1969 music festival in northern California
The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a counterculture rock concert in the United States, held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway outside of Tracy, California. Approximately 300,000 attended the concert, with some anticipating that it would be a "Woodstock West". The Woodstock festival had taken place in Bethel, New York, in mid-August, almost four months earlier.
The event is remembered for its use of Hells Angels as security and its significant violence, including the killing of Meredith Hunter and three accidental deaths: two from a hit-and-run car accident, and one from a drowning incident in an irrigation canal. Scores were injured, numerous cars were stolen (and subsequently abandoned), and there was extensive property damage.
The concert featured performances (in order of appearance) by Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash &amp; Young (CSNY), with The Rolling Stones taking the stage as the final act. The Grateful Dead were also scheduled to perform after CSNY, but shortly before their scheduled appearance, they chose not to due to the increasing violence at the venue. "That's the way things went at Altamont—so badly that the Grateful Dead, the prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn't even get to play," wrote staff at "Rolling Stone" magazine in a detailed narrative on the event, terming it, in an additional follow-up piece, "rock and roll's all-time worst day, December 6th, a day when everything went perfectly wrong."
Filmmakers Albert and David Maysles shot footage of the event and incorporated it into the 1970 documentary film titled "Gimme Shelter".
Accounts of the concert.
Jefferson Airplane's point of view.
According to Jefferson Airplane's Spencer Dryden, the idea for "a kind of Woodstock West" began when he and bandmate Jorma Kaukonen discussed the staging of a free concert with the Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones in Golden Gate Park. Referring to the Stones, Dryden said, "Next to the Beatles they were the biggest rock and roll band in the world, and we wanted them to experience what we were experiencing in San Francisco."
As plans were being finalized, Jefferson Airplane were on the road, and by early December they were in Florida, believing the concert plans for Golden Gate Park were proceeding. But by December 4, the plans had broken down, in Paul Kantner's account, because the city and police departments were unhelpful; innate conflict between the hippies of Haight-Ashbury and the police was manifested in obstructiveness. Sonoma Raceway was then the venue, but its owners wanted $100,000 in escrow from the Rolling Stones.
At the last moment, Dick Carter offered his Altamont Speedway in eastern Alameda County for the festival. Jefferson Airplane flew out of Miami on December 5. Kantner said the location was taken in a spirit of desperation: "There was no way to control it, no supervision or order." According to Grace Slick, "The vibes were bad. Something was very peculiar, not particularly bad, just real peculiar. 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."
Rolling Stones/Grateful Dead's point of view.
During the Rolling Stones' 1969 U.S. tour, many (including journalists) felt that the ticket prices were far too high. In answer to this criticism, the Rolling Stones decided to end their tour with a free concert in San Francisco.
The concert was originally scheduled to be held at San Jose State University's practice field, as there had recently been a three-day outdoor free festival there with 52 bands and 80,000 attendees. Dirt Cheap Productions was asked to help secure the property again for the Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead to play a free concert. The Stones and the Dead were told the city of San Jose was not in the mood for another large concert and the grounds were out of bounds. Golden Gate Park in San Francisco was next on the list. However, a previously scheduled Chicago Bears–San Francisco 49ers football game at Kezar Stadium, located in Golden Gate Park, made that venue impractical, and permits were never issued for the concert. The venue was then changed to the Sears Point Raceway near Sonoma. However, a dispute with Sears Point's owner, Filmways, Inc., arose over a $300,000 up-front cash deposit from the Rolling Stones and film distribution rights, so the festival was moved once again. The Altamont Raceway, just outside of Tracy, was chosen at the suggestion of its owner, local businessman Dick Carter. The concert was to take place on Saturday, December 6; the location was switched on the night of Thursday, December 4. 
In making preparations, Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully and concert organizer Michael Lang helicoptered over the site before making the selection, much as Lang had done when the Woodstock Festival was moved at the last moment from Wallkill to Bethel, New York.
The hasty move resulted in numerous logistical problems, including a lack of facilities such as portable toilets and medical tents. The move also created a problem for the stage design; instead of being on top of a rise, which characterized the geography at Sears Point, at Altamont the stage would now be at the bottom of a slope. The Rolling Stones' stage manager on the 1969 tour, Chip Monck, explained that "the stage was one metre high – 39 inches for us – and [at Sears Point] it was on the top of a hill, so all the audience pressure was back upon them". Because of the short notice for the change of location, the stage could not be changed. "We weren't working with scaffolding, we were working in an older fashion with parallels. You could probably have put another stage below it...but nobody had one," Monck said.
Because the stage was so low, members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club, led by Oakland chapter head Ralph "Sonny" Barger, were asked to surround the stage to provide security.
Security.
By some accounts, the Hells Angels were hired as security by the management of the Rolling Stones, on the recommendation of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane (who both had previously used the Angels for security at performances without incident), for $500 worth of beer. This story has been denied by some parties who were directly involved. According to the road manager of the Rolling Stones' 1969 US Tour, Sam Cutler, "the only agreement there ever was ... the Angels would make sure nobody tampered with the generators, but that was the extent of it. But there was no way 'They're going to be the police force' or anything like that. That's all bollocks." The deal was made at a meeting including Cutler, Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully, and Pete Knell, a member of the Hells Angels' San Francisco chapter. According to Cutler, the arrangement was that all the bands were supposed to share the $500 beer cost, "[but] the person who paid it was me, and I never got it back, to this day."
Hells Angels member Bill "Sweet William" Fritsch recalled this exchange he had with Cutler at a meeting prior to the concert, in which Cutler had asked them to provide security:
We don't police things. We're not a security force. We go to concerts to enjoy ourselves and have fun.
Well, what about helping people out—you know, giving directions and things?
Sure, we can do that.
When Cutler asked how they would like to be paid, William replied, "We like beer." In the documentary "Gimme Shelter", Sonny Barger states that the Hells Angels were not interested in policing the event, and that organizers had told him that the Angels would be required to do little more than sit on the edge of the stage, drink beer, and make sure there were not any murders or rapes occurring.
In 2009, Cutler explained his decision to use the Angels. 
I was talking with them, because I was interested in the security of my band—everyone's security, for that matter. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. They were the only people who were strong and together. [They had to protect the stage] because it was descending into absolute chaos. Who was going to stop it? 
Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully said that if the Angels hadn't been on the stage, that whole crowd could have easily passed out, and rolled down onto the stage. There was no barrier.
Stefan Ponek, who helped organize the event, hosted a December 7, 1969, KSAN-FM radio broadcast of a four-hour, "day after" post-concert telephone call-in forum, provided the following for the 2000 release (the four-hour recording is included) of the "Gimme Shelter" DVD: 
What we learned in the broadcast was pretty much startling: These guys—the Angels—had been hired and paid with $500 of beer, on a truck with ice, to essentially bring in the Stones and keep people off the stage. That was the understanding, that was the deal. And it seemed like there was not a lot of disagreement over that; that seemed to emerge as a fact, because it became rather apparent that the Stones didn't know what kind of people they were dealing with.
The "Gimme Shelter" DVD contains extensive excerpts from that broadcast. A Hells Angels member who identified himself as "Pete, from Hells Angels San Francisco" (most likely Pete Knell, president of the San Francisco chapter), says "they offered us $500 worth of beer [to] go there and take care of the stage ... we took this $500 worth of beer to do it." Sonny Barger, who also called into the KSAN forum, states: "We were told by one of the [other Hells Angels] clubs if we showed up down there [and] sat on the stage and drink some beer ... that the Stones manager or somebody had bought for us." In his lengthy call, Barger mentions the beer deal yet again: 
I ain't no cop, I ain't never going to ever pretend to be a cop. And you know what, I didn't go there to police nothing, man. They told me if I could sit on the edge of the stage so nobody would climb over me, you know, I could drink beer until the show was over. And that's what I went there to do.
A woman who called in to the program revealed that she had seen at least five fist fights from her vantage point near the stage and that the Angels were involved in all of them. She also described a general uncaring attitude toward people who clearly needed help; a girl who was dragged across the stage by her hair, another who was on a bad acid trip and bystanders kicked and walked on her. She said she felt having the Angels as "security" was an irresponsible move because "we were all in terror of them". When she tried to speak about this at the concert, she was warned to be quiet by the people around her, for fear of being beaten. At this point, KSAN's Scoop Nisker mentioned the bystander effect and the murder of Kitty Genovese.
Emmett Grogan (founder of the radical community-action group the Diggers), who was intimately involved in the organization of the event (especially at the two earlier-planned venues), confirmed the $500 beer arrangement on that same KSAN forum with Ponek.
"Pete" also tells host Ponek that the Angels were hired by Cutler because of some rowdy, anxious on-stage incidents during the Stones' Oakland and Miami concerts weeks earlier. As security guards, Pete said "we ain't into that security", but that they agreed after the beer offer. He also claimed that, other than being told to "just keep people off the stage," Cutler gave the Hells Angels very little specific instructions for stage security: "They didn't say nothing to us about any of that." And although the Angels are not security guards, "If we say we're going to do something, we do it. If we decide to do it, it's done. No matter what, how far we have to go to do it." The similar lack of detailed security instructions by the concert's management was also mentioned by Barger during his telephone call-in.
Altamont Speedway owner Dick Carter had hired hundreds of professional, plainclothes security guards, ostensibly more for the purpose of protecting his property rather than for the safety and well-being of the concertgoers. Barger mentions these guards, as identified by