Stefan Ponek, who helped organize the event, hosted a December 7, 1969, KSAN-FM radio broadcast of a four-hour, "day after" post-concert telephone call-in forum, provided the following for the 2000 release (the four-hour recording is included) of the Gimme Shelter DVD: While charges and recriminations were flying, there were some people trying to see what we can learn from the Altamont disaster. The Angels were together and the people weren’t together — they didn’t have time to get together, you know? If they had wanted to get rid of the Angels, honorably, they could have taken up another collection and laid another five hundred dollars on them to split, which they would have done, man.” Jagger: “Why are we fighting? Why are we fighting? We don’t want to fight at all. Who wants to fight, who is it? Every other scene has been cool. We gotta stop right now. You know, if we can’t there’s no point . . .”

For one thing, Wavy feels people had a whole wrong set of expectations about what it was going to be. What it was, as compared with what it might have been, is sad to ponder. The layout at the raceway is easy enough to visualize without a map. It consists of an 80-acre plot of land with an auto raceway carved into its central plateau. This has got high rolling ground on three sides — these sides where were the earliest autos parked — and a low bowl-like fourth area on the side nearest the highway. The latter was where the stage was set up, since it afforded the greatest line of sight, line of hearing potential for the greatest number of people. By night, with only some 5,000 people milling around the interior section, it seemed to stretch on forever. It was hard to imagine that it could ever be totally filled with people, as far as the eye could see looking out from the stage. At first — before people settled in on the rolling pasture land — there was a nice kind of communal spirit on the hike. At least half the crowd was from the San Francisco Bay Area, but lots of them had come from afar. There was one red-headed longhair in Bermuda shorts who’d driven up in three and a half days from Florida. People from Denver, Los Angeles, Orange County (“everybody we know is coming up,” says one VW busload full), San Diego, Seattle, Vancouver, even New York and Pennsylvania.I had expected a nice sort of peaceful concert. I didn’t expect anything like that in San Francisco because they are so used to having nice things there. That’s where free concerts started, and I thought a society like San Francisco could have done much better. I’d never seen a Hell’s Angel before,” explained Young, who’s from a small town in Maine, “and I didn’t really know they could do that.” After the patchwork, he was able to watch the rest of the concert. He took no more photos. Carlos Santana, lead guitarist for Santana, the afternoon’s first band, watched the fighting breaking out in front of him during Santana’s set. Eden Hospital in Castro Valley still had two casualties on Wednesday. One was Candy Sue Johnson, who suffered head injuries as a result of the same accident as McDonald. The other was Steven Vitali, 19, who also suffered head injuries in an accident of still-undetermined origin. By Wednesday, Steve was in satisfactory condition, and Candy in fair condition, but both were still in the intensive care unit and unable to speak. Highland Hospital in Oakland reported treating one person. The Dead were scheduled to play just before — and then, as the day wore on, just after — the Stones. But by the time the Stones had finished their set, the scene was too tense to risk stretching the day out any longer. That’s the way things went at Altamont — so badly that the Grateful Dead, prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn’t even get to play.

The land itself is ok,” Haley, “It’s mostly just debris. There must be a million Red Mountain bottles here, and about half of them are broken. Spirits are really good; we’re doing it because we want to. There’s pretty good vibrations here while we’re working, but it gets pretty cold at night.” They planned to clean the land of the neighboring ranchers when they finished around the speedway, “if the ranchers will let us.” Fat chance the ranchers will let them. They’re pretty leery about longhairs these days. Remember what happened to Sharon Tate. One local rancher went so far as to quite seriously and quite openly propose genocide as the solution to the whole concert problem. Try to tell that man you want to mend his fence. They started building up a hype,” says Scully, “to be certain they’d get a lot of people, big numbers.” The name of the game is money, power and ego, and money is first and it brings power. The Stones didn’t do it for free, they did it for money, only the tab was paid in a different way. Whoever goes to see that movie paid for the Altamont religious assembly.Barger also had a few words for people who “call themselves flower children. There is some of them lousy people ain’t a bit better than the worst of us, and it’s about time they realized it. They can call us all kinds of lousy dogs, and say that we shouldn’t be there. But you know what, when they started messing with our bikes, they started it.” I myself,” said Cutler, “feel that the Hell’s Angels were as helpful as they saw that they could be in a situation which most people found very confusing, including the Hell’s Angels. Everybody found last night very confusing so everybody acted on their own initiative. If you want to ask me what the Hell’s Angels were doing last night then I’m not qualified to speak for the Hell’s Angels, you’ll have to talk to the Hell’s Angels yourself.” One CHP who refused to identify himself said the main problem was just too many people. “Those roads are only designed for about 15,000 cars at the most, and there were thousands more than that. It wouldn’t have even mattered if the new freeway was finished; it couldn’t have handled it either.”

So after hearing that and weighing other factors, Mr. Sparks decided the risk is too great for the possible gains in such a joint venture. Booth, Stanley (2000). The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (2nded.). A Capella Books. ISBN 978-1-55652-400-4. Meredith had never been in any trouble. He had only been involved in one fight in his life, that one to defend his sister. Gwen said he did have a gun. “It was almost always in the house; he had it for his own protection. He only took it with him when he’d go out to big affairs. I know he took it with him to the festival. He pulled it out and showed it to them, but only to make them stop and think when they were beating him. I know he would never have used it. The Angels have the gun now. Patty saw them take it.” The possibility of a film had been no spontaneous afterthought. Arrangements were underway at the very outset of the tour. Haskell Wexler, who directed the motion picture Medium Cool was the first considered by the Stones to shoot the American tour. Then some disagreements over the form and content of the film ended in Wexler’s disassociating himself from the enterprise. There were apparently no ill feelings. Meredith liked all kinds of music, his sister said. He’d gone to the Monterey Jazz Festival, had a good time, and went to this one thinking it would be much the same. He went to see the Stones, “just like everyone else.”

Restrictions

With all the grandeur of Bert Parks inviting last year’s Miss America to step forward, the Airplane had asked, “Will the Hell’s Angels please take the stage.” Robert Christgau (July 1972). "The Rolling Stones: Can't Get No Satisfaction". Newsday. Robertchristgau.com . Retrieved October 25, 2010. WARNING: Altamont products can expose you to chemicals including formaldehyde, which is known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more information go to P65Warnings.ca.gov. Please do not ingest, burn and inhale, or absorb Altamont products, while pregnant or otherwise. Altamont products are not edible, nutritious, or tasty. Altamont products are not suitable for minors in the state of California or anyone who may identify as such. In compliance with Illinois state law, Altamont products are intended to be used only for sport and recreation. They are not intended to be used for violence, by minors, as a replacement for construction materials, divination, sedition, health supplements, gambling, unregulated securities exchange, or any other unlawful activities as defined under Illinois state and federal law. Altamont products are not FDA or SEC approved. Please use responsibly, lawfully, ergonomically, and hygienically. More and more time passed, and eventually it all came down to a big last-minute crisis. Scully and Grogan had been made to look foolish repeatedly, by starting to enter negotiations with San Francisco park and recreation people on various occasions, four, three and two weeks ahead of the scheduled December 7th concert date — only to withdraw without explanation. The Rolling Stones Disaster at Altamont: Let It Bleed". Rolling Stone. January 21, 1970 . Retrieved May 4, 2019.