Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: The nineteen sixties are mythologized as a decade of peace
Speaker 2: and love. But peace and love definitely wasn't the vibe
Speaker 2: outside the beatles London offices. The genteel calm of savile
Speaker 2: row was shattered by the unfamiliar rumble of powerful motorcycle
Speaker 2: engines and sitting astride. These souped up Hardy Davidson's are
Speaker 2: a dozen American Hells Angels pulling up at the Apple
Speaker 2: Records Building well in time for the beatles nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight Christmas party. George Harrison had met the bikers in
Speaker 2: la Despite their fearsome reputation for violence, these angels seemed
Speaker 2: cordial enough, and since they were planning a European jaunt,
Speaker 2: Harrison offered to put them up in the Beatles' offices.
Speaker 2: In a stern memo to staff, the Beatles said, they
Speaker 2: may look.
Speaker 3: As though they are going to do you in, but
Speaker 3: don't fear them or uptight them. Try to assist them
Speaker 3: without neglecting your Apple business and without letting them take control.
Speaker 2: By the time the guests assembled for the Christmas party,
Speaker 2: the bikers were fully ensconced in the building and very
Speaker 2: much in control. George Harrison wasn't there, but the other
Speaker 2: Beatles had brought their children along to enjoy magic shows
Speaker 2: and a ventriloquist act. What they got were Hell's angels,
Speaker 2: said to be drunk and stoned and high out of
Speaker 2: their minds. One guest lost his three year old son
Speaker 2: and the confusion. The child was located not on the
Speaker 2: knee of Santa Claus, but in the lap of an
Speaker 2: angel who was giving him gulps of beer. The bikers
Speaker 2: were less agreeable with the adult party goers and quite
Speaker 2: prepared to do them in.
Speaker 1: What the fuck is going on in this place?
Speaker 2: Screamed an angel called Frisco Pete at John Lennon, we
Speaker 2: want to eat. Aggrieved by a delay in serving food,
Speaker 2: the bikers became surly and aggressive, souring the holiday mood.
Speaker 2: The guest com pleaded for calm was punched. Luckily for
Speaker 2: John Lennon, a forty three pound turkey, reputedly the largest
Speaker 2: available in all of Britain, was suddenly carried into the room.
Speaker 2: They ripped the turkey to pieces, said a witness, trampling
Speaker 2: young children under to get to it.
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 2: The Beatles had had their fill of these greasy guests
Speaker 2: and summoned George Harrison to evict them. His initial attempts
Speaker 2: to encourage their departure were perhaps too subtle.
Speaker 3: Do you dig us, but don't you?
Speaker 2: They asked Harrison, Confused, the so called quiet Beetle again
Speaker 2: couched his request that they depart in soothing, spiritual terms,
Speaker 2: to the continued bafflement of the bikers. Exasperated, Harrison changed tack.
Speaker 1: You know, booger off.
Speaker 2: The Apple employees in the room drew breath and waited
Speaker 2: for the fists to fly. I'm Tim, Hart offered, and
Speaker 2: you're listening to another cautionary tale. Just to be clear,
Speaker 2: in Britain, bugger off isn't the politest way to ask
Speaker 2: guests to leave. But perhaps the quaintness of this Britishism,
Speaker 2: or George Harrison's soft liver publician accent disarmed the Hell's Angels.
Speaker 3: Well, if you put it that way, George.
Speaker 2: Said the angels, and away they roared up, savle row.
Speaker 2: The Beatles had gotten off lightly, but they weren't alone
Speaker 2: in mistaking the Hell's a Angels for harmless, lovable rogues.
Speaker 2: Many leading figures in the sixties counterculture writers, actors, rock stars,
Speaker 2: courted the Angels, thinking them allies in the war against.
Speaker 1: The square world.
Speaker 2: Of all the cheerleaders in the music community for the
Speaker 2: Hell's Angels, none were more influential than the Grateful Dead,
Speaker 2: those demigods of the San Francisco hippie scene. The Dead
Speaker 2: had played at a Hell's Angels party back in sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and the Bikers somewhat adopted the band, and the power
Speaker 2: mysteriously failed at a subsequent gig, the Angels stepped in
Speaker 2: to guard the generators and cabling, so on a trip
Speaker 2: to London, the Grateful Dead's manager waxed lyrical about the
Speaker 2: Angels to none other than the Rolling Stones. How the
Speaker 2: bikers were a cost of and crucially cool alternative for
Speaker 2: policing concerts.
Speaker 3: He trusted those cats, man.
Speaker 2: Remarked the Stones guitarist Keith Richards. It certainly planted an
Speaker 2: idea with the self styled bad boys of rock. The
Speaker 2: Beatles and the Stones were firm friends. The two bands
Speaker 2: socialized together, appeared on each other's records, and were even
Speaker 2: considering merging their back office operations. It's rather odd than
Speaker 2: that the debarcle of the Beatles Christmas Party hadn't made
Speaker 2: a bigger impression on Mick Jagger and his bandmates, warning
Speaker 2: them to steer well clear of the likes of Frisco Pete.
Speaker 3: You never saw a police force like.
Speaker 2: It, said The Stones bass player Bill Wyman.
Speaker 3: Black leather suits studded to the eyeballs, Nazi helmets, swastikas
Speaker 3: and crosses everywhere.
Speaker 2: It's a sweltering July day in London's Leafy Hyde Park. Indeed,
Speaker 2: it's so hot that the roads can't keep the band's
Speaker 2: guitars in tune, and fans gathering for that afternoon's free
Speaker 2: giga diving into the park's lake a Serpentine.
Speaker 1: To cool off.
Speaker 2: At least a quarter of a million young people are
Speaker 2: expected to swarm the venue, so fifty British Hell's Angels
Speaker 2: have been recruited to act as what Wyman described as
Speaker 2: heavy men. They arrive dressed like some greasy contingent of
Speaker 2: Himmler's SS.
Speaker 3: The swastiku is out before the Nazis was even.
Speaker 2: Four of, said ron biker, defending his choice of attire,
Speaker 2: and it was a sign a piece. No one is
Speaker 2: truly buying the peaceful intentions of these toughs, though, and
Speaker 2: the Stones head of security reads them the ry attacked.
Speaker 2: If any of the bikers have come for a brawl,
Speaker 2: he'll see them after the concert, and he'll be armed
Speaker 2: with a shotgun. Despite the menacing appearance of this so
Speaker 2: called leather militia, the event begins without a hitch. The
Speaker 2: bikers content themselves with guarding the stones many girlfriends and groupes,
Speaker 2: and occasionally aiding fans who've wilted in the heat. There
Speaker 2: are some hiccups, of course, but the Stones plan to
Speaker 2: release thousands of white butterflies to memorialize the loss of
Speaker 2: Brian Jones, a founder member of the band, who drowned
Speaker 2: in his pool just days earlier. Legend has it that
Speaker 2: a drunken biker fell on a box of these butterflies,
Speaker 2: crushing the poor creatures inside. The Rolling Stones, by their
Speaker 2: own admission, had played badly, out of tune and out
Speaker 2: of tempo, but the gig was still deemed a success.
Speaker 2: Mick Jagger, whose singing had been hobbled both by laryngitis
Speaker 2: and hay fever, said fans weren't that bothered by the
Speaker 2: quality of his performance anyway.
Speaker 3: It's an excuse as well as a groove for them
Speaker 3: to all come together to join hands and embrace each.
Speaker 2: Other, and things had indeed passed off peacefully, very peacefully.
Speaker 2: There were virtually no arrests, and afterwards fans had enthusiastically
Speaker 2: gathered up their trash, having been promised free records for
Speaker 2: every three bags they collected. How much of this serenity
Speaker 2: was down to the Hell's Angels is debatable. London's parks
Speaker 2: have their own police force. These bobbies were monitoring the
Speaker 2: crowd closely, ready to move in at the first sign
Speaker 2: of trouble. The black clad Angels might have been fitting
Speaker 2: stage props to burnish the Rolling Stones bad boy image,
Speaker 2: but they certainly weren't replacing the actual cops. To their credit,
Speaker 2: the bikers hadn't started any trouble of their own, which,
Speaker 2: given the fearsome reputation of this outlaw motorcycle club, might
Speaker 2: surprise you. That's because the heavy men enlisted by the
Speaker 2: Rolling Stones weren't really Hell's Angels. The fifty bikers at
Speaker 2: Hyde Park were ursats Hell's Angels, cose players in leather
Speaker 2: and Nazi style helms, a pale imitation of the Angels
Speaker 2: in America. Indeed, when Frisco Pete and his friends had
Speaker 2: ridden through London the previous winter. They'd been shocked to
Speaker 2: see locals with no affiliation to the club sporting Hell's
Speaker 2: Angels badges. They decided to stamp out these fitters by
Speaker 2: establishing official Angel chapters and recruiting only bikers who met
Speaker 2: their particular standards of deportment. And what were these behavioral norms?
Speaker 2: As the Rolling Stones would soon find out Cautionary tales
Speaker 2: will return in a moment. The origins of the Hell's
Speaker 2: Angels motorcycle club are disputed, but it's broadly accepted the
Speaker 2: seeds were sown in California by returning World War II veterans,
Speaker 2: often riding army surplus. Harley Davidson's groups of riders formed
Speaker 2: and amalgamated, with chapters of the Hell's Angels gradually being
Speaker 2: established across America. By the mid nineteen sixties, the Angels
Speaker 2: were attracting national attention, and for all all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 2: Bill Ray, a photojournalist with the magazine Life, hitched a
Speaker 2: ride with them.
Speaker 3: They always had plenty of money for gas and beer.
Speaker 3: Their money had to come from somewhere, but none of
Speaker 3: them ever worked.
Speaker 2: The FBI was pretty sure these rebels funded their lifestyle
Speaker 2: through drug dealing, extortion, and a raft of other nefarious activities.
Speaker 2: Then there was their propensity for violence. Ray saw the
Speaker 2: Angels he had befriended beat the holy hell out of
Speaker 2: a rival gang. He said, the uncompromising message to outsiders.
Speaker 3: Get out of the way, or got a hell.
Speaker 2: Since the Angels enthusiastically embraced drugs and just as enthusiastically
Speaker 2: rejected middle class morez, the beatnicks, heads and hippies of
Speaker 2: the burgeoning nineteen sixties counterculture assumed these bikers were kindred spirits.
Speaker 2: The celebrities of the Bee world, poet Alan Ginsburg, writer
Speaker 2: Ken Kesey, and LSD advocate Timothy Leary even broke bread
Speaker 2: with the Angels, dropping acid with them, smoking dope, and
Speaker 2: listening to the Stones on a high Fi together. In fact,
Speaker 2: there's a lyric from the Rolling Stones hit Sympathy for
Speaker 2: the Devil, which neatly articulates the belief that such outlaws
Speaker 2: were actually heroes standing up against the corruption and hypocrisy
Speaker 2: of mainstream society. Just as every cop is a criminal
Speaker 2: begins one verse, and all the sinners saints. When fifteen
Speaker 2: thousand anti war demonstrators streamed down Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue. They
Speaker 2: reasonably thought the authorities would be their sole adversaries. The
Speaker 2: march was supposed to end at the Oakland Army Terminal,
Speaker 2: where men and materiel were being shipped off to the
Speaker 2: unpopular war in Vietnam, but the activists were halted by
Speaker 2: a phalanx of riot police. The leaders of the march
Speaker 2: went forward to confer with the police chief when out
Speaker 2: of nowhere, a dozen or more Hell's Angels assaulted them.
Speaker 2: Writers communists yelled the bikers, followed by more punches and
Speaker 2: shouts of America, first America, for Americans. The police sprang
Speaker 2: to the defense of the bewildered protesters, arresting several angels
Speaker 2: clicking their wounds. The activists simply couldn't comprehend what had
Speaker 2: just gone down. The writer Hunter S. Thompson was at
Speaker 2: the demo working on a book all about the Angels.
Speaker 2: He witnessed the incredulity of the marchers. Surely the bikers
Speaker 2: should be on our side. The angels had to be
Speaker 2: over went their logic, so Alan Ginsburg was sent to
Speaker 2: open the talks. According to Thompson, the swastikas worn by
Speaker 2: the bikers were a worrying sign of their real allegiance.
Speaker 4: The Angel's collective viewpoint has always been for sistic. They
Speaker 4: had the same kind of retrograde patriotism that motivates the
Speaker 4: klucos Klan and the American Nazi Party.
Speaker 2: The Angels weren't just supportive of the war in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: they were willing to enter the fray. Sonny Barger, the
Speaker 2: deve facto leader of the Bikers, sent a telegram to
Speaker 2: President Johnson suggesting his gang be dropped behind enemy lines
Speaker 2: to terrorize the viet Cong. So Ginsburg's peace mission went
Speaker 2: about as badly as you'd expect. At one point, the
Speaker 2: poet even told the Biker chieftain that he loved him.
Speaker 2: Sonny didn't know what the hell to say after fellow Angel.
Speaker 2: The Angels weren't one over to support the peace protesters,
Speaker 2: but nor did they stage any more violent counter demos.
Speaker 2: Sonny Barger said cracking the skulls of the Unamerican marchers.
Speaker 4: Would only produce sympathy for this mob of traders.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty clear declaration of the Angel's position.
Speaker 1: But Hunter S.
Speaker 2: Thompson said some in the counterculture still saw this as
Speaker 2: a sign that the angels were gradually coming round to
Speaker 2: the hippie point of view. We often find it hard
Speaker 2: to distinguish between what is true and what we wish
Speaker 2: were true, and it can have a decidedly detrimental effect
Speaker 2: on our lives. Colloquially we call it wishful thinking, but
Speaker 2: really it's a bias, the desirability bias, and it's been
Speaker 2: measured in several studies. The behavioral economist Guy Meyraus once
Speaker 2: recruited a bunch of ordinary people and randomly assigned them
Speaker 2: to imagine themselves to be farmers or bakers. They were
Speaker 2: shown a graph and told it was the historical fluctuations
Speaker 2: of wheat prices. Then they were asked to predict the
Speaker 2: future price of wheat, would it go up or would
Speaker 2: it go down. They'd be rewarded if their predictions came true,
Speaker 2: and in addition, the so called farmers would get extra
Speaker 2: payment if wheat prices went up, while the bakers got
Speaker 2: extra cash if wheat prices fell. In this experiment, the
Speaker 2: incentive is to make the most accurate prediction that you
Speaker 2: can and meanwhile hope that the wheat price moves up.
Speaker 2: If you're playing a farmer and down if you're playing
Speaker 2: a baker, and yet from exactly the same data, the
Speaker 2: pretend bakers predicted a dip in the cost of wheat
Speaker 2: and the pretend farmers forecast a rise. Both sides predicted
Speaker 2: what they wanted to happen, wishful thinking in its purest form.
Speaker 2: The desirability bias appears in politics too, of course. In
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, a team of psychologists studied groups of American voters.
Speaker 2: Some were Trump supporters who doubted their man would actually win,
Speaker 2: while others backed Hillary Clinton but also thought sheered lose.
Speaker 2: These voters were then shown polling data that indeed had
Speaker 2: bad news about their candidate's chances, but also some indications
Speaker 2: that they might win. The psychologists found that the Clinton
Speaker 2: voters suddenly felt Hillary was more likely to take the
Speaker 2: White House. Of course, on the same data, the Trump
Speaker 2: supporters were now convinced that he would claim victory two.
Speaker 2: Both groups had assimilated the good news into their new
Speaker 2: prediction of the election their favored outcome, but ignored the bad.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty nine, the stones and the dead were
Speaker 2: also ignoring the bad news about the Hell's angels, and
Speaker 2: there was plenty of it. Perhaps they didn't believe the
Speaker 2: corporate newspapers and their square reporters. Of course, mainstream society
Speaker 2: would demonize the Angels because the Angels, just like the counterculture,
Speaker 2: rejected the mainstream. But what of the violence at the
Speaker 2: Berkeley Walmarch? And Hunter S. Thompson's book setting out the
Speaker 2: biker's troubling politics and behavior. Its publication had made Thompson
Speaker 2: a national celebrity, and he went on numerous TV shows
Speaker 2: to talk frankly about his two years living with the Angels.
Speaker 2: The PostScript to that book alone should have given anyone
Speaker 2: pause for thought about the biker gang.
Speaker 4: I push my luck a little too far and got
Speaker 4: badly stopped by four or five Angels?
Speaker 2: Are these really the sort of people that the Grateful
Speaker 2: Dead and the Rolling Stones wanted doing their concert security?
Speaker 2: Seems a sure fire recipe for indiscriminate violence. The Dead's
Speaker 2: Jerry Garcia was especially fond of the Angels, praising their straightforwardness.
Speaker 3: Their brutal But their brutality is really only honesty.
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of a viral tweet from twenty to fifteen
Speaker 2: by author Adrian Bott. It goes, I never thought leopards
Speaker 2: would eat my face sobs woman who voted for the
Speaker 2: Leopards Eating People's Faces party. The Rolling Stones US tour
Speaker 2: of late nineteen sixty nine was a roaring success, not
Speaker 2: to mention money Spinner. Audiences were pleased to see the band,
Speaker 2: who hadn't played America in years, but reporters repeatedly grumbled
Speaker 2: about the steep ticket prices. Perhaps stung by these insinuations
Speaker 2: of greed, but also motivated by a regret that they
Speaker 2: had not played Woodstock that summer, The Stones were plotting
Speaker 2: a free show a Woodstock of the West to end
Speaker 2: their time in America. The Grateful Dead would be on
Speaker 2: the bill, and they suggested the venue b San Francisco's
Speaker 2: Golden Gate Park. Unfortunately, the Dead announced the concert without
Speaker 2: asking the city authorities nor checking if any other events
Speaker 2: clashed with the proposed gig. They did, a big football
Speaker 2: game was scheduled, so Golden Gate Park, with its amenities,
Speaker 2: police department and transport links, was off the table. With
Speaker 2: time ticking, a racing circuit a few miles north of
Speaker 2: the city was booked and the Stones roadies began hurriedly
Speaker 2: constructing a stage. But even as they hammered away the
Speaker 2: deal with the track's owners was falling apart, with some
Speaker 2: concert goers already en route to the free show. The
Speaker 2: price for using the raceway was suddenly jacked up, so
Speaker 2: a frantic search began for a replacement. Hearing of the
Speaker 2: stone's predicament, the proprietor of another race circuit called with
Speaker 2: an offer. He'd happily host the festival. The publicity would
Speaker 2: benefit his venue, and the Altamont Speedway definitely needed some
Speaker 2: good press. Though only an hour or so inland from
Speaker 2: San Francisco, it was a world away. While San Francisco
Speaker 2: was lush and picturesque, Altamont was dry and barren. While
Speaker 2: the city was humming with hippie good vibes, Altamont was
Speaker 2: a rural and conservative backwater. There were no decent transport links,
Speaker 2: too few parking spaces, and certainly not enough bathrooms for
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand music fans. But still, the road is
Speaker 2: tore up their original stage and trucked it to Altamont.
Speaker 2: As they assembled it again, a new problem presented itself.
Speaker 2: At the first racetrack, this stage had been at the
Speaker 2: top of a slope. At Altamont, they had to build
Speaker 2: it at the foot of an incline. A general rule
Speaker 2: is that this is unwise, since gravity pushes crowds downhill
Speaker 2: and hard up against the stage. If you have no
Speaker 2: other choice, then a high stage helps prevent fans invading
Speaker 2: the performance space. But the age they'd brought with them
Speaker 2: was just three feet high. None of this was ideal,
Speaker 2: but geography was acting against the stones in a farm
Speaker 2: or sinister way. At the suggestion of the Grateful Dead,
Speaker 2: thet agreed to have the Hell's Angels act as security
Speaker 2: at the other proposed venues. These angels would have been
Speaker 2: recruited from chapters well known to the dead and trusted
Speaker 2: by them. That Altamont was in the East Bay, and
Speaker 2: the East Bay was very much the territory of the
Speaker 2: Hell's Angels, ruled by one Sunny Barger Cautionary tales will
Speaker 2: be back in a moment.
Speaker 1: With the aid of.
Speaker 2: Some chemical stimulation, the road is finished. The Altamont stage
Speaker 2: as December sixth dawn a sound s and was also
Speaker 2: rigged together, using bits and bobs from each of the
Speaker 2: acts appearing. It wasn't great, but it worked. Just Volunteers
Speaker 2: had been frantically tied dyeing great banners to decorate the stage,
Speaker 2: but nothing could bring much color or cheer to the
Speaker 2: dismal raceway. If attendees were hoping for a repeat of
Speaker 2: the good vibes and togetherness of that summer's Woodstock, they
Speaker 2: were in for a rude awakening. It was only after
Speaker 2: most of the other concertgoers had assembled that around one
Speaker 2: hundred Hells Angels rode in. They drove through the throng
Speaker 2: and parked their bikes in front of the low stage.
Speaker 2: This crowded real estate would become a flashpoint as fans
Speaker 2: flowed down the slope, jostling to hear and see better.
Speaker 2: They'd swamp this air, banging into and knocking over the
Speaker 2: prized Harley Davidson's of the Angels. There remains much dispute
Speaker 2: about the actual deal broken with Sonny Barger and his bikers.
Speaker 2: The accepted story is that they were offered five hundred
Speaker 2: dollars worth of beer to guard the stage, the equipment,
Speaker 2: and the performers. The bikers said they merely agreed to
Speaker 2: sit on the stage, drink beer and look menacing and
Speaker 2: spat on the idea that they were there to police
Speaker 2: anyone but Grace Slick, whose band Jefferson Airplane were playing
Speaker 2: was clear what she expected of the bikers.
Speaker 4: People get weird and you need people like the Angels
Speaker 4: to keep them in line.
Speaker 2: And people got weird, very weird, almost as soon as
Speaker 2: the music began. Keith Richards had been at the site
Speaker 2: all night, going ahead of his fellow Rolling Stones him
Speaker 2: Altamont resembled Dante's vision of Hell.
Speaker 3: It was a descent to cave men level thanks to
Speaker 3: sunny Barja in his lot and bad red wine and
Speaker 3: bad acid.
Speaker 2: Out of their minds. Some hippies striped naked and clambered
Speaker 2: over the stage the Angels and their bikes. Santana was
Speaker 2: the first band to play, and knives were drawn and
Speaker 2: blood spilled before their opening song was done. Jefferson Airplane followed,
Speaker 2: and now the Hell's Angels flailed up the crowd with
Speaker 2: the fat ends of pool cues cracking skulls. Marty Balin
Speaker 2: of Jefferson Airplane had had enough of the unfolding savagery.
Speaker 2: Seeing Angels assaulting yet another music fan, Bailin threw his
Speaker 2: tambourine at the attackers. A biker known as Animal punched Baby,
Speaker 2: knocking him out.
Speaker 1: Coming to his.
Speaker 2: Senses, Baileen leapt down from the stage to intervene once again.
Speaker 2: In the brawling, fists and pool cues were flying. Grace
Speaker 2: Slick pleaded into her microphone.
Speaker 1: No, now, stop it, Please be kind, Please be kind.
Speaker 2: Grace didn't have her contact lensers in, so to her,
Speaker 2: the violent melee in the front row was just a
Speaker 2: nightmarish blur.
Speaker 1: You've got to keep your bodies on each other unless you.
Speaker 2: Intend love, she told the brawlers, as one by one
Speaker 2: her bandmate stopped playing and took refuge behind the drum kit.
Speaker 2: Animal approached Marty Bayalin, apologizing for punching him but recommending
Speaker 2: his show The Hell's Angels more.
Speaker 1: Respect in future.
Speaker 2: Fuck you, replied the musician, Animal knocked down and out again.
Speaker 2: The Flying Burrito Brothers came next, then Crosby, Stills, Nash
Speaker 2: and Young. During their set, Stephen Stills was stabbed in
Speaker 2: the leg by an angel armed with a sharpened wheelspoke.
Speaker 2: Still's bandmate David Crosby was unsurprised by this turn of events.
Speaker 2: Unlike his fellow musicians, Crosby seemed clear eyed about the bikers.
Speaker 4: If you don't want the tiger to eat your lunch guests,
Speaker 4: don't invite the fucking Tiger to lunch.
Speaker 2: But where were the people who suggested inviting the tiger?
Speaker 2: The Grateful Dead had just helicoptered in and crossing the site,
Speaker 2: they'd noticed many unfamiliar, unfriendly faces among the Hell's angels.
Speaker 2: Hearing of the unfolding violence and noting the sour mood,
Speaker 2: they agreed this isn't a place for us and scurried
Speaker 2: back to the helipad. This left a gap in the schedule.
Speaker 2: Most of the Rolling Stones had flown in, with Mick
Speaker 2: Jagger taking a punch from a drugged up giggoer moments
Speaker 2: after their arrival, but Bill Wyman had missed the flight,
Speaker 2: so Altamont endured an increasingly tense hiatus until he arrived.
Speaker 2: It was cold and inkly black when the Stones is
Speaker 2: set finally began under blood red stage lights. Jumpin Jack
Speaker 2: Flash was followed by Carol, then sympathy for the Devil,
Speaker 2: but scuffles that had started even before their show began intensified.
Speaker 2: Jagger stopped singing, Brothers.
Speaker 3: And Sisters, why.
Speaker 1: We don't want to fight?
Speaker 4: Come on?
Speaker 2: The singer then encouraged the steadily encroaching fans to instead
Speaker 2: sit down, Thinking h had calmed the tensions. The song resumed,
Speaker 2: The stage still bristled with angels who crisscrossed in front
Speaker 2: of Jagger at will, jumping into the crowd as the
Speaker 2: mood took them to dole out more beatings. Then during
Speaker 2: under My Thumb, a disturbance erupted to Jagger's left. In
Speaker 2: a section of the crowd illuminated by the stage lights,
Speaker 2: a thin, rangy teenager in a lime green suit is
Speaker 2: surrounded by bikers. A revolver glints in his hand the
Speaker 2: blade of a large knife in the hand of an angel.
Speaker 2: The eighteen year old Meredith Hunter came off worse in
Speaker 2: the encounter. The knife plunged into his neck and back
Speaker 2: five times before his crumpled body was stomped on by
Speaker 2: more bikers. He died before a chopper taking him to
Speaker 2: hospital could take off. Keith Richards vowed that the Stones
Speaker 2: would split if.
Speaker 3: Those cats don't stop beating everyone in sight.
Speaker 2: But the show went on under the increasingly hostile glares
Speaker 2: of Sunny Bargera and his men. Finally, a helicopter pilot
Speaker 2: approached bassist Bill Wyman. His was the last flight out,
Speaker 2: he explained, and the Stones better get aboard now if
Speaker 2: they wanted to escape. Seen reminiscent of the Vietnam War,
Speaker 2: the Stones and let entourage played.
Speaker 3: We piled in on top of each other. It couldn't
Speaker 3: even lift off, that's how full it was. Back in
Speaker 3: their hotel, the enormity of what had just occurred was
Speaker 3: dawning on the band. Mick Jagger was said to be
Speaker 3: blaming himself and even suggested quitting rock and roll altogether.
Speaker 3: Keith Richards wasn't so sure. The dead should have known,
Speaker 3: the angels shouldn't have been asked to do the job.
Speaker 2: But Richards thought the fans at Altamont shared the blame too.
Speaker 3: People were just asking for it, All those new fat
Speaker 3: people just asking for it.
Speaker 2: But the music press knew who to blame and was
Speaker 2: excoriating Rolling Stone, A magazine named in honor of the band,
Speaker 2: said Altamont had been the product of diabolical egotism, ineptitude,
Speaker 2: and a fundamental lack of concern for humanity. The magazine
Speaker 2: said of the Stones, a man died before their eyes.
Speaker 2: Do they give a shit? But Mick and the boys
Speaker 2: had more to worry about than their reputation. Sonny Barger
Speaker 2: was deeply unhappy with them too. He called a radio
Speaker 2: phone in show, an angrily ranted.
Speaker 4: McJagger put it on on us. He used us for
Speaker 4: dupes men.
Speaker 2: One Angel was arrested for the murder of Meredith Hunter,
Speaker 2: but was controversially cleared by a jury. The White Angel
Speaker 2: had acted in self defense, they decided. When confronted by
Speaker 2: the armed teen Sonny Barger and his bikers felt that,
Speaker 2: what with legal fees and reputational damage, Mick Jagger owed
Speaker 2: them fifty thousand dollars, and rumors.
Speaker 1: Swirled that until this debt.
Speaker 2: Was paid, a contract was out on Jagger's life. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 2: the Stones began to look over their shoulders. Backstage, Rhodies
Speaker 2: carried their union cards so no assassin could slip in
Speaker 2: amongst them. The band also shunned hotel room service for
Speaker 2: fear of poisoning, and they checked in under assumed names.
Speaker 2: Keith Richards liked the alias Count Ziganpus. Sonny Barger, who
Speaker 2: incidentally spent thirteen years in prison for various crimes but
Speaker 2: beat a murder rap, was more coy about the feud.
Speaker 4: If there was a contract out mc jagger, then he'd
Speaker 4: be dead. It's that simple. He wouldn't still be.
Speaker 2: Singing flying home to London. Keith Richards tried to tamp
Speaker 2: down the criticism over Altamont, telling reporters the gig had
Speaker 2: been well organized, but.
Speaker 3: A few tempers got frayed.
Speaker 2: Coming as it did in the dying days of the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, Altamont is often portrayed as the death knell
Speaker 2: of the decade. Altamont was the end of Rock's innocence,
Speaker 2: said one San Francisco paper. It's certainly an argument, and
Speaker 2: one still hotly disputed, but Altamont definitely changed the Stones.
Speaker 2: Mick Jagger and the band had a rocky relationship with
Speaker 2: the police. Prior to Altamont. The singer had even faced
Speaker 2: the prospect of a prison center on trumped up drugs charges.
Speaker 2: This might well explain his interest in having the Angels
Speaker 2: police his gigs, but the killing at Altamont changed that.
Speaker 2: He moodily said, I'd rather have had the cops. Key
Speaker 2: sources for this episode include Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson,
Speaker 2: Keith richards On Keith Richards, edited by Sean Egan, and
Speaker 2: The Stones Memoirs Life by Keith Richards and Stone Alone
Speaker 2: by Bill Wyman. For a fullness of our sources, visit
Speaker 2: Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim
Speaker 2: Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Dilly. It's
Speaker 2: produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
Speaker 2: and original music are the work of Pascal Wise, but
Speaker 2: additional sound design is by Carlos san Juan at Brain Audio.
Speaker 2: Bend A Dafhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the
Speaker 2: voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hembrough,
Speaker 2: Sarah Jupp, the Saamonroe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The
Speaker 2: show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of
Speaker 2: Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohene, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody,
Speaker 2: Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 2: a production of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardall Studios
Speaker 2: in London by Noria Barr and Lucy Rowe. If you
Speaker 2: like the show, please remember to share, rate and review.
Speaker 2: It really makes a difference to us and if you
Speaker 2: want to hear the show ad free, sign up to
Speaker 2: Pushkin Plus on the show page. On Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 2: at pushkin dot Fm, Slash plus, oh