Book Review: 'Just a Shot Away: Peace, Love, and Tragedy with the Rolling Stones at Altamont'

Over the weekend, I finished my most recent read and it was a good one: Just a Shot Away: Peace, Love, and Tragedy with the Rolling Stones at Altamont by Saul Austerlitz (Thomas Dunne Books, 2018).

When I was a kid, I read Jagger Unauthorized by Christopher Andersen (Delacorte Press, 1993) so I was familiar with with the Altamont tragedy.

Austerlitz's book takes a much deeper dive looking into the forgotten life of 18-year-old Meredith Hunter, the black man murdered during the Rolling Stones set at Altamont. The show was on December 6, 1969, effectively putting a period on the sixties counterculture movement.

Altamont was meant to be "Woodstock West." A massive free concert featuring Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Rolling Stones. The Dead were the main planners of the event as they were used to doing free shows in parks around the Bay Area in Califorina. Planning for Altamont was haphazard at best and the site was moved a couple times to accomodate various issues. Altamont Speedway in Alameda County was secured as the site of the show on December 4, 1969 - just two days before the promoted gig. Since there was no time for good planning or setup, the stage was set at ground level (because it had been built for a different site), the lighting was bad because gear didn't show up, the sound was bad, there were far too few bathrooms and other facilities.

So 300,000 show up for a poorly planned free show at a massive speedway not meant for concerts and most folks couldn't even see the stage. What happens when you're at a show and you can't see? If you are in GA, you jostle around and try to get closer. Well, that's what so many folks did during Altamont, creating a crush of folks by the too-low stage and it only got worse as the day went on.

So rampant drug use - including wine dosed with acid - made the crowd angry, paranoid, sick or all three and the mood was not good vibes.

Members of the Hell's Angels motorcyle club provided "security" for the event, circling the stage to keep attendees from the band's equipment and the performers themselves.

In the aknowledgements, Austerlitz notes that he conducted 80 original interviews to form his story and to piece together a definititve truth of the concert melee - and to shine a light on Hunter's death.

So the Hell's Angels, known for their docile nature and caring attitudes, shocked the performers in their gross lethality. All during the day, various Angels beat up concert goers all the while continuing to drink and take drugs.

So an agitated crowd is consistently tormented by even angrier Angels all day long. Openly beating crowd members with fists and pool cues, the Angels were attacking crowd members constantly. The performers could see some of the violence at the front of the stage and often begged for calm. Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin was even punched by an Angel. So members of the Dead, especially Jerry Garcia, are watching all this go down and decided to split. Of this, Austerlitz is very critical.

So the Stones finally performed after an extra delayed wait - and thousands crush the stage, trying to climb on it. Singer Mick Jagger continually stops the show, begging for calm and threatening to walk off. A major fight breaks out toward the front of the stage and Meredith Hunter, fearing for his life, pulled out the .22 he had brought as a form of protection. Hunter left the gun in his car all day, but went back for it just before the Stones' set because he felt things getting ugly. Being a black man with a white girlfriend named Patti Bredehoft, Hunter knew he would be a target of the Angels. During a fight with Hell's Angel Alan Passaro, he was stabbed several times and beaten badly.

The concert tragedy and view of the murder is the subject of the 1970 documentary Gimme Shelter. Filmmakers were on site to record the day for possible use as a concert film for the Rolling Stones. The shots showing Passaro stabbing Hunter last about two seconds.

Meredith Hunter's name is never uttered during the documentary.

On-site doctors tried to save him, but Hunter died on site from his wounds. Passaro was tried for Hunter's murder and acquitted based on the Gimme Shelter footage, determing the Angel had acted in self-defense. I'll note also that the autopsy found methamphetamines in Hunter's blood at the time of death.

Austerlitz spends significant time focusing on the loss of Hunter through interviews with his sister, Dixie. Through the book, we learn how Dixie and Meredith had an unstable life, born to a poor mother with schizophrenia. While Dixie did her best to care for her siblings and mother, Meredith spent his teen years in and out of juvenile detention.

The book takes a well-known story and turns it on its head by looking at the murder through the lens of modern racial injustice. Remember, this book was released in 2018 - after Eric Garner and Travyon Martin were killed by white police officers. Austerlitz repeatedly makes note of Meredith's blackness and his relationship with a white woman. He also points out that the vast majority of faces in the crowd at Altamont were white - and so were the performers. Lots of time is spent on the Hells Angels backstory and their history of racial prejudice. There's an argument here that the main story of Altamont is one of black trauma. To his credit, Austerlitz does aknowledge plainly that the Hells Angels had no problem beating plenty of white people at Altamont, too.

There's a decent amount of repetitiveness in the book and I could probably cut it down by at least 50 pages. That said, I think the book is worth your time, especially if you love history and rock n' roll stories.

Austerlitz has no problem calling out The Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones for their culpability in the death of Hunter. He also repeatedly mentions that no one from the Stones camp even bothered to phone Hunter's family with condolences, save lighting designer Chip Monck.

In the end, Hunter's family brought a wrongful death suit against the Stones. The band settled for a measely $10,000. Can you imagine this today?

The Cincinnati Who concert crushing deaths, Woodstock '99 riots, The Station Nightclub fire and the Al Rosa Villa shooting, our concert experiences are much different today. Each tragedy begets lessons learned. When is the last time you were at a show and allowed to leave and come back? How common is it now to go through a metal detector before a show? Ladies, do you own a clear plastic purse because you can't carry a bag that might conceal a lipstick...or a handgun? What about all those actual police officers and trained security we see at every show now? And the warnings before the shows start about locating the emergecy exits?

So should you read Just a Shot Away: Peace, Love, and Tragedy with the Rolling Stones at Altamont? Yeah, you should. It is a fast, engaging read - even if I can't make a straight line between the death of Meredith Hunter and those of Eric Garner and the formation of Black Lives Matter.