jagger’s pleas to the audience to calm down.

“Jagger was very, very shattered,” an associate told Rolling Stone for their gut-wrenching 1970 feature on the festival. “I cannot overemphasize how depressed and down he was with the way it turned out. They’d like to just be able to blink and make it go away.”

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