{"id":330148,"date":"2025-12-05T21:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/330148\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T21:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:06:09","slug":"today-in-history-december-6-bikies-paid-in-beer-cause-mayhem-and-violence-at-massive-rock-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/330148\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History – December 6: Bikies paid in beer cause mayhem and violence at massive rock festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

What was intended on being a free concert based around peace and love turned into a violent hellscape on December 6, 1969.<\/p>\n

After the cultural success of Woodstock several months earlier, a group of musicians in San Francisco set out to host a similar festival.<\/p>\n

The plan was for a free concert in Golden Gate Park, with organisers sneaking the Rolling Stones onto the stage as an unannounced headline act.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/An estimated 300,000 people showed up for the concert at the Altamont Speedway. (AP\/AAP)<\/p>\n

The Rolling Stones were keen on doing a free concert as a way of atoning for the high ticket prices of their American tour.<\/p>\n

The prices were unheard of at the time, costing as much as $105 in today’s money.<\/p>\n

When Mick Jagger revealed the plans for a free performance two weeks earlier, the city immediately backtracked.<\/p>\n

Despite the popularity of Woodstock, municipalities elsewhere did not want hundreds of thousands of hippies descending on their cities.<\/p>\n

The concert organisers were then forced to find another venue in a hurry.<\/p>\n

They found the Altamont Speedway, a venue an hour away from the city.<\/p>\n

The rushed preparation meant there weren’t enough portable toilets or medical facilities.<\/p>\n

And acting on the advice of other bands, organisers hired the bikie gang the Hells Angels to act as security.<\/p>\n

The Hells Angels were paid with $500 worth of beer.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/The free concert at Altamont Speedway became a violent disaster. (AP\/AAP)<\/p>\n

The festival soon turned violent. Nearly 800 people were treated for “bad trips” after drinking wine spiked with LSD.<\/p>\n

The heavily drunk bikies started to beat up members of the crowd. When Jefferson Airplane lead singer’s Marty Balin jumped off stage to intervene, he was knocked unconscious.<\/p>\n

Later, Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills and Nash was stabbed in the leg by a Hells Angel armed with a sharpened bicycle spoke.<\/p>\n

Because of the violence, the Grateful Dead refused to go on stage, and the Rolling Stones were urged to follow suit.<\/p>\n

But they were determined to play, and went on stage even after Mick Jagger had been punched in the face.<\/p>\n

In the mayhem of their show, the Rolling Stones did not realise a concertgoer had been stabbed in the back multiple times by a Hells Angel mere metres from them.<\/p>\n

They continued their set for another 11 songs as Meredith Hunter, an 18-year-old man, died waiting for an ambulance.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Music fans dance and sing to the Rolling Stones at a free concert at the Altamont Speedway. (AP\/AAP)<\/p>\n

A jury found the bikie who stabbed him, Alan Passaro, not guilty because Hunter had been holding a gun.<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone magazine described Altamont as “rock and roll’s all-time worst day”.<\/p>\n

“If the name ‘Woodstock’ has come to denote the flowering of one phase of the youth culture, ‘Altamont’ has come to mean the end of it,” Esquire’s Ralph J Gleason wrote.<\/p>\n

It has since gone on to be described as the end of the hippie era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What was intended on being a free concert based around peace and love turned into a violent hellscape…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-330148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}