A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead by Dennis Mcnally

Author:Dennis Mcnally [Mcnally, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Genre.Biographies and Autobiographies, Music, Nonfiction, Biography & Autobiography, Genres & Styles, Composers & Musicians, Folk & Traditional
ISBN: 9780307418777
Google: sWCRWJnTTF8C
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2007-12-18T21:27:08+00:00

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Trouble All Around (12/5/69–3/70)

Sam Cutler was in Alabama when he learned that the Sears Point location was out, and when he heard about the Altamont offer, he sent Rock Scully and Woodstock promoter Michael Lang, who had somehow materialized in San Francisco, in a helicopter to look at it. They came back and said, “Yeah, it’s possible.” They also sketched out a location for the stage, at the bottom of a hill. Later, Jon McIntire would recall that Rock expressed doubts even then, but the dream of the Dead playing with the Stones was too much for Scully’s judgment, and he wouldn’t let go of the idea. “California’s driven by wonderful dreams,” said Cutler. But when he saw Altamont, he saw a “shithole in a desert.”

The San Francisco Bay Area is surrounded by an arc of hills, and one of the major breaks in the arc is the Altamont Pass, which links the greater Bay Area with California’s Central Valley. The gap is meteorologically critical, generating such tremendous air pressure between the cold ocean and warm inner valley that the crest of the pass is lined with hundreds of shiny steel windmills. On the other side of the range, as the road flattens out, there is a demolition derby track on the right. It is cheap and sleazy-looking, an ugly desolation of crushed auto bodies. In December the hills are sere and yellow. The farmers in the Sacramento Delta fifty miles north burn off their rice stubble, and the air is bitter and smoky. From the Altamont Raceway, there is nothing else in sight but the hills and the freeway.

Early in the process of preparing for the concert, Sam Cutler had attended a meeting at Mickey’s barn. Dressed in a fur-collared suede jacket, dripping in turquoise, he must have looked, he later thought, “like a demented rock-glam version of a manager to the assembled denim-clad Frisco people, a visitor from another planet.” After spending the night, he was taken for a ride on Snorter, “frantically galloping alongside up and down the hills of the ranch . . . basically hanging on for dear life.” Having passed this first test, he met with some Hell’s Angels, including Mickey’s close friend Sweet William and Frisco Pete Knell. Every free show in the Bay Area since 1966 had included the Angels, who would assume pride of place with their motorized steeds near the stage and generally behave with equanimity, taking care of lost children, guarding power lines, and so forth. The Angels were elementals in the alchemical sense, not govern-able, physically intimidating, but usually safe enough. Since they’d be at the free Stones show in any case, it seemed reasonable to have them sit on the front edge of the stage. “[Pete] was absolutely adamant,” said Cutler later, “that nobody hires the Hell’s Angels to do fuck all. The only agreement there ever was, basically, was the Angels, if they were going to do anything, would make sure nobody fucked with the generators, but that was the extent of it.

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