This Rolling Stones documentary from 1970 became infamous not for a rousing performance by the premier British rock band of the era but for what happened off stage. The ultimately disastrous Altamont Free Concert, which came at the tail end of the bands 1969 US tour, was riddled with problems; the main one, however, was that somebody had had the bright idea of hiring a bunch of Hells Angels (armed with pool cues) as the main security for the event, which was attended by somewhere in the region of 300,000 people. And by people we mean hippies, which meant there was a lot of drinking, drug taking, and by the time the Stones actually came on stage, a lot of rowdy people coming up against some equally doped-up security guards who were hoping for a fight. In the end one person was killed, three died accidentally, scores were injured, numerous cars were stolen and then abandoned, and there was extensive property damage. All of this was captured by documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, who recruited a large group of rookie camera operators to chronicle the entire thing (including, tragically, the fatal stabbing of Meredith Hunter by a Hells Angel) - one of whom was a young Martin Scorsese, whose footage appears in the film. You know whose doesn't? George Lucas, who also was in attendance, but whose camera jammed after shooting about 100 feet of film. What an idiot. Plus we think we can reliably throw him in as one of the idiots who didn't realise how out of hand the whole thing was getting, and chose to keep filming instead of helping.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
