Lucifer rising

My wife insists on watching HBO’s True Blood, and I join her, though we both agree it’s the trashiest, sleaziest thing going on TV these days. The level of decadence may run high — as on a recent episode in which a vampire leader leads the draining of a “fang-banger” in a werewolf bar — but after watching this blood-soaked drama, I’ve decided it doesn’t hold a candle to the air of evil and malice present in the Maysles brothers’ 1970 documentary on The Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter.

This is not so much because the Stones’ music is evil or incites violence; it just happens that Altamont turned out to be the worst confluence of bad, negative forces available on the planet at the time. And the Rolling Stones just happened to be in the middle of it — the lightning rods for evil, if you will.

For those younger than 40 and unfamiliar with evil, Altamont Music Festival was a free concert staged outside San Francisco at Altamont Speedway in California. The concert was suggested by the Stones as a kind of parting gift to fans after a long and successful North American tour. There are also hints that the Stones were trying to upstage Woodstock with their own West Coast concert (this is how organizers pitched it); they probably felt a bit jealous about the success of that earlier festival, and wanted a slice of history to call their own.

As the film begins a voiceover tells us the Stones are about to take the stage in Madison Square Garden. Mick Jagger — dressed in cape and American flag top hat — mumbles “Welcome to the breakfast show…” as the band lurches onstage, typically late, for the evening concert while guitarist Keith Richards launches into Jumping Jack Flash.

Jagger’s announcement tips us off to what kind of band we’re dealing with here: for the Stones, the day typically begins after the sun sets, when they collectively emerge from their narcotized (or otherwise induced) slumber to pour their brand of rock ‘n’ roll all over an eager youth culture. It was 1969. No one knew which way the wind was blowing for the coming decade, but the Stones — hyped as “The World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band” — seemed to be holding some crucial cards. Not only were the Beatles in the middle of breaking up, but on many nights, the ramshackle Stones lived up to their hype, embodying the rock ‘n’ roll fantasies they sang about.

The Boston-born Maysles brothers (Albert and David) capture the live Stones act beautifully in Gimme Shelter. In Madison Square Garden, there’s something richly seductive in their focus on Jagger, on the rooster-combed Richards, the fresh-faced/new-victim guitarist Mick Taylor, and the world-weary caveman mug of Watts, bashing away. Despite the Maysles’ reputation as “fly on the wall” documentarians, their slow-mo footage of Jagger twirling a red scarf onstage during Love in Vain — with panning shots across an audience that seems bathed and saturated in red stage lighting (one can’t help thinking of blood) — is some of the most beautifully stylized concert footage ever.

The Maysles’ film works on us gradually, building up layers of understanding. It never points fingers, doesn’t bash us with agitprop, the way someone like Michael Moore does in his documentaries; it hints at realities right there, near the surface, if we look a little closer. I remember watching Gimme Shelter on PBS as a teen, and feeling that Jagger’s ego was behind the mayhem that occurred in Altamont. Watching it again, older and wiser, I realize that the truth is never that simple; like Bob Dylan’s best albums, Gimme Shelter reveals more, deeper levels as we mature along with it.

Added to this is the device of time: we step back from live footage to see the Stones are actually watching all these events on film editing monitors, days after the Altamont concert. They know how it all ends: with a stabbing in front of the stage in a field. They are not asked to comment. Rather, their true feelings dribble out in random comments, stony silences. Jagger, considered the most media-savvy band member, tries to summon the right tone for his close-ups (and the camera does like to close in on Jagger’s weary face, especially in the freeze frame at the end that echoes The 400 Blows).

But the winds of evil are in the air, already unleashed. The Stones are shown listening to a radio call-in from Sonny Barger, San Francisco Hell’s Angel leader, who angrily insists the Stones asked his “tribe” to be there, at Altamont, to maintain order. “The Stones played us for dupes, man,” Barger tells the radio DJ. “They told me if I could sit on the edge of the stage so nobody could climb over me, I could drink beer until the show was over.”

It’s not clear whose questionable idea it was to position Hell’s Angels as guardians of the stage in the first place. But their presence — as a mixture of hippies, high-powered English promoters, African-Americans, Asians and nonplused musicians converge in a field holding 300,000 or so bodies — adds an element of chaos and latent violence to a scene that already holds seeds of madness. When the Stones arrive at Altamont via helicopter, a fan rushes up to the tarmac and takes a swing at Jagger; he’s led violently away. Jagger tries to shrug it off. Later, a crazed woman fan is shown whining, “I wanna see Mick!” before she is dragged kicking and screaming from the stage by security. At the time, Jagger was obsessed with the idea that a famous rock star would someday be assassinated onstage; he must have feared it could be him.

Other hints of bad juju emerge: the British organizer refuses to announce onstage that people should avoid the “bad acid” that’s circulating, despite footage showing people clearly deranged by the drug, saying “I don’t want to lay any negative vibes on this scene.” Too late, dude.

There’s a palpable sense that the Stones themselves unwittingly created this maelstrom of dueling energies — positive and negative — yet are powerless to control it. (Again, all this is inferred: the Maysles brothers never comment, they simply record everything in the “cinema verite” style of the times, deploying a private army of cameramen to wander the Altamont crowds; a young George Lucas was reportedly among them.)

The denouement occurs after the Jefferson Airplane take the stage and singer Marty Balin is knocked unconscious by a Hell’s Angel. Balin had apparently seen an Angel swinging a pool cue at a fan who got too close to stage, and decided to jump into the fray. Through it all, as the cameras capture Angels swinging sticks at unruly, stoned fans, singer Grace Slick (for younger viewers: think a ‘60s version of Katy Perry, except in addition to being good looking, she also has talent) tries to put the genie back in the bottle, sounding like a kindergarten teacher: “Let’s all just be quiet… Let’s all just be quiet…” No such luck.

The Stones take the stage (after dark, of course) and try to deal with fistfights erupting left and right. They stop playing during set opener Sympathy for the Devil (Jagger remarks, “Something funny always happens when we start that number…”). A dog walks across the stage, another weird omen. Cameras capture a look of hooded malice in an Angel’s eye as he stares at Jagger. A guy has a classic acid meltdown on camera, looking like the heavens are crashing down, which indeed they are. At this point, the Angels have become more than just security men winging the stage; they stand before the band like a phalanx of gargoyles, though instead of warding away evil spirits, they coax them out. Jagger keeps doing his mojo shuffle, but the incredulous faces in the crowd reveal the voodoo isn’t working anymore; his prancing seems ineffectual, effete.

The natural antagonism between hippies and bikers reaches a horrible climax when a certain Meredith Hunter pulls out a gun during a brawl near the stage, and is stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angel member. It’s unclear whether he was aiming at the stage (Jagger’s nightmare realized) or at the attacking Angel. It’s all caught on camera.

The Stones are shown, later, watching the footage on film editors, their personal Zapruder moment captured forever, the Maysles further capturing the band’s shocked, drained faces with even more cameras.

Reality has just entered the room. The Sixties are over.