A Slap in the Face of Naïveté

Terry O'Neill

If Woodstock was the zenith of the hippie-era aspiration for free love, then Altamont was its nadir

National Post, Monday, September 14, 2009

If nothing else, the news that British police are reviewing the July 1969 drowning death of founding Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones demonstrates that, even after almost half a century at centre stage, the Stones -- even the dead ones on whom moss has most certainly grown -- continue to possess an uncanny ability to command the public spotlight unlike few other entertainment acts. Or, for that matter, unlike few other people on Earth.

This ability to mesmerize the media and the masses also was evident at a more mundane level when newspapers and websites around the world published an entertainment-industry trifle disclosing that Sir Mick Jagger and his grizzled group of geriatric rockers are now, at $9-million a show, the world's most expensive wedding band.

It seems that whatever the story --dead Stones, money-grubbing Stones or simply ever-rolling Stones -- it matters little. They captivate us still.

It must be noted, however, that there was one rather significant show-biz and pop-culture story from the summer with which the Rolling Stones were not associated: the celebration in mid-August of the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the renowned gig at which the famous band did not play, but which nevertheless quickly became known as an epoch-defining event.

Having missed the magic bus ride to the Age of Aquarius that supposedly sprung fully formed from the mud of Max Yasgur's field in upstate New York, the Rolling Stones decided to stage a festival of their own later in the year at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. But poor planning forced the Stones to move the event at the last moment to a venue 30 minutes down the road.

And so, despite only two days' notice and with virtually no advertising, some 300,000 fans flocked to Altamont Speedway on Dec. 6, 1969, to gambol in what they expected to be some sort of post-Woodstockian stardust being sprinkled on an event billed as "three days of peace and music." That was the plan, anyway.

Instead, it is generally agreed that Altamont, with its four fatalities (one fan stabbed by a boozy Hells Angels bouncer; one drowned in an irrigation ditch; two run over by a hit-and-run driver while they slept) brought a crashing end to the euphoria created by the Woodstock festival just four months before. If Woodstock was the zenith of the hippie-era aspiration for free love, free weed and an eternal playlist of rock and psychedelic music, then Altamont was its nadir.

After all these years, however, it seems to me that Woodstock, which a contemporary observer enthused was "the greatest weekend since creation," was actually much less than what it appeared at the time, and Altamont was actually much more. Indeed, if it is true that Woodstock embodied generational aspirations -- that is, a drug-fuelled, euphoric utopianism where music, peace and love frolic like lambs in a field of clover -- then common sense should tell us that whatever success the festival enjoyed was, to put it bluntly, a fluke.

It was all a fantasy. The Age of Aquarius was actually the Age of Illusion. Or Self-Delusion. Anyone with half a brain knows, or should know, that half a million people cannot subsist on pot smoke and good intentions, no matter how much Jimi Hendrix they listen to. Yes, it was a good party, but it was not and could not be reality.

As surely as Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings inevitably return with "terror and slaughter" to claim hapless people who fall for the latest "ism," certain truths about our mortal existence here on Earth asserted themselves with devastating consequence at Altamont. Chief among them was the fact that half-baked notions of universal love will do little to protect human wellbeing when common sense is jettisoned.

Jagger may have thought that giving thugs unlimited beer, in exchange for their agreeing to protect his pitiful four-foot-high stage, would provide sufficient security, and he also may have presumed that an overriding Aquarian spirit would pacify the throng, but he was dead wrong on both counts.

If naivete was allowed to strut about unchecked at Woodstock, it received a needed slap in the face at Altamont. The idealism of the hippie era didn't tragically die at Altamont; it committed unavoidable suicide.

I can't help but recall the interview Jagger gave to a distinguished panel of academics and religious leaders during a British public-affairs TV show, World in Action, filmed shortly after he had escaped drug charges in the summer of 1967.

Asked how he wanted to be understood by the world, especially by young people, Jagger answered, "Just in the very way that I started myself, when I was quite young, which is just to have as good a time as possible, which most young people do try and do without any regard to responsibilities of any sort... The main thing to start off is to have as good a time as possible."

Two years later at Altamont, it became quite apparent that simply having "as good a time as possible" was as pathetic an excuse for a personal philosophy as could be imagined. It remains a tragedy that so many people of the Sixties and beyond still fail to recognize this. - Terry O'Neill is a Vancouver writer and editor who is also co-host of RoadkillRadio.com.

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