Just a Shot Away: Peace, Love, and Tragedy With the Rolling Stones at Altamont by Saul Austerlitz

Author:Saul Austerlitz [Saul Austerlitz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250083197
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Published: 2018-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three

CARRYING ON

9. Last Chopper Out

The last notes of “Street Fighting Man” drifted out from the stage, over the fans still packed in like sardines, over the Hells Angels wielding blood-spattered knives and pool cues, out past the Altamont audience, mostly still blissfully unaware of what had taken place, and on into the darkened and barren nightscape beyond. The music had at last come to a halt, and the debacle known as Altamont was now complete. The Rolling Stones had attempted to hold off the chaos that threatened to envelop their jury-rigged utopia with music, and whether due to their own personal failings, or those of the culture they represented, they proved woefully inadequate to the task of warding off disaster. Now everyone was free once more—free to escape, free to return home, where civilized virtues still took hold. The primary actors on this temporary stage began to disperse, each on their own trajectory away from Altamont.

The concert was over, but people still lined up outside the oozing, festering porta-potties. Many fans waited for the speedway to begin emptying out before they slowly trudged back to their cars. It was simply too crowded to even consider leaving. And the unsettled atmosphere made the cooped-up fans wild. One irate (or drug-addled) concertgoer smashed a full gallon jug of wine against a car seeking to escape the speedway, cracking the windshield and terrifying its inhabitants. And the CHP’s overly energetic ticketing and towing earlier in the day meant that once fans did leave, many people would mistakenly believe that their cars had been stolen or misplaced. Some had to spend an unpleasant night at the speedway, or cadge a ride back to the Bay Area with friends or strangers.

The Rolling Stones fled from the stage and up the hill toward the helicopter waiting to whisk them away. It would be the first leg of their escape from America, and a continent that had welcomed them so gratefully only a few months prior. The band and their handlers tore through a hole in the cyclone fence around the speedway and piled into two vehicles—one car and one ambulance—anxious to make their escape. The drivers leaned on their horns, steadily parting the teeming crowd as they made their way to the helicopter. The Stones and their minions boarded, seventeen people in total. Jagger’s assistant Jo Bergman would later compare it to the “last chopper out of ’Nam.”

The helicopter landed at the nearby Livermore airport, where an airplane waited to fly them back to San Francisco. Richards was furious about the Angels’ hijacking of what was to have been their American apotheosis: “They’re sick, man, they’re worse than the cops. They’re just not ready. I’m never going to have anything to do with them again.” Jagger sat on a wooden bench nearby, his eyes, Stanley Booth wrote, “still hurt and angry, bewildered and scared, not understanding who the Hells Angels were or why they were killing people at his free peace-and-love show.” “How could anybody think those people are good, think they’re people you should have around?” Jagger wondered.

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