Altamont

Altamont, edited by Jonathan Eisen

July, 1970  Avon Books

Jonathan Eisen published a trio of rock books in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s: The Age Of Rock and The Age Of Rock II, and finally Twenty-Minute Fandangos And Forever Changes. I have all three of them and keep meaning to read them; they’re very long anthologies of rock journalism by various authors. The first one seems to be mostly taken from magazines, but the last two are all new material, and both feature great, super-weird essays by future Blue Oyster Cult lyricsist Sandy Pearlman. These three books are fairly easy to find, however this fourth anthology of Eisen’s, Altamont, is quite rare and overpriced. Luckily I was able to get a copy from Interlibrary Loan, which was pretty surprising given that the book was a paperback original. 

As with the three rock books mentioned above, Altamont only features an Introduction by Eisen, after which the articles are all contributed by various rock writers. The range is much more narrow than the other three anthologies though, limited mostly to various indictments against the infamous Altamont debacle, that December 1969 single-day festival where Hell’s Angels ran roughshod over the cowed hippie audience, where four people lost their lives (one killed near the stage, two run over, and one drowned). In fact the indictments run so thick and constant that by the end of the book I almost felt like that lame old joke, “Yes, Mrs, Lincoln – but how was the play?” Because honestly you don’t get much about any of the actual music that day, it’s just all about the horrific conditions, with Hell’s Angels beating people to pulp, an obese naked man running around, and the Stones in general and Mick Jagger in particular being blamed for just about everything bad. 

Altamont features unusual packaging, sort of along the lines of a few other paperbacks of the era: The Making Of Kubrick’s 2001 and Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book!; like them it’s stuffed to the gills with black and white photos. It also has some very large print; it runs to 271 pages, but you could read this thing in a few hours. Curiously only a few photos are used, but there’s a lot of repetition of them throughout the text. Overall it seems to me that Avon was trying to make the book an art piece along the lines of the Kubrick paperback. Or perhaps they feared their target audience would be put off by too many words and stuff. This runs counter to the three rock books Eisen also edited at the time; some of the collected pieces in those run to inordinate lengths and come off like doctoral theses on rock. None of that is to be found here, though, with all the contributors sticking to a more grounded approach to the Altamont debacle. However it would’ve been nice if there had been some discussion of the music that was to be heard that day. 

Eisen’s intro gives a bit of historical background on the “tribal gatherings” that began in the late ‘60s, culminating of course in Woodstock, and how Altamont was the dark reflection of it. Or the “counter-Woodstock,” as the first page of the book puts it. Eisen at times approaches the “egghead rock journalism” vibe of his other three rock anthologies: “Nevertheless the outlaw cult, while potentially revolutionary, has reached the point where it is helping sunder the national fabric, but in potentially destructive, privatistic directions rather than in ways that can help accommodate new and more humane ways of organizing itself socially.” Yeah, but what about the music, man? Sadly there isn’t much about it. Indeed, “Altamont was nothing in itself. It was not very special except to make people realize how similar we all are to the society we have no choice but to abhor.” This is just a taste of the America bashing we’ll endure in Altamont, but then Eisen’s entire work here is thrown into question on page 22, when we encounter the line: “…the gigantic and insatiable ego of Mick Jaggar[sp].” 

Of course, Jagger’s name is spelled correctly from then on out, but that sole gaffe is enough to make one wonder why the hell he’s even bothering to read the book. (And to be fair, some copy editor at Avon could’ve made the flub.) And also, I want my rock stars to have gigantic and insatiable egos! Eisen though is part of that Jon Landau school of rock criticism where he thinks every rocker should be some hardscrabble man of the people who speaks from his heart and other such bullshit. To hell with that – I want ‘em loaded to the gills on drugs and self-importance. At any rate, the “insatiable ego” dig on Jagger is due to the long-held conviction that murder at Altamont only occurred because Jagger “insisted” that the group not take the stage until nightfall. It wasn’t until the ‘80s that it was revealed, by journalist Stanley Booth, that the Stones came on late because they were waiting for Bill Wyman to arrive. 

Speaking of the murder, it was of a young black man named Meredith Hunter who was stabbed by a Hell’s Angel mere feet away from the Stones as they were performing on stage. There is inconsistency in the book, though, because Eisen in his intro states that Hunter “may or may not have” been pointing a pistol at Jagger when the Angels swooped in on him; the Angels long argued that they’d saved Jagger’s life. Later in the book, though, a study of the Altamont documentary reveals that frame-by-frame analysis of the fated moment “clearly” shows a pistol in Hunter’s hand. That would seem to render Eisen’s “may or may not have” statement a bit moot. The whole affair still seems to be shrouded in mystery; by the by, Sandy Pearlman in Twenty Minute Fandangos delivered a super-long (and super weird) essay titled “Excerpts From The History Of Los Angeles, 1965 – 1969,” apparently the work in progress of a book he never completed, which went into a “conspiracy theory” about the murder at Altamont. 

The first actual piece in the book is pure self-involved late ‘60s Woodstock Age: a poem, with lines line “But Babylon opens/To sweet lies.” It’s titled “Altamont Premonition” and it’s by George Paul Csicsery, who per the credits “writes for west coast publications” and was “one of the most beautiful people [Eisen] met” when he was putting together the book. Okay… Much better is the following piece, “Satan and the Angels: Paradise Loused,” by Andy Gordon. This is one of the best parts of the book, as it’s a long memoir about attending Altamont and so provides a lot more context than the other essays. Per the credits this is an “original piece” for the book; Gordon was a graduate student, and he well captures the nightmarish vibe of Altamont, with the mounting madness of the Angels and the increasingly dire situations. Yet he too has little to say about the music, ultimately ducking out of the concert when he sees an open spot in the massive crowd around him while the Stones are performing: “I drove home the same way I came – alone.” 

“Bye-bye Sweet Brian, So Long Mick,” by Robert Somma is humorous in that the entire thing is a bitch session. Somma literally bitches about everything in 1969, “a very bad year,” in particular the albums that came out. This is of course hilarious given the quality of music released in 1969…here we are over fifty years later and people are still listening to it! Good grief, Somma even complains about “the second Rolling Stones compilation,” saying it’s not as good as the first one was; he’s clearly talking about Through The Past, Darkly, which contained songs like “Paint It Black” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “2000 Light Years From Home.” Yeah, that one really sucked, man! According to the credits Somma was an editor of some magazine called Fusion; his diatribe becomes tiresome (expectedly doling out the usual political complaints as well), but he did make me chuckle with his off-hand dismissal of The Who’s Tommy: “a not-quite-first-rate hyrbrid essay on what it’s like being Peter Townshend.” 

As mentioned we get a few interviews, including a seemingly endless one with Sonny Barger, head of the San Francisco Hell’s Angels. It’s conducted with KSAN, one of the more famous progressive freeform FM stations of the day, but the names of the KSAN jocks doing the interview aren’t stated. It’s presented as a transcript, and humorously one of the KSAN jocks is refered to as “KSAN (Girl).” Barger insists his Angels were just doing the job they were hired to do and also takes a moment to rake Jagger over the coals, something that’s done in practically every article in the book. My favorite part of this one was how the KSAN “Girl” kept trying to ask Barger a question but he just kept talking over her. Otherwise it just goes on and on. Better yet is “The Terror Beyond Death,” by Lar Tusb, a pseudonym of Richard Meltzer (per the credits at the end of the book). This is a satirical piece that puts a darkly humorous spin on the Altamont debacle, complete with b.s. quotes from fictitious characters. Too bad the rest of the book didn’t follow the vibe of this one. 

“Parallel And Paradigm” sort of follows the same lines, but is a little more reserved in the satirical department. This one’s by Bobby Abrams, apparently another Fusion writer, and he gives us a rundown of the big events of the ‘60s, leading into a dissertation on the Stones and Altamont. Per the credits he’s got another piece on the Stones in The Age Of Rock II, which I got years ago but still haven’t completely read. (I mostly got it for the Pearlman stuff.) George Paul Csicery returns with a sort of diatribe titled “The Sound Of Marching People.” This proto-The Greening Of America comes off like a lecture as Csicery goes on about anarchy, the government, the environment, and the like…with not one word about the Stones or Altamont. 

Ralph Gleason, famous critic of the day and author of The Jefferson Airplane And The San Francisco Sound, provides a short narration of his experience at Altamont which practically drips with venom. His anger at Jagger is especially pronounced. As if that weren’t enough, we get more anger courtesy an interview that’s conducted with Gleason later in the book. “Mick Jagger is a revolutionary – bullshit! He’s a rich man...I dig his performance, and I dig his music, and I like the album, but that’s all going to be forgotten; I’m the enemy of the Rolling Stones.” Curiously this gradually leads into Gleason’s pronouncement that “God is dead.” And also that Altamont was “Jagger’s super ego trip.” Also curious that none of the other Stones are ever much mentioned…I think there’s like one or two references to Ketih Richards in the entire book. 

There are a few more pieces here, like another first-hand recollection by “Detroit Annie” (who goes unmentioned in the credits), but overall Altamont comes off more like a quick cash-in on “The Forgotten Festival.” I really didn’t learn much from it at all; much more informative was Robert Santelli’s Aquarius Rising, which incidentally listed Eisen’s book in the bibliography. Altamont fails to live up to the “multiple views” promised on the cover, mostly because every single view collected here is the same. Ironically it’s now this book that is forgotten, not Altamont, which has become a buzzword to describe the death of the Woodstock Nation dream (ie “post-Altamont”).