A STORM IS THREATENING DECEMBER 6, 1969: THE DAY THE SIXTIES DIED. GO ON A JOURNEY TO SEE HOW THE ROLLING STONES CONQUERED AN ERA AND SIMULTANEOUSLY HELPED USHER IN THE END OF A REVOLUTION, AS TOLD BY MAE PASCUAL
Against the glare of the spotlights, crowd hungry, stands The Rolling Stones—basking in their own magnitude, set to conquer the world of Rock ‘n Roll one stage at a time. “Gonna get us a little satisfaction”, sings Mick Jagger and fans scream bloody ecstasy, throwing themselves at the iconic rock god, wearing as he is forever emblazoned in our minds, the mad Uncle Sam hat of red, silver, and blue. He is energy personified, performing and hypnotizing as his hips move in time with the snare drums, as if he is connected by strings to the rhythm churned out by Keith Richards and Mick Taylor, by Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, engulfing his entire being as he moves in and out of focus of the camera recording on film what is to be one of the last concerts of a leg doomed to tragedy. This is the beginning of Gimme Shelter, a documentary film named after the lead track off of the album, “Let It Bleed,” chronicling the last weeks of The Rolling Stones’ 1969 U.S. tour. Directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, the film is best known for capturing the ill-fated December 6, 1969 Altamont Free Concert which resulted in the death of 4 individuals and the injury of several others including Jefferson Airplane’s front man, Marty Balin. Included also in the film are scenes from the Madison Square Garden concert, as well as their photography session for the cover of their video concert album, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out. But more than that, we are treated a backstage pass to the lives of The Stones on the road as they check into cheap motel rooms, guzzle booze like bottled Kool-Aid, and even get treated to a glimpse of the band working at Alabama’s famed Muscle Shoals Studio, recording “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses”. And then there’s Altamont. Of course, the film was never intended to serve as pallbearers for what the majority would deem as the death of a free-loving, Woodstock-borne era. It is important to take note that the film makers only intended to capture The Rolling Stones’ first U.S. tour after three years. But as circumstances would have it, the cameras were there to witness the unfolding of what was to be a free end-of-the-tour gig at the Altamont speedway in California turned into the end of the flower power youth counterculture as we know it. The climax of the movie, the real gut-wrenching kicker comes in the form of the parting of the crowds, the flash of a revolver in the hand of Meredith Hunter making a dash for the stage and in an eye’s blink, taken down by a Hell’s Angel. With one swift
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/August 2012
move, life was snuffed out of Hunter with a knife to his back and is swept away by the off-camera darkness. Although gruesome and shocking, the disastrous turn of events was already evident, Death’s grin looming overhead even from the haphazard dealings for the concert venue, to “security” in the form of a notorious biker gang aptly called Hell’s Angels, paid in 500 dollars worth of beer. Add to that intoxicating mix free-flowing booze, acid trippers, and a discontented and agitated crowd and you’re sure onboard a speeding train to impending doom. With the Maysles brothers and Zwerin being proponents of the Direct Cinema movement wherein filn nakers take the reactive path and record events as they naturally unfold, the movie entails hand-held camera footagw making scenes shaky and ragged in most parts. The film also employs techniques from fictional films, using shots to shape events which explains the frequent intercutting of scenes and imprecise chronological sequence in the movie. Personally, I found the movie rough and lacking focus—forcing the metaphor of death as its narrative, giving away the ending even from the beginning of the film and rushing its “death of the 60s” theme. Although cinematography and editing-wise, it was rough and tumble due to its background with the Direct Cinema movement, I quite like it as it gave a more organic and grounded “I really was there” feel to it. But what stuck to me the most was the image of the band gathered around the Maysles’ editing console, watching the tragedy that failed to reach their eyes on that fateful night in Altamont. Arguably, the film would have just been another alternative to Woodstock with a violent aftermath if not for that scene. Gimme Shelter now becomes a commentary on itself, making it seem as if the concert footage, the happenings in Altamont were just a move within a movie, with the real movie set there in the witness of the editing bay, in Mick Jagger’s blank face betraying neither shock at the brutal way a fan was killed nearly before him nor relief that it did happen, maybe even sparing him his life had Hunter really planned ill with that revolver. Who knows? Only that scenes like this and the unbroken shot of the band listening to “Wild Horses” playing back: eerie, dreamlike, and odd, serve as a foreshadow, a premonition of the things yet to come and as a history lesson on American music culture. Welcome to the death of an era.