Altamont Speedway — Rolling Stones Free Concert 1969

On 6 December 1969, the Rolling Stones performed a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in Alameda County, California, that has become one of the most notorious events in rock music history. Promoted as a West Coast Woodstock, the concert drew an estimated 300,000 people but descended into violence almost immediately. The Hells Angels had been hired as security in exchange for $500 worth of beer — a disastrous arrangement that resulted in Angels beating audience members with pool cues throughout the day. During the Stones' set, 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by a Hells Angel after producing a gun; the killing was captured on film by documentary makers Albert and David Maysles and appears in the resulting film Gimme Shelter.

Altamont effectively ended the mythology of 1960s utopianism that Woodstock had briefly constructed four months earlier. The concert had been thrown together in less than a week after Golden Gate Park negotiations fell through. The decision to use the Hells Angels as security was reportedly made following their non-violent use at earlier Bay Area free concerts, but the scale and organisation of Altamont were entirely different. Four people died that day, though only Hunter's death was a homicide.

The Altamont Speedway subsequently became Altamont Motorsports Park and continues to operate as a racing venue. There is no permanent memorial to the concert or its victims. The events are extensively documented in Gimme Shelter — widely considered one of the great music documentaries — and in numerous accounts of both the Rolling Stones and the end of the 1960s.