History Trivia / GimmeShelter1970

* HeAlsoDid: Creator/GeorgeLucas is credited as one of the camera operators, despite his footage not being used due to his camera jamming.
* MissingEpisode: According to Albert Maysles (in 1999 while he visited UCLA), Creator/GeorgeLucas was one of the cameramen for this shoot. Unfortunately his camera jammed after shooting about 100 feet of film that night. All of his footage was deemed unacceptable and wasn't used in any version of the final product. However, according to Joel Selvin's extensively researched book ''Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day'', one shot - a long pan of the dazed crowd from the distance - remains in the final cut.

* MissingEpisode: According to Albert Maysles (in 1999 while he visited UCLA), Creator/GeorgeLucas was one of the cameramen for this shoot. Unfortunately his camera jammed after shooting about 100 feet of film that night. All of his footage was deemed unacceptable and wasn't used in any version of the final product. However, according to Joel Selvin's extensively researched book Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day, one shot - a long pan of the dazed crowd from the distance - remains in the final cut.

* TheSixties: The Altamont concert is often seen as the symbolic end of the 1960s. If ''Film/{{Woodstock}}'' in August was the highlight of the hippie era, ''Gimme Shelter'' was its dark twin. The death and violence at Altamont proved that the innocence of the peace loving hippie subculture was definitely over.[[note]]Anyone who lived in the Haight-Ashbury or New York's Lower East Side in 1967 could have told you it had been dead for two years, the inevitable outcome of the Summer of Love; as hordes of young seekers invaded what they'd been led to believe was an existing free-love {{Utopia}} rather than a work in progress, actual hippies moved out, often establishing rural {{Commune}}s; speed dealers and sexual predators quickly moved in for the kill.[[/note]] Earlier in 1969 Music/BrianJones had unexpectedly died of a drug overdose, showing that this habit wasn't so consequence free as many people thought. UsefulNotes/CharlesManson also brought negative attention to the youths by appearing to be a hippie who, claiming inspiration by Beatles music, set up a cult that brainwashed young men and women into murdering people. The Altamont concert was the final straw for many, destroying their hope for better times.\\\
Ideals of peaceful fellowship were crushed by primordial violence. People described being terrorized by the Angels to the point that they felt paralyzed to help victims or even speak up. BystanderSyndrome was repeatedly mentioned. A woman who did try to intervene described being pulled away by friends and warned to be quiet for her own safety. In the film, you can see people trying to peacefully reason with the Angels and being beaten themselves.

--> We hated them, hated them and envied them all at the same time. For all of their brutality and ugliness they had a definition of themselves and their purpose that showed us up. We had all talked about a counter-community for years -- and now, with that community massed in one place, we couldn't relate to anything. In their primitive way, and without talking much about it, the Angels were so together that less than 100 of them were able to take over and intimidate a crowd of close to a half-million people. We had talked about solidarity, but they, not us, were willing to go down for each other in a showdown. We had the music but they had a purpose, and everyone in that atomized, alienated mass in front of the stage knew it, and that was their incredible power over us. -- Sol Stern, "Altamont: Pearl Harbor to the Woodstock Nation". Reprinted in ''Conversations with the New Reality: Readings in the Cultural Revolution'', Canfield, 1971.

::Creator/HarlanEllison also emphasized in his book ''The Other Glass Teat'' via a quote from political activist [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Bardacke Frank Bardacke]] (who also cited Kitty Genovese) that the counterculture, still a work in progress, lacked the strong sense of shared moral values that would have given it the courage to stop the violence. Ellison summarized it -- they were there to hear the Stones, and that took precedence. While the Stones' lyrics were violent and misogynistic there were plenty of "peace and love" bands there. Ellison asked, "Why didn't the Woodstock Nation of half a million people rise up against the Visigoths in their midst and stop the Angels?" But they didn't. The music they'd all believed would change the world was not enough to inspire a huge crowd to make a difference and save the life of Meredith Hunter. It appeared that "peace and love" music might as Ellison said keep people happy, but "sated and ineffectual".
--> It's one thing to hear some dude singing about loving one another, and really ''loving'' a strange black man enough to risk your ass by grabbing the pool cue being used to stave in his head.
--->Harlan Ellison, ''The Other Glass Teat'', chapter 56: 6 March '70

* TheSixties: The Altamont concert is often seen as the symbolic end of the 1960s. If ''Film/{{Woodstock}}'' in August was the highlight of the hippie era, ''Gimme Shelter'' was its dark twin. The death and violence at Altamont proved that the innocence of the peace loving hippie subculture was definitely over.[[note]]Anyone who lived in the Haight-Ashbury or New York's Lower East Side in 1967 could have told you it had been dead for two years, the inevitable outcome of the Summer of Love; as hordes of young seekers invaded what they'd been led to believe was an existing free-love {{Utopia}}, actual hippies moved out, often establishing rural {{Commune}}s; speed dealers and sexual predators quickly moved in for the kill.[[/note]] Earlier in 1969 Music/BrianJones had unexpectedly died of a drug overdose, showing that this habit wasn't so consequence free as many people thought. UsefulNotes/CharlesManson also brought negative attention to the youths by appearing to be a hippie who, claiming inspiration by Beatles music, set up a cult that brainwashed young men and women into murdering people. The Altamont concert was the final straw for many, destroying their hope for better times.\\\

* TheSixties: The Altamont concert is often seen as the symbolic end of the 1960s. If ''Film/{{Woodstock}}'' in August was the highlight of the hippie era, ''Gimme Shelter'' was its dark twin. The death and violence at Altamont proved that the innocence of the peace loving hippie subculture was definitely over.[[note]]Anyone who lived in the Haight-Ashbury or the Lower East Side in 1967 could have told you it had been dead for two years, the inevitable outcome of the Summer of Love; as hordes of young seekers invaded what they'd been led to believe was an existing free-love {{Utopia}}, actual hippies moved out, often establishing rural {{Commne}}s; speed dealers and sexual predators quickly moved in for the kill.[[/note]] Earlier in 1969 Music/BrianJones had unexpectedly died of a drug overdose, showing that this habit wasn't so consequence free as many people thought. UsefulNotes/CharlesManson also brought negative attention to the youths by appearing to be a hippie who, claiming inspiration by Beatles music, set up a cult that brainwashed young men and women into murdering people. The Altamont concert was the final straw for many, destroying their hope for better times.\\\

* TheSixties: The Altamont concert is often seen as the symbolic end of the 1960s. If ''Film/{{Woodstock}}'' in August was the highlight of the hippie era, ''Gimme Shelter'' was its dark twin. The death and violence at Altamont proved that the innocence of the peace loving hippie subculture was definitely over. Earlier in 1969 Music/BrianJones had unexpectedly died of a drug overdose, showing that this habit wasn't so consequence free as many people thought. UsefulNotes/CharlesManson also brought negative attention to the youths by appearing to be a hippie who, claiming inspiration by Beatles music, set up a cult that brainwashed young men and women into murdering people. The Altamont concert was the final straw for many, destroying their hope for better times.\\\