Albert Maysles was a documentary
pioneer, fact. He normalised the ‘fly on the wall’ and reactive style of
documentary with his brother David and used it to devastating effect with the
off kilter and menacing Gimme Shelter.
In 1969, the Rolling Stones launched
a huge USA tour culminating in a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in San
Francisco. Built up as the next Woodstock, the gruesome affair ended when a
Hells Angel (hired as crowd control) stabs a spectator right in front of The
Rolling Stones performing Under My Thumb. The Maysles don’t reveal this as a
twist of tragic drama, but shows it as inevitable from the opening minutes of the documentary, with Mick Jagger and Keith
Richards reacting in stunned silence to a radio interview with one of the Hells
Angels. These cuts to the Stones watching their own film acts as the interview
segments of any other documentary and Jagger’s horror when he sees the frozen
image of the Hells Angel with a knife gives more information than any interview
ever could.
And it all started so well, with the
crowds in New York getting groovy as the Rolling Stones play on a three foot
stage. Everyone is having a good time and Jagger feeds off the good vibrations,
giving energetic and carefree performances. When asked at a press conference if
staging a huge free concert would be a good idea, Jagger brushes it off; they’ve
played massive gigs before and the crowds behaved themselves then, why should
this be any different?
For a while, it seems that
there’s a lot of fuss over nothing. The Stones play, the crowds have a good
time and their lawyer Melvin Belli rings his hands over where the hell this
concert will actually take place. But good grief, do things turn nasty when the
attention turns to Altamont. For a start, amount of drugs on show is eye-watering, and it seems that every single one of the three hundred
thousand attendees were completely off their heads. There're fights, screaming and an impressive amount of nudity, all shown with in non judgemental silence from the filmmakers. By showing the effects of these drugs on the individuals, the glamour of the Sixties becomes a mess of mind alteration and confused terror, as one man's giggling stupor turns to horror as he stares at the long suffering sound recordist for the longest ten seconds put to film.
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| Literally everyone is naked and high in this photo |
And it gets worse. The lead singer of Jefferson
Airplane is cracked on the head by a Hells Angel. The Flying Burrito Brothers
stop playing until everyone gets off the damn stage. A doctor is called for on
three separate occasions. Jagger kills Sympathy for the Devil and ticks off the
fighting crowd like an exasperated primary school teacher. He tells
everyone to sit down until the final song and misses verses as he tries to find
out from some people in the crowd why one guy was fighting. He stands at a
complete loss when it’s clear that no amount of laid back charisma can control
this mess of ugly violence.
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| A rare moment where Jagger could actually perform without naked people crushing the stage |
By noninvasively documenting these events
in a quiet, dignified style, Albert and David Maysles allow the shock of just how violent Altamont was
to unfold without plodding, heavy voiceovers or pompous analysts talking about
the end of hippy counterculture and whatnot. Albert Maysles died last
weekend aged 88 and he left behind a legacy of astonishing documentaries, of
which Gimme Shelter is his crowning
jewel.
