-Chronicles the last weeks of the Rolling Stones 1969 US Tour.
-This ended with the famous murder of the Altamont Free Concert.
-This movie is named after the lead track on their Let It Bleed album
-This movie also shows The Stones at work in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, recording 'Brown Sugar' and 'wild Horses'. Also includes footage of Tina Turner opening for the Stones at their Madison Square Gardens concert, to Mick Jagger's comment "It's nice to have a chick occasionally"
Altamont Free Concert
-The security was provided by the Hells Angels, who were armed with pool cues. As the day went on, with drugs being taken and alcohol being drank, everything started getting ugly. There were fights during the performances of Jefferson Airplane and the Flying Burrito Brothers; Grace Slick started trying to plead with the crowd to calm down
-At one point, Jefferson Airplane singer Marty Balin got knocked out by a Hells Angel; Paul Kantner tried to confront the people who hit his singer and he told the Hells Angels that violence is not the point of this concert, it was to be like a 2nd Woodstock.
Songs performed
- The Rolling Stones
"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
"You Gotta Move"
"Wild Horses" (in studio at Muscle Shoals)
"Brown Sugar"
"Love in Vain"
"Honky Tonk Women"
"Street Fighting Man"
"Sympathy for the Devil"
"Under My Thumb"
"Gimme Shelter" (live version, over closing credits)
Ike and Tina Turner
"I've Been Loving You Too Long" (at Madison Square Garden)
Jefferson Airplane
"The Other Side of This Life" (at Altamont)
Flying Burrito Brothers
"Six Days on the Road" (at Altamont)
Did You Know?
-After all the bad publicity attached to the song Sympathy for the Devil, The Rolling Stones did not perform it for 6 years
-Despite what people think, Meredith Hunter was not killed during the performance of Sympathy for the Devil, he was stabbed just as The Rolling Stones were going into opening chords of Under My Thumb.
-In the original version for theatres, Mick used foul language and to cover it up, you would hear a guitar strum to block the offending word. In the early copies, it was uncensored.
-After police reviewed the footage of Hells Angel Alan Passaro stabbing Meredith Hunter, he was found innocent and acquitted of the murder charge at his trial for self defense because it showed Meredith holding a gun and Alan was just defending himself
-The concert venue was originally supposed to be Golden Gate Park, but when the city heard it was The Rolling Stones, they feared a large crowd and refused to permit it. So they moved it to Sears Point Raceway in Sonoma, but after a fight with the track owner, everything was moved to Altamont Speedway and set up 24 hours before the concert was set to take place.
-Besides Meredith Hunter, 3 other people died at the Altamont show; a young couple died when their car plunged into a large bonfire and a young man died of suffocation when he fell into a ditch
-The Rolling Stones had gotten the idea of using the Hells Angels as security because they had used the London chapter of the Hells Angels as security for their free concert at Hyde Park that past July. The only thing is that their British counterparts were not as violent as their American counterparts.
-California Highway Patrolmen noticed heavy traffic from as far as Bakersfield caused by cars heading to the concert. In 1969 if current laws were enacted, The Rolling Stones would have received a bill from the California Highway Patrol and other law agencies for traffic enforcement problems due to this.
