Review of Gimme Shelter (2013) by Bob K — 09 Jun 2018

4/5.

This starts out at a comatose pace, following the Rolling Stones during their 1970 North America tour. "Following" isn't the right word, since what they mostly do is just show Mick singing, and then show the band hanging around doing nothing in hotel rooms, or just listening to their own music, looking as bored as we feel. Then the story of the final 1970 appearance at Altamont Speedway starts up, and it's astounding from the start. The location right outside Livermore was volunteered by the Speedway owner just a couple days before the scheduled date, which was supposed to be in Golden Gate Park. We learn that people were already traveling west for the free show before any details were close to final.

Not that many details were attended to. Like port-o-potties (there were none, for 300,000 people who had to make do). But someone made the crucial decision to "hire" Hell's Angels for security. The film doesn't make it clear how that happened, but you can read elsewhere that they were promised $500 worth of beer, which they drank at the site, to secure the stage and the generator.

Past performance is no guarantee of future success, we've all heard. Hell's Angels had indeed provided security for Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead in the past, with no major carnage. But the stars were misaligned that fateful December day, or the crowd was just uglier due to inferior acid being sold, or it was the presence of relatively undisciplined San Jose Angels, all of these and more having been suggested as causative of the ensuing mayhem. The photography clearly shows that Mick had less room to maneuver onstage than my living room, with fans (and a stray dog at one point) climbing up, then being summarily and brutally removed by the Angels. There are several shots of really bad trips happening in the crowd. The most amusing moment is when The Dead learn that Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane had been attacked, and they decide to bug out without performing. The film is also quite meta, because it cuts away to Mick and company watching footage we just saw, on an editing machine, to see the famous stabbing that took place right by the stage, serendipitously caught on film. Incidentally, George Lucas appears in the credits as a camera guy.

Utter chaos. I can't imagine a scene I'd want to avoid more than that. Dante's 8th circle was right outside my home town.