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[dramatic music]
[rock music]
[Narrator] In February 1964
The Beatles brought optimism to America.
Only four months later The Rolling Stones arrived.
They made themselves an antithesis, really,
of what the Beatles were in terms of image.
The Beatles may want to hold your hand,
but The Stones want to come and burn your town.
Rebellious, dangerous, druggy,
sexy, that is The Stones.
[Narrator] But as peace and love spread from California,
The Stones tougher vision seemed out of place.
The Stones are hardened.
They never fully bit on all the idealism of the '60s.
"We can transform things by smoking pot."
It was just not realistic.
In a sense, The Stones' vision was truer.
[Narrator] And then, within months of
The Summer of Love, the whole world changed.
By '68 the darkness that was associated with The Stones
definitely chimed with what was happening
on the streets of Chicago, and Paris, and London.
Blood was running in the streets.
The temperatures were rising, rising really fast.
It was as if this is their time.
[Narrator] This film traces The Stones through this
turbulent era, all the way to the Altamont Festival in 1969,
the concert that brought the decade to a shocking end.
Much as there was an element of The Stones
that loved chaos, and loved disorder, they had no idea
what they'd gotten into at Altamont.
This didn't turn out like that.
You'd see real ugliness,
savagery right in front of your eyes.
The Hell's Angels were horrible.
It's like a car crash.
You can't do anything about it, you're just in it.
Things just went from bad to worse,
and there's no controlling it.
It was probably, one of the worst days of my life, ever.
[dramatic music]
[Narrator] October 17, 1969.
After a prolonged break from live performance,
The Rolling Stones touched down in Los Angeles to begin
preparations for the biggest concert tour of their career.
Due to play at 16 arenas across the country,
for the booming youth culture, The Stones' return
to the American stage was hugely anticipated.
It was looked forward to as a huge event,
a big event, and a lot was expected of it.
People wanted to hear what The Stones had to say.
The Rolling Stones hadn't played
in America for three years or so.
Things had changed radically in that three years.
When The Rolling Stones before were playing,
girls would literally wet themselves and scream
the house down, and the show might last 20 minutes
before all 10,000 people rushed the stage.
So The Rolling Stones were confronted with something which,
at first, completely kind of freaked them out.
Which was audiences that sat there and wanted to listen.
[Narrator] Announced as the greatest rock and roll band
in the world, despite a changed environment,
The Stones' seminal performances became the stuff of legend.
Everybody was on fire, you'd get the energy from a group,
and you'd get an energy from the fans.
I'd love the fact that I could go and watch them
every night, and it would be a little different each time.
But it was great, the shows were spectacular.
The boys knew how to perform.
* Everywhere I hear the sound
* of marching charging feet, boy *
* 'Cause summer's here and the time is right *
* For fighting in the street, boy *
In 1969 The Stones were incredible, they were brilliant.
I mean those shows were raucous.
The Stones were the biggest rock and roll band on the road.
The Beatles had pulled back, Dylan had pulled back.
But The Stones were out there in 1969.
And coming to America in 1969 was no joke.
The Stones were in the thick of whatever was
racketing around in America at that time.
America in '69 is in a state of some turmoil.
We'd moved on from The Summer of Love in '67.
Obviously things have got a lot darker,
partly because of the Vietnam War protests.
We've had the assassination of Martin Luther King,
and Kennedy, so there's a much darker mood abroad.
There's still that air of hippy optimism. '69 is,
in some ways, the high water mark of that,
rather than The Summer of Love in '67,
because this is the summer of Woodstock.
[Narrator] Held in August 1969,
with nearly half a million in attendance,
the Woodstock Festival was a momentous four day
free concert that stood as a testament
to the growing strength of the youth culture.
In November, late in their tour, The Stones announced
their own free concert on the West Coast.
Originally to be held at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park,
this event would eventually take place
at a remote racetrack called Altamont.
Altamont was intended to be an expression of optimism,
of the strengths of the counterculture,
an event at which all the tribes could could come together.
So, on the surface, when it's first announced,
this is huge news and and it's celebratory news.
The mythology of free concerts were
at the absolute height in 1969.
The whole phrase free concert was just redolent
with all these ethics, and images, and ideas
that were floating around the counterculture at the time.
It could have been fantastic, everybody assumed
that they were looking at a mini Woodstock
in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
That's not what it turned out to be.
[somber music]
[Narrator] The event itself would prove disastrous,
a tipping point where the countercultures dream
of peaceful solidarity tragically fell apart.
And the violence and chaos that The Stones
came face to face with during this concert
was a far cry from the seemingly calm America
they had first encountered less than 10 years beforehand.
And the band's own development across this decade
interweaved with the changing currents
of America's youth culture during the same period.
America, 1962, a nation energized by a period
of political growth of prosperity.
Consumer culture was thriving.
Advances in technology were transforming everyday life.
And many felt that this was the dawn of a new golden age.
The American dream alive and kicking once more.
Yet an ever present threat of war
cast a shadow over this spirit of optimism.
And beneath the confident surface,
tensions were developing.
America in the early '60s is a strange place in many ways.
In terms of popular culture, it's rather bland and anodyne.
At the same time, politically you've got
Camelot and the court of JFK.
And there's a certain optimism there that
we've broken with the immediate post-war generation,
and this is the start of a more youthful,
more energetic, more forward looking political life,
soured to an extent by the Cold War,
soured by the Bay of Pigs, and the situation in Cuba.
Almost half of the population in
the United States is under 25 years old.
And there was this sense of an inherited
world that had a lot of problems.
For the younger generation, growing up with the Cold War
and the threat of nuclear annihilation,
all the material prosperity in the world
didn't really go to their concerns.
Things like community, or things like social justice,
or spirituality, none of those things could
be addressed by a roaring economy itself.
[Narrator] And in November 1963,
the equilibrium of the nation was shattered.
President John F. Kennedy, for many a symbol
of optimism and rejuvenation, was assassinated in Dallas.
The event stunned America,
its youth in particular traumatized
by the violence and chaos it seemed to represent.
But early the following year, a voice of hope emerged.
And it was emanating from distant shores.
The Beatles arrived within a couple of months
of Kennedy's assassination, so they walked
into a nation that was grieving,
grieving really badly, and was in a state of shock.
And they appeared on that Ed Sullivan.
And immediately they put smiles on people's faces.
It sounds glib and bland, but that's really what they did.
It was medicine, what the Beatles did.
You can't stress enough
just how important their arrival was.
[Narrator] And the sudden stateside success
of this revolutionary four piece opened the door for dozens
of other British bands to have a go at breaking America.
Following in the footsteps of Liverpudlians,
Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Searchers and Billy J Kramer,
in June 1964 a London group arrived
with a very different image and sound.
Unlike their fellow countrymen,
The Rolling Stones weren't about optimism.
There wasn't a sense of "the latest band from England."
That was the thing, it was the British Invasion.
And every week it was The Searchers,
and The Dave Clark Five, and Herman's Hermits,
and all this business.
The Stones were something totally different.
It just felt entirely different.
* Sitting in my bedroom late last night *
* I got into bed and turned out the light *
No one else was really trying to do what
The Stones were doing, they were into the blues.
They were into black music, and they imitated it.
But they imitated it very well,
and they got something of the essence.
They weren't just playing on the surface.
[Narrator] But The Stones', singer Mick Jagger,
guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones,
bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts,
found that their appeal was limited.
And their first US tour proved a disappointment.
When The Rolling Stones first came to
the United States in 1964, they were not
greeted with tremendous acclaim, initially.
Their records hadn't hit the radio yet,
and they came to Los Angeles where they appeared
on a television show called The Hollywood Palace.
And the host was Dean Martin and he said, these guys
are gonna get in a hair pulling contest with The Beatles.
They were costarring with two elephants,
which kind of tells you what America
thought of The Stones to start with.
And Dean Martin, he laid into The Stones.
Well I'm gonna let you in on something.
You know these signing groups today are under
the impression they have long hair. [scoffing]
Not true at all, it's an optical illusion.
They just have low foreheads and high eyebrows.
[audience laughing]
They had the advanced publicity, they had the gigs,
but America just did not see in
The Rolling Stones what they wanted to see.
They really wanted a second Beatles.
And that's not what they got.
[Narrator] In contrast, their rise
to the top in the UK had been meteoric.
Having only formed in the summer of 1962, they quickly
made a name for themselves in the London blues circuit,
and arrived fresh faced in the British
charts less than a year later.
And where America was looking for another Beatles,
The Stones earlier in their homeland had been built upon
marketing them as the polar opposite of the Liverpudlians.
Their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham,
carefully crafted this image.
They wouldn't smile in photos,
they would respond indifferently to interviews.
From the very start, The Stones were presented as rebels.
They didn't so much have a defiance as an insolence.
It put The Rolling Stones on one side, with the youngsters.
And it put the establishment on the other side.
They were really probably the first anti-establishment band.
There was a punk attitude, except we didn't call it
punk at the time, we just called it loutishness,
or yobbishness, that applied to the Beatles as well,
and John Lennon in particular perhaps.
And whereas Brian Epstein's instinct was then
to tone that down, put them in suits,
and make them as respectable as he possibly could
without completely losing their edge,
Oldham's instinct was the exact opposite.
He definitely had a vision of creating a band,
a gang, that was the opposite of the Beatles gang.
I think they understood Andrew's vision.
And I think when Andrew said don't smile, be a bit surly,
you don't have to be, if Charlie doesn't
want to answer he doesn't answer.
If he does answer, he just says yes or no.
And he's sort of monosyllabic and cool.
What would you say?
Not in this first relationship,
It's too late to be made better.
What came out of it was a high degree of individuality,
coupled with the nous that Jagger had from the very outset.
The coolness that Keith had, and the extraordinary
charismatic Brian who was unlike, at that moment in time,
unlike anybody I think you'd ever seen.
[Narrator] And The Stones'' image
perfectly complemented their music.
After a couple of minor singles, their 1964 hit
"Not Fade Away" captured the band's
unique blend of blues and rock and roll.
The sound that had made them a sensation on the club circuit
now saw them ascend to the top of the British charts.
The Stones really were the first
of the R and B bands to emerge.
I mean R and B originally came out of the jazz
movement in London, the jazz clubs.
And it was frowned upon a bit,
it was scene as a bit populist.
Whereas the Mersey Beat bands, obviously the Beatles,
but then you had Billy J Kramer,
you had Freddie and the Dreamers,
were very much melody driven.
But The Stones had this dark American vibe.
They didn't look to Mersey side, they looked across
to the States to Chicago and the inner cities.
So, it was really a new sound, there was nothing really
like what The Stones were doing at all.
* I wanna tell you how it's gonna be *
* You're gonna give your love to me *
* I'm gonna love you night and day *
* Well you know my love will not fade away *
The Stones' music was very much a vine.
The hooks were all about rhythm, whereas I think
the hooks for the Beatles were yeah yeah yeah and harmonies.
The Stones didn't really go in for that.
"Not Fade Away" really crystallized that.
["Not Fade Away" by The Rolling Stones]
The Stones had that R and B bluesy edge.
And, of course, in Jagger they had this
charismatic frontman, so it was earthier.
Rock and roll had sort of eradicated it's
black origins, and tried to make itself
as white as it could possibly sound.
And, if you like, the early Stones put
the black back into rock and roll, even though they were
white, middle class, suburban English boys.
After that you had the chain of events that The Stones
were suddenly good copy in the national newspapers,
this is the dark version of the Beatles,
they don't wash, all that kind of stuff.
"Not Fade Away" was the song that did that.
They were taking us on this rhythmic journey,
and no one knew where that was gonna end.
[Narrator] In October 1964,
The Stones headed to the US once again.
Now with hit singles behind them,
and a growing reputation within the youth market,
this time they were invited on to
Ed Sullivan's television show, which had helped launch
the Beatles nationwide at the start of the year.
And the generational divide that the band had opened up
in their homeland, was immediately
replicated when they arrived on screen.
The Stones' appearance on Ed Sullivan,
in the newspapers everybody was complaining about
because Mick Jagger walked on stage in a sweat shirt.
No one did that on The Ed Sullivan Show.
[audience screaming]
* I said the joint was rocking
* Going round and round
Jagger just walked out on that
stage like he was in a club.
The second you saw him you knew that this was
crossing the line in an outrageous way.
* And they never stopped rocking *
* Till the moon went down
Jagger was singing in a kind of black American accent.
It was very sexual.
And by that point the Beatles had become sort of
a novelty as far as parents were concerned.
You got patted on the head for liking the Beatles.
You didn't get patted on the head
for liking The Rolling Stones.
The older Americans reacted with complete dismay,
without understanding why, although
instinctively they are completely correct
because the British were here to replace
old fashioned American show business,
and that's exactly what they did, so long Toady Fields.
It presaged what came to be called the generation gap,
where the American adult population became
really threatened and intimidated by their children.
[Narrator] And these children were impressed
by what they saw on Ed Sullivan.
This time, with the performance mainlining
the band directly into homes across the country,
The Stones were instantly elevated
to the very top of the music world.
And as their audience grew, so too did the unruly,
frenzied atmosphere of their live shows.
More than any of their contemporaries,
The Rolling Stones inspired chaos.
There were a lot of riots, but the riots were more-so
I think the fans trying to get close to you.
Mick had it controlled usually, and the minute you knew
they were coming over the stage, we'd run back to
the dressing rooms and lock it down.
There was not as much security but the doors kept it clear,
no kids were pushing through at that time.
But it was scary.
The Stones appealed much more towards
the boys than the Beatles had done.
The Beatles encouraged the screamers.
The Stones invited the boys to participate.
There was something a bit more butch about
The Rolling Stones than there was
about the Beatles, at that time.
Whether it was the beat, the rebel look,
young men turned up at Stones' concerts.
On the continent, for example Paris and Holland,
there was serious rioting, male, masculine, macho rioting.
It was just like rock and roll again,
smashing up the stalls, fighting with the police.
It wasn't just the fact that
it was the boys looking for a punch up,
it was the media, to a large extent, that built up
the expectations of the gig quite often.
The security people just didn't know what to expect.
When somebody tells you that The Rolling Stones
are coming to town, there's gonna be a riot.
You prepare for that eventuality just in case.
Security and the audience was a massive problem,
which I mean ultimately saw it's nadir in Altamont.
[Narrator] But these outbreaks of disorder
did not dampen the mood of optimism back in Britain.
By late in 1964, a cultural and artistic revolution
was underway, with a change in political leadership
bringing a new sense of purpose and vitality.
Youth was in the driving seat, and the nation's capital,
London, was becoming a hotbed of creativity and innovation.
After the Beatles, it was all eyes on Britain,
but particularly all eyes on London.
Suddenly, filmmakers, the fashion world
particularly, were gravitating to London,
and seeing London as a city of culture.
It was very very different, the old idea of Britain as
an old fashioned, almost militaristic,
historical establishment symbolized by the royal family.
We're having aristocrats now,
and they were from the lower orders.
You had Julie Christie, Jagger,
Ringo Starr, Michael Caine, Terence Stamp.
This was London in 1964, '65, it was the place
where everyone wanted to gravitate.
And it was the place that was pulsing
more than any other city on Earth.
[Narrator] In America however, things were very different.
Although the coming of the British bands
had energized the nation's youth,
and revolutionized the entertainment industry,
the shadow of violent conflict loomed large.
At the time of John F. Kennedy's death
there had been a number of military advisors in Vietnam
aiding the government in the south of the country
against a communist insurgency from the North.
Where Kennedy had been keen to contain this involvement
his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, escalated
the conflict and committed US forces to a ground war.
By 1965 thousands of young American men were being
called up to military duty and sent to Vietnam.
And the president immediately emerged as
an enemy of the growing youth culture.
History did not favor a single system or belief,
unless force is used to make it so.
That's why it's been necessary for us to defend
this basic principle of our policy, to defend it in Berlin,
and in Korea, and in Cuba, and tonight in Vietnam.
[audience applauding]
Vietnam certainly did more than anything else
to politicize the generation gap.
And the reason he escalated it when he did was that he made
the terrible mistake of thinking that Southeast Asia
was a replay of Europe in 1938, and we were reminded
over and over again that we must never make the mistake
of Munich made by Neville Chamberlain.
The two things actually had nothing to do with each other.
But unfortunately they became an excuse
to send 500,000 American soldiers to Vietnam
in a completely hopeless cause.
The draft that supported that war
was incredibly unpopular, again,
90 million Americans under age 25,
many of them know people that are are getting drafted,
and serving, and dying in some cases.
So the war was extremely controversial.
And there's also an important point
that young people were more alert to.
And that was that the explanations about the war,
its origins, and its development we're not truthful.
This is much more than a political issue.
It's an issue of trust.
[Narrator] And as the war quickly escalated,
protests broke out across the nation.
Young Americans joined with peace activists
to organize large scale demonstrations, and marches.
While at academic institutions, students became
a powerful voice in the fight against the war.
With the young now actively involved in a conflict with
an older generation they perceived
as violent war mongers,
the music that had reenergized their lives
became bound up in this struggle.
As people began to protest the war,
and civil rights protests were taking place,
rebellion in the cultural arena began to take on that tinge.
So, what seemed just like The Rolling Stones
kind of surliness, suddenly had a political element.
The generation gap, and the don't trust anyone over 30,
and all of those kind of ideas became politicized,
so that it wasn't just the kind of Marlon Brando
what are you rebelling against, what do you got?
Well, we got plenty, there's plenty to rebel against.
[Narrator] And in the summer of 1965,
just as President Johnson announced he would double
the number young Americans called up for active duty,
and as race riots erupted in the Watts
neighborhood in Los Angeles, The Rolling Stones
released "I Can't Get no Satisfaction."
The song perfectly captured the spirit of their generation.
"Satisfaction" really was the record that they kind of,
they didn't realize it I think, but it was
the one that they were working up towards.
It was the one that embodied their attitude.
It embodied the drive.
And you have to listen to the rhythm of that.
It was like a marching, almost a marching pounding beat.
* I can't get no satisfaction
And it was the march of youth,
the march of the younger generation.
And then you add the lyrical content on top of that.
I can't get no satisfaction, The Stones,
and that record particularly was the one
in summer of '65 that embodied everything that
the young people were kind of striving for.
"I Can't Get no Satisfaction" became
a kind of generational anthem.
And it's an amazing performance,
I mean it's a definitive guitar line.
But also Jagger's performance,
by the time he gets to that last verse,
I'm riding around the world.
* When I'm riding around the world *
* And I'm doing this and I'm signing that *
* And I'm trying to make some girl *
* Who tells me better maybe come back maybe next week *
* Can't you see I'm on a losing streak *
* I can't get no
Jagger is very underrated as a singer.
But when you isolate his vocals, and you hear
the kind of commitment that he brings to his delivery.
There's a reason why the second you hear
that song you never forget it.
The sense of young people feeling that kind of
disgruntlement with mainstream culture, that was very much
in the air right then, and they gave it voice.
[Narrator] Over the next year,
The Stones' sound would expand.
And the singles following "Satisfaction" took aim
at the dark underbelly of British culture.
And at the same time in America, a new door was beginning,
one that would have an enormous impact on The Stones,
and all of their contemporaries.
In distant San Francisco an artistic, spiritual,
and cultural scene had been growing since the 1950s.
And its introduction of new music, mind expanding drugs,
and alternative lifestyles was about to change the world.
San Francisco has been a home for
the tragically disaffected since the Catholic
missionaries showed up here in the 1700s.
Hospitable to radicals, rebels, mavericks, it attracted
these original sort of disaffected free thinkers
of the '50s, of the post war era.
And it was common knowledge to them
that their parents didn't understand them.
And one of them was a writer by the name of Jack Kerouac
who constructed an epic book, "On the Road",
of two just such characters making a journey
across the country, and their destination is San Francisco.
On the Road settled San Francisco as
the capital of this kind of thinking.
The main thing that touched off this kind of activity,
I think, is the arrival of the beats,
the arrival of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
And then in short order you've got figures like Ken Kesey.
[Narrator] A decade younger than the beat writers,
celebrated novelist,
Kesey introduced the bohemian community
in San Francisco to a new drug, LSD.
And this would play a pivotal role in
the cultural scene that soon developed.
Ken Kesey had made his money as the author
of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
He'd been introduced to hallucinogenic drugs
by a government backed experimental testing program.
And then he becomes the link really between
The Beat Generation of Allen Ginsberg
and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the emerging
hippie movement of the mid 1960s, so he's a pivotal figure.
He puts together what came to be called the acid tests,
which were multicultural events, experiences,
at which LSD was liberally and freely circulated,
and at which the Grateful Dead became the house band.
The Grateful Dead play there, they become part of
that scene, the house band, they weren't really concerts.
But the Grateful Dead were there.
Sometimes they didn't even play, they were too high to play.
And no one would came there to listen to them anyway.
So it gave them a fantastic opportunity
to develop their music in the way that they saw fit.
[Narrator] In early 1966, this musical offshoot
of the LSD parties began gathering momentum.
Alongside The Grateful Dead, bands such as
The Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother
and the Holding Company developed on the local
club circuit, creating psychedelic sounds
that complimented the acid experience.
At the premier clubs the Fillmore West,
and the Avalon Ballroom, from these experiments
a new musical culture was born, far from the controlling
hands of the commercial entertainment industry.
At the Fillmore in Avalon there were no spotlights.
There was a big light show that covered the back wall
and the side wall, and was not an exact science.
It covered parts of the floor too, and people sitting on it.
It was just this huge pulsing set of colors
coming out of light projectors, and film loops.
And there was no spotlight, there was no band on display,
and the stages were very low, like 12,
18 inches off the floor, and these crowds danced.
They danced to the music, they didn't
sit there and watch like a concert.
[Narrator] And the culture that started in the clubs,
soon began to spread out into the neighborhoods
and public spaces of the city.
With its epicenter in the Haight Ashbury District,
free concerts were soon organized,
with The Grateful Dead
and other bands playing to large crowds,
both on the streets and in local parks.
By the end of 1966, the hippy movement was in full flight.
What's happening in San Francisco is driven by
a very democratic impulse, but it is not commercial.
So you have the free concerts.
I mean the drugs are also very very important.
LSD is still legal in in '66, don't forget.
And it is a tool of liberation, and suddenly drugs
are not just about getting out of your head,
they're about expanding your head, expanding your mind.
And so that goes along I think with the democratic impulse,
and the love, and peace, and those sort of pseudo political
philosophical notions that underpin the hippie movement.
[Narrator] And while the key concepts of love and peace
were central to this new San Francisco counterculture,
at the free concerts another group of non conformists
were often seen rubbing shoulders with the hippies.
The Hell's Angels, a Californian biker club,
were similarly looking to live by their own code.
An outlaw presence across the state,
viewed by the authorities as a violent criminal gang,
they had come into contact with Ken Kesey
and the burgeoning counterculture
at an early stage.
Kesey tamed The Hell's Angels.
He had them come over to La Honda, filled them with LSD,
and hung out with the pranksters.
And they were tamed by him, they loved him,
they loved LSD, they got that whole thing.
Pretty soon The Hell's Angels are fixtures
at the Grateful Dead shows, and people
start getting used to seeing them.
And in fact they can be quite helpful,
sometimes reconnecting lost children with their parents.
So, it wasn't unusual to see them at some of these events.
The counterculture and The Hell's Angels were sort of
decent bedfellows because sex, drugs, rock and roll.
Living the fast life, living life on the margins of society.
There's an affiliation between rebellion
and men on motorbikes that goes right back
to Marlon Brando in "The Wild One."
[engines roaring]
[dramatic music]
On their bikes they expressed freedom,
and up and down the freeway, this is on the road,
except they're on their iron horses, so to speak.
But I think there must have been a wariness,
because the angels lived kind of a different life.
They didn't subscribe to love and peace.
[Narrator] For more than a year this new counterculture,
coexisting with The Angels, had been able to grow
organically with little media attention.
But in January 1967 a far larger free concert was organized.
Known as the Human Be-In, it featured speeches
from prominent figures Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg,
alongside musical performances by
the major new voices on the scene.
The Human Be-In was a huge event,
because it was the first one of its kind.
You hadn't seen this kind of a huge crowd
of countercultural people until the Human Be-In.
So, it's example was extremely important.
It was made for television, sort of as a signal
to the national media that something interesting
is going on in San Francisco's youth culture.
The people who are onstage and speaking,
are also made for television.
You got Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg
in these kind of flowing robes, Leary spreading his message
about the benefits of psychedelics.
Six words:
Turn on,
tune in,
drop out.
[audience cheering]
I don't think word leaked out much about what was going on
in San Francisco through the course of 1966.
But with the Human Be-In in January of '67,
it just exploded the beginning of that year.
And the mythology was instantaneous.
Harry Reasoner showed up, the American TV journalist
and cluck, cluck, clucked about the hippies.
They they think there's some kind of saint.
And in doing that, it delivered a coded message
to young people everywhere that it wasn't as repressive,
it wasn't as gray, that there was hope.
And that you could go to San Francisco,
grow your hair, and things would be different.
[Narrator] While across America, young people flocked
to the Haight Ashbury District in search of this Utopia.
In Britain too the influence of San Francisco was soon felt.
Countercultural ideas and fashions crossed the Atlantic,
while touring musicians, including The Stones
and The Beatles were introduced
to hallucinogenics by their American counterparts.
Talk of the new drug, LSD in particular, led to fears
that popular culture was getting out of control.
Where only two years beforehand,
the administration of Prime Minister Harold Wilson
was celebrating the Beatles and the booming
youth movement, now a backlash began.
Where once leniency had prevailed,
now a number of drug busts were organized.
And in February 1967, the police arrived in force
at the home of Rolling Stones' guitarist, Keith Richards.
Pop stars had soft power, they had cultural power,
and what they were saying was increasingly disobedient.
But of course the establishment didn't like that.
And they increasingly took notice
of pop stars, and what they were saying.
And The Stones really were ideal
candidates then for drug busts.
When they started to clamp down hard,
which was February 1967, The Stones were marked men.
The police were given a tip off by the news of the world
that a drug party was taking place at Keith Richards'
home in West Wittering, in Sussex.
And they raided it on a Sunday night in February.
This was the famous bust where Marianne Faithfull
was dressed in nothing but a fur rug.
All they found was some ash from marijuana cigarettes
in an ashtray, a few amphetamines
that were actually, I believe a prescription.
And the outcome was that Jagger was
sentenced to three months in prison for the pills.
And the Keith Richards got 12 months for allowing
his home to be used for this nefarious drug taking.
Personally I was upset for them, and very shocked.
We were all instructed to be very
very low key, not to talk to any media.
There was a sort of blanket instruction
from The Stones' office, to not do anything to exacerbate,
that this was a serious situation.
And so we were all, I mean definitely, upset,
and distressed, and worried, and worried for them.
[Narrator] While these arrests further enhanced
The Stones' rebellious reputation, they also sidelined
the band for much of the counterculture's watershed year.
While awaiting trial, they performed a European tour,
their last series of shows for more than two years.
And in May, Brian Jones was also the target of a police
raid and he too would stand trial for drug possession.
On America's West Coast, however,
the counterculture's influence spread unobstructed.
And in June 1967, the first major pop festival took place in
Monterey, a coastal city 100 miles south of San Francisco.
It would prove a vital showcase for
the bands of the Haight Ashbury.
The San Francisco scene was very excited by this.
We could feel this was the next wave.
And so we wanted for them, if you hadn't heard of them,
now's your chance to see them, now go down
and spend three days and see them all.
Monterey, incredible important transition,
catalyst for huge change, and people came in that weekend
on the top, Mamas and Papas runs six straight top 10 hits,
The Association, Simon and Garfunkel.
By the end of the weekend everybody was
talking about Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane,
Otis Redding, Big Brother and The Holding Company.
And the whole world had revolved in three days.
Monterey was the first of the pop music festivals.
And it had a great feeling around it.
There was a lot of optimism in the air,
along with the smell of marijuana.
And for me, watching that festival,
the highlight was Janis Joplin.
Because I'd scene Hendrix, and I'd seen The Who.
I knew how good they were, I'd flown out with Hendrix.
But when Janis Joplin came up on stage
and opened her mouth, I just took two steps back.
I just had never heard a woman sing like that in my life.
* Oh whoa whoa tell my why
* Does everything go so wrong *
* I see people honey all go wrong yeah *
Everyone was there, Derek Taylor, the Beatles
publicist put this whole thing together.
And a lot of people were there.
So a lot of people saw her kill it.
I mean she was great that night.
Rather than being in a relatively small,
semi-provincial American city, all of a sudden
San Francisco was challenging LA.
LA was the West Coast center of popular music
with the movies, and all that was all LA.
And San Francisco had very little part in that.
But now, The Grateful Dead was San Francisco,
Janis Joplin was San Francisco.
San Francisco, that summer, became a pop music
capital where it had not been before.
[Narrator] And in attendance of this
historic festival was a Rolling Stone.
Brian Jones, still awaiting sentencing,
had traveled to the event, keen to witness
firsthand the fruits of this new counterculture.
Brian Jones appearing in the audience at
Monterey Pop, hanging out with Nico was
important to the scene, they recognized that as
British rock royalty anointing the festival.
So The Stones were represented there.
It would be the underpinnings of
what would lead them into Altamont because
they felt somewhat separate from this hip underground
movement and they really wanted to be part of it.
Jagger especially wanted that for his band.
[Narrator] But it was neither The Stones,
nor the West Coast acts that would provide the definitive
musical statement of this new countercultural mindset.
In a remarkable creative surge, with the LP
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,
and the single All You Need is Love, it was the Beatles
that captured the spirit of the summer of love.
1967 really was owned by the Beatles.
There was all this thing happening
over on the West Coast.
But "All You Need is Love", it was so right for its time.
A summer of love that was, like all the best flowers,
they just die off after a couple of months.
But "All You Need is Love" was the song,
the single song that symbolized that.
They also had Sergeant Pepper on the album market which,
even reviewers in the Times saying this is genuine art.
This isn't pop music, this is art.
In my whole career of following music,
and now it's 50, 60 years, there was nothing ever
and hasn't been since something like Sergeant Pepper.
This was big, Sergeant Pepper blew everybody's mind.
Everybody found something to like.
It was just powerful, powerful music.
[Narrator] In late July, Jagger and Richards
successfully appealed against their convictions.
And the pair were free men once again.
Determined to keep up with the Beatles,
The Stones quickly reassembled and issued
their own contributions to the summer of love.
But the single We Love You, and the album that followed,
the much maligned Satanic Majesties Request,
offered a less celebratory vision of the times,
and failed to chime with the utopian mood of the era.
The Rolling Stones, and peace and love
might seem unlikely bedfellows.
But Jagger and Richards were there
at the recording of All You Need is Love.
And in fact their single which follows that,
"We Love You", I think is a masterpiece.
The Rolling Stones are, and Jagger and Richards
in particular are, right in the firing line at this point.
So, peace and love with with an edge,
because they are being targeted and victimized.
* We love you
* And we hold
It wasn't anything like "All You Need is Love".
It was sardonic.
It was ironic, almost, the way they sang that
It wasn't inclusive, and upbeat,
and playful, and fun, and international.
So The Stones weren't really playing ball.
The Stones are hardened.
They never fully bit on all the idealism of the '60s.
They were tougher, it was like a London thing in part.
They were city kids.
So all of this get back to the land,
and wear flowers in your hair, and all that business,
that didn't really work for them so well.
They didn't think because you went to the park
with your friends and waved a flag around
that anybody was gonna give up anything important.
They totally understood that that was never going to happen.
[Narrator] And The Stones reluctance
to join in with the prevailing optimism,
was borne out by the more disturbing events
that occurred during the summer of love.
In June 1967, 10,000 peace marchers were violently attacked
by police during a demonstration in Los Angeles.
While the following month, race riots erupted in Detroit
leaving dozens killed and hundreds injured.
Even as the summer of love was proffering this
kind of vision of a a new world,
there were plenty of problems.
Everything didn't disappear because you took a pill one day.
"We can transform things by smoking pot."
It was just not realistic.
And soon everyone learned how unrealistic it was.
The growth of the counterculture occurs at exactly
the same time as the black ghetto is rising up in force,
in Detroit, and in many other places.
So, you have these two simultaneous,
not exactly related movements, but both of them
give you a feeling that everything is changing.
And a lot of things are under siege
in a way they never were before.
But certainly the riots in the black ghettos are
the most destabilizing force in the country,
and the one that terrifies white people the most,
even more than long haired rock and rollers, clearly.
[Narrator] The stage was set for harder times to follow.
And at the very start of 1968 the counterculture's
faith in the authorities crumbled even further.
Victory in Vietnam was always presented as a certainty,
the inevitable end to a just crusade.
But the news reports
that broadcast during the Tet Offensive
offered all of America a very different vision of the war.
William Westmoreland, who's the Commanding Army General
for the United States in Vietnam has come home to America
in the fall of 1967 and said that the war is being won,
and that we have nothing to worry about,
and that we're about to turn the corner, and of course,
famously there is light at the end of the tunnel.
And then at the end of January of 1968 you have
every major city in South Vietnam,
and every major military outpost
attacked simultaneously in honor of the Tet Holiday.
And you have Vietnamese, including some who
had worked before the American Embassy,
inside the American Embassy attacking it.
And those images of people inside the Embassy Compound,
as well as the general mayhem around the country,
have a very dramatic and immediate effect.
It was very clear that the light at the end of the tunnel
just really didn't exist, that was a fantasy
that was being sold to the American people
to justify their sons going over to fight this war.
Once that became part of people's awareness of what
was going on in Vietnam, yeah, the tide began to turn.
But yeah there was resistance to that.
My country, right or wrong.
That was something you heard all the time back then.
Even if Vietnam was not justifiable you had to
get behind it, and young people who were kind of
expected to go fight that war we're thinking,
well I don't think so, I don't see it that way.
The battle was on.
[Narrator] And this battle was not
restricted to America's home turf.
The youth and peace movements were active internationally.
And in Europe large demonstrations were
organized to oppose the Vietnam War.
And although Britain had seen peaceful marches
for nuclear disarmament since the start of the decade,
in March 1968 outside the US Embassy in London,
the protests descended into violence.
After the flowers had wilted there was a reality check.
And the reality check, Vietnam was becoming an issue
that spread amongst young people right around the world.
It was the Cold War really getting out of control, Vietnam.
Young lives are being lost and people are asking questions
as to why Britain wasn't sending the forces over,
but there was some tacit support of the USA.
[Narrator] And amongst the protesters,
observing as the police and the demonstrators clashed,
was Mick Jagger himself.
Since his trial the frontman's role
in the counterculture had been transformed,
and he now positioned himself on the front lines.
Jagger's very interesting in terms of his role
in the counterculture because there is this instinctive
desire just to be yobbish and put your two fingers up.
But he's also got this LSE education.
He is attracted by some of the intellectual ideas
that are underpinning these notions
of different ways of organizing society.
And he starts appearing on British TV
debating with Malcolm Muggeridge, and Mary Whitehouse,
and these figures who represented
a really reactionary attitude at the time.
The opportunity to go on TV and debate why he felt
society was being organized on the wrong lines
was very attractive to him, and then it becomes
part of his songwriting as well.
[upbeat music]
[Narrator] And this would come at a perfect time.
The confrontational mood in Europe was further escalated
in May when student riots erupted in Paris.
The resistance soon spread to the French workers themselves.
And the streets became a battleground,
with protesters calling for a revolution.
Into this turbulence came The Rolling Stones
new single, "Jumping Jack Flash".
You had Grosvenor Square, but you also
had activism in Berlin, in Paris.
And youth was becoming an international force,
in a way like that, and The Stones, when they
got there kinda mojo back, back to the tough R and B,
They were a great symbol for that.
So when you had the Beatles in '67,
embodying everything that was happening then,
The Stones were poised, really, to embody the
darker energies that were kind of unfolding during '68.
* I was born in a cross fire hurricane *
* And I howled at the morning driving rain *
* But it's all --
I remember the first time I heard Jumping Jack Flash.
I was thinking like wow, The Stones are back.
* But it's all right
Driven by a riff, and driven by
a kind of rebellious message, it was exactly
what that moment seemed to call for.
That started them off and kicked
everything off with the "Jumping Jack Flash".
I mean, born in a cross fire hurricane,
and all of the language that was in that thing,
it was like identifying for all those people
felt like life was crazy, you had all the Vietnam,
all these other things going on so yes,
born in a crossfire re-kicked everything, it rekindled it.
[somber music]
[Narrator] But where The Stones were being
revitalized, the American political landscape
was reeling from further tragedies.
In April, civil rights leader Martin Luther King
had been assassinated sparking off riots
in more than 110 cities, the greatest wave of social unrest
the country had experienced since the Civil War.
Despite the turbulence, there was one
political figure who offered hope.
Robert Kennedy, the younger brother of slain
president John, was a leading candidate for
the Democratic Party to succeed Lyndon Johnson.
An advocate of human rights, and social justice,
and an opponent of the Vietnam War,
he suggested that change could occur
from within the political system.
Yet on June 5, 1968, shortly after winning
the Californian primary, he too was assassinated.
He did represent hope, and even the people who hadn't
necessarily invested in it, they knew him to be that.
And the robbery was felt very strongly
throughout the youth culture.
Those two assassinations did more to destroy
optimism than anything else in my lifetime.
And of course, really, it was three assassinations
in the minds of us who came of age in the '60s,
because it was John Kennedy, and then it was King,
and then it was Bobby Kennedy, so those were the three most
horrifying events of my youth.
The main thing I think when you think back on that period
was just how saturated with violence the culture was.
The idea of putting any kind of hope in any of these figures
was beginning to look faintly ridiculous.
Because so many of them were being killed,
violently, in front of our eyes.
[Narrator] And for the counterculture the idea
of peace and love lost its allure,
and revolution became their rallying cry.
Many of those involved in the youth movement
solely for the sex, drugs, and rock and roll
now became politically active.
And this reached its boiling point at a mass demonstration
at the Democratic National Convention in August, 1968.
Well, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
shaped up to be a coronation of Hubert Humphrey,
Johnson's vice president and hand picked
successor nobody cared one whit about.
And the sort of National Council of unaffiliated hippies
who called themselves the yippies,
determined to create a diversion, a strike,
a demonstration outside the convention headquarters.
And they called on youth all over
the country to descend on Chicago.
The fact is Chicago was run by a Mayor,
tough guy named Richard Daley.
And he just didn't see any reason these kids
should be allowed to do anything, so it was a battle
in the streets outside the Democratic convention.
There were thousands of kids getting clobbered,
and tear gassed, and hauled off to jail by the Chicago
Police who were acting, for all intents and purposes,
like the Nazi Police Festival in the '30s.
The police riots at the Democratic National Convention
in Chicago in 1968 were absolutely a dividing line.
It would totally radicalized youth culture.
One of the chants of the protesters at
the Chicago Convention was the whole world is watching.
And that there was that sense of once you've seen this
you can't look away you can't unsee it, you can't pretend.
You had to line up on one side or another.
[Narrator] Just as these images of vicious
police brutality were being broadcast worldwide,
The Rolling Stones released the single "Street Fighting Man"
inspired by the Grosvenor Square riots earlier that year.
Declared a subversive record, it was instantly banned
by radio stations in Chicago and reinforced
the group's anti establishment credentials.
Street Fighting Man captured the feeling
of the time both in America and here.
But Jagger was always good at sensing that.
And he always had that ability.
It was one of his strengths as a song writer.
* Everywhere I hear the sound of marching charging feet boy *
* 'Cause summer's here and the time is right *
* For fighting in the street boy *
Blood was running in the streets.
The temperatures were rising, rising really fast.
It had changed so much in that year from
"All You Need is Love" in 1967, "Street Fighting Man" in 1968.
Timing is everything and to have that song come out
at that moment made them right at the center of
the zeitgeist in a way that they probably
hadn't been for several years before.
And it's true that the absolute peak of the Beatles
was with "Sergeant Pepper's" in 1967, although we have
to remember that "Hey Jude" was also in 1968 and Dylan's
most powerful political stuff was, by 1968, behind him.
So yeah, I would say that The Rolling Stones,
at that moment, were probably the most powerful
political force in the rock and roll scene.
[Narrator] And The Stones resurgence was confirmed
at the close of the year with the album "Beggars Banquet".
Promoted with a drunken press party,
it was a time for celebration, with not only
Jagger and Richards, but also Brian Jones,
having narrowly avoided prison time during a difficult year.
Yet the wider counterculture was not feeling so celebratory,
with the presidential election of Republican candidate
Richard Nixon in November, pouring salt on the wounds
that had been inflicted during 1968.
The Stones' new LP, and its standout opening track,
"Sympathy for The Devil", demonstrated
their continued relevance
and resistance to the existing order.
Anyone who had doubts about what The Stones
were up to after "Satanic Majesties Request"
had those doubts erased by Beggars Banquet.
If you watch the footage of the movie
they made with Jean-Luc Godard,
they're recording "Sympathy For the Devil".
And in the course of making the movie,
you see Jagger having to change the lyrics from
I shouted out who killed Kennedy to
I shouted out who killed the Kennedys?
* I watched with glee while your kings and queens *
* Fought for ten decades for the gods they made *
* I shouted out who killed the Kennedys *
* When after all it was you and me *
When you have to make a revision like that,
you know that you're operating right on
the cutting edge of what's going on.
As the track that announced Beggars Banquet,
it couldn't possibly have been a stronger statement.
* Pleased to meet you *
* Hope you guessed my name oh yeah *
Jagger married a hedonism to
an enjoyment of that sort of Lord of Misrule role.
That's what comes across
in songs like "Sympathy For the Devil".
He falls in love, I think, with this role of the Lord
of Misrule bringing chaos and turbulence in its wake.
And it's very attractive but equally
rather dangerous at the same time.
[contemplative music]
[Narrator] While The Stones were busy reestablishing themselves
in this anarchic role, another scene
had developed in Britain over the past two years.
Inspired by the San Francisco psychedelic acts,
the bands of the underground had also experimented
with light shows, and elongated soul forms
at the circuit's main club, UFO.
In 1968 the scene's leading lights, The Pink Floyd
headlined the first major free concert
in London's Hyde Park, organized by Blackhill Enterprises.
And following the success of the first show,
in June 1969 they staged an even larger event,
featuring the supergroup Blind Faith.
Pink Floyd show was seminal because it was
a whole lot of people at it, but it was kind of small key,
We didn't promote it viciously, as it were.
But the Blind Faith show was seminal insofar as
they were kind of amalgam of Cream and Traffic,
that were two huge bands, so they played in Hyde Park.
There was 150,000 people at that.
Nobody got arrested, there are no fights,
it was a beautiful day, it was very kind of
Fae and woodland in a kind of English way.
[Narrator] And and Sam Cutler
was then contacted by The Rolling Stones.
Riding high after their
commercial success the previous year,
they felt that a large free concert with added
underground kudos would offer a suitably
high profile return to the live arena.
In May, they had also fired the unreliable Brian Jones,
and had a new guitarist in tow, Mick Taylor, for whom
this concert would provide the perfect introduction.
A date was set for July,
anticipation running high for the event.
And then, two days before the show,
they received news that Jones had been found dead.
A few days before the show, Brian died.
So the question, of course, immediately becomes
in situations like that, well what do you do?
Well, there is of course in the music business,
like all theatrical enterprises,
there's a the show must go on thing.
Mick and Keith basically, felt that
it should be held as a memorial to Brian.
[calm music]
Blackhill Enterprises started off with very much
the hippie bands playing; Pink Floyd, Tyrannosaurus Rex,
and then Blind Faith a bit later.
The Stones is a different thing again
because they hadn't played for a couple of years,
not since the busts, so much had happened.
And they came out they released the butterflies
which promptly died, not great omen.
* I'm free to sing my song any old time *
* So love me hold me
* Love me hold me
* Cause I'm free to sing my song *
I thought it was one of the most awful concerts
I've seen The Rolling Stones perform.
They were under rehearsed.
Mick Taylor just didn't know whether
he was coming or going all the way through it.
Jagger dancing on the dead butterflies was probably
the most awfully comedic thing I've ever seen.
And they were just so terribly sad.
Shame they felt they had to do it.
[Narrator] Outside of the performance itself,
the concert was a major event bringing together
an audience of over a quarter of a million,
who were oblivious to The Stones' failings on stage.
In its communal atmosphere, it echoed the peaceful unity
of the San Francisco events it was emulating.
And in an homage to the renowned
Golden Gate Park shows, security was overseen
by a very British version of The Hell's Angels.
Everyone was impeccably behaved, nobody went to hospital,
no one was stabbed, no one was shot, any of that.
And there were these guys that rode BSA 125 motorcycles,
which would like one step up from the scooter,
who called themselves Hell's Angels, and of course had
nothing whatsoever to do with the American Hell's Angels.
The Hell's Angels in England,
they weren't California Hell's Angels.
They had their colors drawn on their leathers in chalk.
And they were backstage at the Hyde Park concert
serving tea, so if that's what the Rolling Stones
thought The Hell's Angels were,
they were in for quite a severe surprise.
[Narrator] And soon The Stones would come
face to face with the real Hell's Angels.
Following the Hyde Park concert,
the band were making plans for a new tour,
something they desperately needed to organize.
Despite their resurgence in the mainstream,
the band members themselves were broke.
Back in 1965, manager Andrew Oldham had brought
New York accountant, Allen Klein into The Stones' team.
And overtime this tough negotiator
had proven his worth to the band.
Soon muscling Oldham out of the picture,
by 1968 he was the band's sole manager.
And his company Abkco, had control over
their financial affairs and their collective bank accounts.
And getting Klein to release their funds
was proving increasingly difficult.
They were fed up with Allen Klein because they
could never get any money out of Allen.
So here they were this world famous band,
virtually starving, and they had to do a tour of America.
Basically they knew that if they did it
with Allen Klein, Allen Klein would end up
with the lion's share of the receipts.
And they do this huge tour and have no money.
So they managed, I don't know quite how,
to seduce Allen Klein's nephew Ronnie Schneider
away from his uncle's company, Abkco,
to come and work for The Stones and do that tour.
In August, I left my uncle.
A few weeks after that I got a phone call from
Mick Jagger saying we want you to do this tour.
And I told them that I had left Abkco.
And they said well we know.
And I said you have to get my uncle's permission so that
I can go, I don't want to have a family problem here.
So they said they would get his permission.
And what they actually did was, that was the first time
I heard from Sam Cutler, what they did was
they flew him over to the UK and fired him.
[Narrator] In firing Klein, the band's assets
were immediately frozen, and the run of American shows
became even more crucial for their financial survival.
And at the end of the summer, while preparations
for the tour were underway, a major figure from
the West Coast scene arrived in London.
And from here the seeds of the free concert were sown.
What happened was that the manager,
well one of the managers of The Grateful Dead
was a guy called Rock Scully, lovely man.
He came to London, and a dear friend of his was the head
of Epic Records, of guy called Chesley Millikin in London.
And Chesley Millikin, in turn was good friends
with Keith and Mick, so he introduced Rock Scully
from The Grateful Dead to Keith and Mick.
And Rock basically was a great proselytizer
for the benefits of free concerts, how wonderful it was,
what was going on in San Francisco.
Rock is summoned over to Keith Richards house.
And Rock says you guys are coming over
to the United States,
you need to play the free concert in the Golden Gate Park.
I know exactly how to do that, I can fix you up.
But then they also talk about how The Stones should
play the Taj Mahal, and all kinds of crazy ideas come up.
And Rock leaves there without really thinking that
he had just offered to set up a concert for
The Rolling Stones in San Francisco, But Keith remembered.
[Narrator] And the prospect of headlining
another free concert in the heartland of
the counterculture soon became even more appealing.
In the middle of August, the three day Woodstock Festival
became a landmark event,
bringing together 32 musical acts,
and an audience of nearly half a million.
Despite the previous year's struggles,
and the election of Richard Nixon,
this peaceful harmonious event proved that
the counterculture was united and thriving.
The counterculture was in very healthy condition in 1969.
And Woodstock was the high tide, in a way.
I think in 1969 we genuinely thought we were winning.
We thought we were growing,
and we were an unstoppable force.
I was a teenager at the time, and that's certainly how
I felt, however naive that may sound today.
But I think the view that I held was one that was
widely held, that we were going to change the world.
We genuinely believed that.
And in 1969 we didn't think anything could stop us.
[Narrator] In late October, 1969
The Stones' team arrived in Los Angeles
looking to secure at least 15 venues for the upcoming tour,
but with no plans whatsoever for a free concert.
on November seventh, at Colorado State University
the band took to an American stage
for the first time in three years.
But as with the Hyde Park show,
as a live group they were still rusty.
It showed up in their first show,
how woefully ill-prepared they were for the tour.
And just before that show, I was asked to introduce them.
I didn't even think about what I was gonna say.
But a minute before the show, I rushed on stage
and went "the greatest rock and roll band
in the world, The Rolling Stones!"
Everyone cheered, the band came out and played.
At the end of the show Mick came off stage,
and as he walked off stage and passed me,
he went "I wanna talk to you," not looking very happy.
So we went into the dressing room all on our own,
and he looked at he said "man, don't call us the greatest
"rock and roll band in the world, it's embarrassing."
To which I replied "well either you are or you ain't."
They immediately went back into rehearsal.
They got the sound stage for "They Shoot Horses Don't They",
that film on Warner Brothers lot in Burbank
in California, and they rehearsed solidly.
[Narrator] And from the next show onwards,
The Stones proved that they were
the greatest rock and roll band in the world.
As they moved west from Los Angeles to Texas,
Alabama to New York's Madison Square Garden,
they improved with every show.
Alongside the writer Stanley Booth,
who was one of The Stones' inner circle,
New York Times journalist Michael Lydon was able
to witness firsthand the band's remarkable ascension.
I was embedded in the tour, I never paid for a hotel room,
I never paid for an airplane ticket,
I was just part of the entourage.
And, as you can imagine this was a plum assignment.
This was extremely groovy.
I remember thinking, Stanley and I would look at each other
while The Stones were on stage, and we were behind the amps.
And we go like, funny luck between each other,
realizing where we are right now is where
every hippie anywhere in the world wants to be,
right in the band with The Rolling Stones.
And it was great fun.
They were red hot, and they were crossing the the country.
And they had been getting better, and better, and better.
In 1969 The Stones were incredible.
I mean they were just masterful.
I remember when the lights were down, and all you can see
were the red lights on their amplifiers.
and Madison Square Garden in the dark.
And I remember thinking God, in just a few seconds
The Rolling Stones are gonna be performing right here.
I remember how thrilling that felt.
And they were great.
* Yeah yeah yeah
* The honky tonk woman
* Gimme gimme gimme the honky tonk blues *
I saw The Stones on that tour at the Los Angeles Forum.
I had tickets for the second show,
which was supposed to start at 11, it started at two.
The Stones got onstage at four, and they then proceeded
to put on what was the greatest rock and roll show
I had ever seen at that point in my life.
And to this day, 50 years later, remains one of the greatest
rock and roll shows I've ever seen, they were unbelievable.
[Narrator] But while they were putting on
one explosive show after another, behind the scenes
plans were developing for a West Coast free concert.
We played in Oakland, and all the Grateful Dead
people showed up at that show, and that kind of
ball that had been started in London about "wouldn't it
"be great if you guys played a free concert
"with the Grateful Dead," slowly kind of accelerated.
And it became, it became the case that somebody from
The Rolling Stones had to go out to California
and meet with the people from the Grateful Dead
and get serious about whether this was possible.
So, I was chosen to go there.
Rock Scully's original plan was to get a permit
for a concert by the Jefferson Airplane,
and the Grateful Dead and then 24 hours before
the show announce we've got a special guest.
And they talked about having The Hell's Angels
create a escort guard and bring The Stones
from the airport into the concert, that was the idea.
It could have been fantastic, The Rolling Stones, right?
But, the people in charge of The Rolling Stones
business strategies began to think
this is getting to be too valuable an opportunity.
Rather quickly The Rolling Stones' management,
in the form of Ronnie Schneider and a strange guy
named John James who attached himself to The Stones,
they took control of the situation, "we'll handle this."
And contacted the mayor of San Francisco,
and that was not a good idea, that ended any prospect
of getting that concert in San Francisco.
[Narrator] Applying directly for permits
for a concert in Golden Gate Park, the Stones' team
set alarm bells ringing in the mayor's office.
The Grateful Dead had an envisioned a less
high profile event, with deals made behind the scenes.
But the idea of 300,000 Stones fans descending
on a city ill-equipped for such
a large festival immediately shut the idea down.
Now a new location was needed,
with little time to arrange it.
And while alternatives were being considered,
the involvement of the Hell's Angels became official.
Rock told me we'd need the Angels to guard the generators.
There's no electricity there, so what you did was you had to
hire in big generators to produce enough electricity
to do the sound, and lights, and all that stuff.
And I went to meet The Hell's Angels.
And The Hell's Angels went to some lengths
to explain that they weren't cops.
Basically, they were happy to sit by the generators
and stop people messing with the generators for sure.
Because they love music too.
The idea initially was that they would park
their bikes in front of the stage.
The beauty of that would be that no one would
rush the stage, or that was the theory.
[upbeat music]
[Narrator] While these plans developed,
renowned documentary filmmakers The Maysles Brothers
were brought on board the tour to capture
the Madison Square Garden shows,
and the subsequent free concert.
And during their New York leg, The Stones themselves
made a return to the show in which they had
so famously shocked America back in 1964.
They had gone full circle.
Yet as a voice of their generation,
they were more relevant than ever.
They appeared on Ed Sullivan's Show five years after
the first appearance, what a difference.
They're playing "Gimme Shelter", this song that
really symbolizes so much of what was going on
at that time, the tumult in the culture.
They got such great reach, they're a pop band,
they're a rock band, they're on Ed Sullivan
doing "Gimme Shelter" which is
a very subversive, angry, dark song.
* Oh, a storm is threatening my very life today *
* If I don't get some shelter yeah I'm gonna fade away *
* War, children, it's just a shot away *
* It's just a shot away
Rape, murder, it's just a shot way.
What is round the corner?
We're coming to the end of the decade.
Things are looking pretty bleak socially.
Musically, they were probably reaching a new kind of peak.
Have The Stones done a better song than "Gimme Shelter"?
I'm not sure, it's an amazing piece.
This isn't pop as we know it.
That's The Stones really on top.
[Narrator] On November 28, riding high on the critical
acclaim for their performances, and aware that
in the music world, they were the biggest news in America,
they held a press conference to publicly
announce the upcoming free concert.
[Reporter] I read in one of the papers that
you'll be giving a free concert in San Francisco.
We are doing a free concert in San Francisco
on December sixth, and the location is not
Golden Gate Park, unfortunately, but it's somewhere
adjacent to it, just a bit larger.
[Narrator] Not just a Stones show, the lineup included
the biggest names from the West Coast scene.
From The Grateful Dead, and the Jefferson Airplane,
to Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young.
Yet a location was still not confirmed,
with Dick Saint John's Sears Point Raceway
the most likely alternative to Golden Gate Park.
They said Ron would you come out and negotiate
a deal with Sears Point Raceway?
So I flew out to San Francisco,
I sat down with Dick Saint John, and he basically said
"well your free concert we need $100,000
"to clean everything up, we need $100,000
"to cover a 10 million dollar insurance policy.
They gave me another why they needed money.
And then also we need any rights to a film.
So I said first of all, it's a free concert.
We're not paying you $300,000, so that deal blew up.
[Narrator] It was two days before the event,
and The Stones' team was now desperate.
And at that point, a new location was offered to them.
The Altamont Speedway, 60 miles east of San Francisco
was a remote racetrack located amidst
the rolling hills of Alameda County.
Owned by ex-racing driver, Dick Carter it was
an unlikely candidate for a major rock festival.
Dick Carter, his biggest audience ever before
was he had 6,000 people show up for a demolition derby.
It's Thursday afternoon, and The Stones' people
don't know exactly what to do, but they got a look at it.
So they get a traffic helicopter from one of the local
radio stations and they take Rock Scully,
and Michael Lange, the producer of Woodstock
who showed up for some reason, what not.
And they fly over to Altamont.
Rock looks out and he sees oil stained asphalt,
broken glass everywhere, just this horrible panorama.
And he's looking out there going what the heck?
And he hears Michael Lange go this is perfect.
We can do this here.
[Narrator] And like that Altamont had a green light.
With only a day to prepare the venue,
the road crew rushed to set up this new site.
The Stones' team had already begun building the stage
and organizing the lighting rig at Sears Point.
And this was simply dismantled and re-erected at Altamont.
There was no time to properly evaluate
or rethink the original plans, although upon his arrival
tour manager Sam Cutler immediately had concerns.
The major, major problem was that the stage
that had been perfect for Sears Point,
because it was gonna be on the side of the hill,
was now at the bottom of a hill.
And the stage was knee high, so it was
effortlessly easy for people to get on it.
The show was on a Saturday, I saw the place midday
on Friday for the first time and was horrified.
And there was already 100,000 odd people on site.
And this stage was isolated in the middle of them.
So we tried to make barricades of trucks and stuff
around it and get set up for a show.
And I knew on the Friday this was gonna be
a massive, massive public order problem.
[Narrator] The show went ahead,
with no food or water stands, no amenities of any kind,
and only basic medical services on site.
The 300,000 concert goers who flocked to the venue
had no idea what was awaiting them.
It was the very end of the '60s, the last mass congregation
of the counterculture before a new decade began.
This should have been a celebration.
The sun came up, it was a great day.
And then at some point they officially let people in,
and this mob of young people came rushing down
the hill with the blankets, and trying
to grab themselves a tiny little space to sit.
And the mood was definitely cheerful, and fun, and like
yes this is gonna be like Woodstock, this is groovy.
I couldn't make it to Woodstock but I'm here.
[Narrator] But it did not take long
for the atmosphere to change.
The problem was there was a lot of LSD,
bad acid, bad drugs, lots of cheap booze.
So, by the time the show opened midday on the Saturday,
you had three, 400,000 people completely out of it.
And the fights began, and it just degenerated from there.
[Narrator] With The Hell's Angels,
a visible presence around the stage
and throughout the festival grounds,
at midday the first act appeared, Santana.
Halfway through the performance San Francisco peace activist
and promoter, Bert Kanegson was the first of many victims
to face the wrath of the concerts brutal security force.
This overweight Latino, stark naked, whipped out of
his brains on LSD that was probably laced
with methedrine, and guzzling Red Mountain wine.
He wanders down the hill into the front
of the stage where The Hell's Angels are.
And this is just like bad news right away.
And Bert sees this happening, and he jumps down.
And he starts in on this all men are brothers,
and begging the Angels not to beat this guy.
They turn on Bert, and they rain pool cues down.
They bust him up so good, he has 60 stitches in his head.
[Narrator] It was just the beginning.
The Angels' presence on the stage
and at the front of the audience increased.
And as The Jefferson Airplane took
their places for the second performance,
it was hard to distinguish the band from the bikers.
More of the crowd were singled out for beatings.
And when the Airplane's lead singer Marty Balin
tried to intervene, he too was attacked.
These guys were the real thing, they weren't
the little biking club that they had at Hyde Park.
They've got psychopaths, and murderers, ex cons,
and God knows what in there, they're bad news.
[Grace] It's all right, it's kind of weird up here.
Hey man, I'd like to mention that The Hell's Angels
just smashed Marty Balin in the face,
and knocked him out for a bit.
I'd like to thank you for that.
[Grace] There's other ways.
[Hell's Angel] Hey wait, is this on?
If you're talking to me, I'm gonna talk to you.
I'm not talking to you man, I'm talking to
the people that hit my lead singer in the head.
You're talking to my people.
So let me tell you what's happening.
You are what's happening.
Hey, oh!
[Grace] No.
[Hell's Angel] Buster hold it, hold it.
This was scary, this was scary.
Sort of rationally scary, we weren't inventing anything.
We'd seen real ugliness and
hurtfulness and
savagery right in front of our eyes.
The Hell's Angels were horrible.
And it seemed almost more so because over the past decade
there had been a kind of a myth about how cool they were.
Really important to understand,
the San Francisco chapter of The Hell's Angels
was located in the Haight Ashbury.
They were well known backstage at Grateful Dead
and Jefferson Airplane concerts.
They rode bikes with the road crews.
They were an entirely different group of Hell's Angels
than say the home office over in Oakland.
The problems with The Hell's Angels at the
eventual site of the concert at Altamont
were all in front of the stage.
And they were almost entirely caused
by members of the San Jose Chapter.
And the San Jose Chapter was entirely different.
That's an hour away from San Francisco, they're not hippies.
They're not used to going to the Filmore,
they're not backstage presences, they are old fashioned
California thugs, and those were the guys
in front of the stage with the pool cues.
[Narrator] Although they were there
to capture a positive end to the Stones tour,
The Maysles Brothers and their cameramen were
now documenting the escalating chaos.
And it was The Stones' tour manager,
Sam Cutler, who attempted to restore order.
In many ways I felt essentially helpless.
In the face of people who were determined to fight
one another, what can a skinny little Englishman do?
And as the day progressed, and the violence
got worse, I was faced with this dreadful
realization that my band was gonna come.
The Rolling Stones were gonna come,
and we're gonna have to appear here.
[Narrator] And in the early afternoon
as The Flying Burrito Brothers
began the third set of the festival,
The Stones arrived on the speedway track by helicopter.
And almost immediately they were met with violence.
Mick arrived, and the rest of The Stones, minus Bill Wyman
and the first thing that happened was
he stepped out of the helicopter,
and some deranged kid on acid punched him.
[calm music]
[Camera Man] They hit Mick, somebody hit him.
So that was frightening.
And Mick arrived and got reports from people
about how dreadful the whole thing was.
We were all put in a little trailer.
So, at the beginning I'm sure we got stories
that some violence, but we didn't see
any of it and know what was going on.
But you can sense it, there was--
I don't know about situations other places,
but you can feel it in the air.
[Narrator] And this ominous mood was enough
to convince local headliners, The Grateful Dead
to abandon the concert altogether.
Arriving soon after The Stones,
only to discover that members of their road crew
had already been assaulted by Angels, they decided to bail.
The band who had pioneered the very idea of
the free concert, wanted no part of this event.
The bottom line was The Grateful Dead ran.
They backed out of it, they saw there was too much violence.
If they would have performed I think
it might have been a whole different ballgame
as opposed to saying oh The Stones--
If The Grateful Dead had performed there two or three
hour set I'm sure it would have mellowed everybody,
It might put everybody to sleep eventually.
They were doing all the drugs and all that.
But the end result was they ran.
So now you had that lag time before The Stones came out.
And all the bad drugs, the violence,
and all that stuff going on there but The Stones
still came out and performed, they didn't run.
[Narrator] Following The Dead's departure
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young played
as brief as set as they could manage, the beatings
by the Angels continuing throughout their performance.
After only half an hour, they quickly exited
the stage and immediately fled Altamont.
Now there was only The Stones left to play.
And in the absence of The Grateful Dead,
their headline set wasn't due to start for hours.
The crowd just sits there, they've been there all day.
There's no water, or bathrooms, no food.
They're jammed in hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder.
And they're there for more than
two hours with nothing going on.
Just as the sun starts to go down
Sonny Barger, and the Oakland chapter shows up.
They'd had a meeting that afternoon.
And they literally did just drive right through the crowd
down to the front of the stage, get off,
park their bikes, get off and sat on the stage.
It was an amazing display.
[Narrator] And once darkness had fallen,
The Stones finally took to the stage,
outnumbered by the hordes of Angels all around them.
As they kicked off their set they managed
to rise above the unsettling atmosphere.
The Stones played out of their skin,
and quite probably out of fear.
Because by this time, The Hell's Angels
are all over the stage, and if they stopped playing
they might not even have got out alive.
And under duress, and with that kind of adrenaline flowing
they put on one hell of a performance.
* Pleased to meet you, I hope you guess my name *
* But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game *
It was just phenomenal, just Charlie and Wyman
had the bottom locked down, the guitars were going off
like sparks, and Jagger was singing like he meant it,
like none of that sort of loopy caricature
the he tends to go, he was real about this thing.
[Narrator] But this impressive performance
could not suppress the brutality
that would soon disrupt their set.
And although later some of the band claimed
they were unable to see the full extent of the violence,
the cameras filming the events on and around the stage
captured a concert descending into chaos.
Things just went from bad to worse.
And really there's no controlling it.
There's fights everywhere, people rushing the stage,
being thrown off the stage, fights in front of the stage.
We were more than aware of what was going on.
All the light was back light,
50,000 watts of backlight, bright is your living room.
So all this stuff about The Rolling Stones didn't know
it was happening, and didn't see what was happening
is complete and utter bullshit.
And you can see in the movie where Jagger's
dancing around and his eyes happen out in the audience.
Ae sees somebody take up a blow from a pool cue,
and he just goes bomb and stops dancing.
Jagger has so much command as a performer.
And to see him struggling, it's terrifying.
Let's get it together, I can't do any more
than just ask you, just beg you just to keep it together.
You can do it, it's within your power, everyone.
Everyone, Hell's Angels, everybody.
At that point certainly, bands like the Jefferson Airplane
and The Rolling Stones they were avatars, they were gods.
And to see them desperate to try to stop
this violence happening right in front of them,
and failing, it's unforgettable.
You could see it itched in people's faces
at the front of the stage, just looking at Jagger
and saying please stop, help us out.
This is, we're watching everything dying here.
And in between the songs you had these deathly silences.
And then sort of then [imitates cracking]
sort of the sound of cracked heads and
people shouting "no" and
wanting everything to stop.
The brotherhood of man thing, which was the hippie dream,
it was all coming really unstuck there, very very badly.
I was right behind the amps, so I could see,
I could only see what I could see.
But at some point Keith, just like Marty Balin,
Keith stops and says hey, you can't do this here.
And the music stopped.
[Keith] Look cat, that guy there if he doesn't stop it.
Listen, either those cats cool it man or we don't play.
But then there was some kind of, another one of
these attacks and you could tell it was just awful.
And people were,
they look liked if you were fish in a bowl
and you dropped a pebble in, and all the fish
would scurry as fast as they could.
That was like there was a center place,
where something really ugly was happening.
And people would just try to get away
as fast as they possibly could.
I left, I just walked, left the stage
and sort of walked away up the little hill.
Then I realized I'm not coming to any more of these things
I'm not gonna sort of believe the Woodstock,
Monterey Pop, human being myth anymore.
The Hell's Angels were a huge mistake.
We're just not all brothers and sisters.
There's just elements of ugliness,
and viciousness, and hurtfulness,
that are too powerful for that.
[Narrator] And the viciousness unleashed
at the concert culminated in murder.
18 year old student Meredith Hunter,
caught up in a brawl with the Angels in front of the stage
made the mistake of pulling a gun on his assailants.
He would not live to see the end of The Stones' set.
Finally they're doing "Under my Thumb",
and a guy pulled out a gun, got two shots off,
maybe 60 feet in front of the stage,
and was stabbed to death by one of the Hell's Angels.
The band stopped.
All of a sudden I got told "Ron, Ron
we need the ambulance, a guy's been stabbed."
So that's what I was told, so I started running
to go to the side of the stage to get the ambulance.
And as I'm running along there, I get to it
and there's no driver, typical situation.
I'm screaming for the driver, and I'm running along there.
Where's the driver to the ambulance, to get him for them.
And a cop says hey, wait wait.
Are you about that guy that got stabbed?
I said yes, he said you don't have to run, he's dead.
And that was like a gut, that was just so bad at the time.
[Narrator] And although the footage was never released
in The Maysles Brothers film, "Gimme Shelter",
in the years following the event,
eyewitness accounts reported that Hunter's body
was brought to the stage by members of the audience
in an attempt to end the Angels' violence.
I talked to the guys that carried his body
to the stage, and I talked to the guy who carried
his body from the stage backstage.
And they put it on the stage, right in front
of Keith Richards and the Hell's Angels
swarmed over and just pushed it back off.
There's a photograph of that.
There's a photograph of Mick Jagger looking away
with his hand over his face like this, and a bunch of
Hell's Angels bent over mysteriously in the corner.
Yeah they just dropped a dead body
on your stage, and they're pushing it off.
What are you gonna do about that fellas?
They're gonna stay on stage for another hour...
terrified.
I whispered to Mick, "the guy's been killed man,
you gotta get off stage right now", right?.
"He had a gun, you gotta get off stage,"
to which Mick replied, and kudos to the man,
and I've always admired him for it.
"We can't get off stage, we can't leave,
"we have to finish the show."
[Narrator] When The Stones eventually boarded a helicopter
and left Altamont, they were shell shocked.
Due to fly out for a number of European shows the next day
their schedule didn't allow them time to fully grasp
the magnitude of the event they had just experienced.
In the days that followed, where some news reports
glossed over the violence of the festival,
slowly the facts began to emerge.
And alongside the arrests of cult leader Charles Manson
and his murderous followers only days beforehand,
soon Altamont was being identified as an
event of real historical significance.
Well Altamont is always the thing that's cited
as being the end of the flower power era, the hippie era.
And I think, it's certainly a signpost.
I think it was downhill all the way after that.
Murder does tend to concentrate the mind a little.
I don't think The Stones realized the significance,
or the impact of Altamont until long after.
I think most of us didn't.
This is the famous Zhou Enlai thing when, asked in about 1950
about the impact of the French Revolution on the subsequent
course of history, and he said it was too early to say.
So, ultimately the sort of rock and roll equivalent
of that in a way, no one knew in December '69
or even by summer 1970 that it was gonna
go down in rock history as this seminal moment,
this turning point, this tipping point.
The hard truths that those events represent
about how hard change is to achieve, and what
violence in American culture represents,
and how it can manifest itself even in contexts where
you would think would be the last place it would occur,
those were important lessons.
And those were lessons that signaled,
guess what we're not going back to The Garden.
That became pretty apparent.
I don't think anybody was walking around
with flowers in their hair after all that.
A new equilibrium was found, and actually
very quickly people almost thought,
did that late '60s what happen then, what really happened?
The negative out punched the good there, unfortunately.
And people wanted to distance themselves from that.
So the '70s there was kind of a marked break.
The flower stuff seemed just an absolute joke.
I saw Monetary Pop in 1975, and the audience laughed,
they laughed at the look, the sound, everything.
I was horrified by that, it's the '60s.
To me, I hung onto the good part of the '60s.
It had really been put to bed, that period.
People didn't want to know, you know.
It kind of quickly became the forgotten zone.
And Altamont, and the Manson murders
were instrumental, really, in closing that door.
[Narrator] And although The Stones moved
ever onwards with their career,
the event also closed the door for them too.
The bad boys of the British Invasion would
never again be at the center of the culture,
politics and social commentary notably absent from
their subsequent work, they're remarkable reign
as the voice of a generation was over.
There's The Rolling Stones before Altamont,
and there's The Rolling Stones after Altamont.
Their just two separate things.
All that stuff about the dark guys, and the bad boys,
and the sympathy for the Devil had played out
to this absolute, real example of evil.
And having faced that that could never go back
to their little pretend kingdom.
And you can see that in the "Sticky Fingers" album.
The three songs recorded before Altamont,
"Brown Sugar", "Wild Horses", and "You Got to Move"
are completely different type of music
than the rest of that album.
Whatever happened at Altamont to the Rolling Stones
it changed them forever, and their music was never the same,
their shows were never the same,
their personal relations were never the same,
nothing about their lives went on the way it was before.
[contemplative music]