284 PETER DOGGETT THERE'S A RIOT GOING ON 285

features seemed to grow more androgynous with every passing month; but arguably the most iconic rock in late 1960s America. Enraged by injust­ not perhaps John Lennon, who beat up an old friend at Paul McCartney's ice and government oppression, they railed against the Vietnam War, racism, 21st birthday party, after being accused of having a gay relationship with police harassment and anything that might prevent them from flying their his manager.9 There was speculation about the lyrical imagery on Bob Dylan's freak flags and getting high. Yet anyone approaching CSNY for political mid-1960s albums (all those sword-swallowers and complaints about his lover leadership was likely to be disappointed. being so hard), especially given Dylan's close friendship with the joyously 'I laugh at the SDS and I laugh at those fucking parlor-pink revolutionary homosexual, straight-man-lusting poet Allen Ginsberg. But it was widely kids going around saying, "I'm a revolutionary by trade",' Crosby scoffed. assumed that all pop stars were healthily - indeed, voraciously, like their 'They haven't any idea what it is, man. They should go watch a newsreel of groupie admirers - heterosexual. It would be three years before a pop the last three days of Budapest and think it over. Asshole kids.' Stills, who performer with ar:y degree of media prominence would proudly claim to had been raised as an army brat in Latin America, concurred: 'I remember be gay; and almost as long before the radical left was prepared to accept getting into a fight with this little chick from the Weathermen in the middle gay rights activists as fellow travellers towards the revolution. Before they of Chicago Airport, and she really annoyed me coming on with all that revo­ could think of coming together, homosexuals still had to come to terms lution business. I mean, I would like to take some of these people to Latin with living apart. America and show them a real revolution.' At the same time, Crosby was prone to making statements such as 'I do GOING FISHING want to blow this political system'. But how? 'There is no answer that I David Crosby of had described the ideal- ideal for men, that is know of to save us,' he said, exposing the same fatalism with which he - relationship in his 1967 song 'Triad'. 'Why can't we go on as three?' would face his own crippling drug addiction a decade later. 'Somehow Sgt he asked a pair of his female admirers. It was a hipper rephrasing of a Pepperdid not stop the Vietnam War. Somebody isn't listening. Now, I am California chorus from earlier in the decade: 'two girls for every boy'. The doing my level best as a saboteur of values, as an aider of change, but when song was rejected on moral grounds by his band, who sacked him soon it comes down to blood and gore in the streets, I'm taking off and going afterwards, but accepted by the more adyenturous Jefferson Airplane. Not fishing.' Stephen Stills had used exactly the same line in an earlier discus­ until 1968 did he re-emerge with a new project, and then it took almost a sion about revolutionary apocalypse. year to cut through the bureaucratic red tape so that he could record with Escaping Armageddon by boat: that was the scenario of 'Wooden Ships', Stephen Stills (the chronicler of the Sunset Strip riots, from the Buffalo written by Crosby and Stills with Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. It was Springfield) and Graham Nash (from the somewhat less political English a utopian song about avoiding responsibility for your fellow man: 'Horror group the Hollies). Their effervescent vocal harmonies and refreshing blend grips us as we watch you die,' CSN sang, but meanwhile 'we are leaving, of acoustic and electric textures won them immediate acclaim. For live work, you don't need us'. Not that they were staying around to make sure. 'Guess they recruited Stills' former colleague, Neil Young, as an equal partner, and I'll set a course and go,' CSN's recording of the song concluded. 'That was the quartet's turbulent internal politics mirrored the idealistic uncertainty of the prevailing philosophy of his circle,' says Crosby's friend and fellow song­ the times. writer, Jackson Browne. 'They all had boats and this ideal life- with Born outspoken, Crosby had enraged the Byrds by using their huge amounts of money, sailing off into an ethereal future that couldn't as a vehicle for his opinions of psychedelic drugs (good) and the assas­ possibly exist, because there was nowhere they could go where they could sination of President Kennedy (an establishment cover-up). Now all four escape what was happening in the rest of the world.' members of CSNY (as the quartet became known) were free to comment Even more than Crosby and Stills, Kantner and the Airplane were given on the chaos swirling around them. Their lengthy concerts mixed per­ to grand statements of revolutionary rhetoric. During a May 1969 sonal confessions with rousing political anthems, establishing CSNY as in Miami, technicians turned off the group's PA system when they exceeded 286 PETER DOGGETT THERE'S J\ RIOT GOING ON 287 the venue's strict curfew; Kantner reacted like any outlaw would, ripping into generally had to work hard and have often had to make great sacrifices. the offending workers and promising, 'Wait till we burn down your society.' people are dying in Vietnam and getting manhandled in the streets - and For this righteous anger, he was arrested and charged with disturbing the along comes [Marty] Balin with his revolution-is-fun song.' 'We didn't feel peace - 'we should have been arrested as traitors a dozen times', he says we had to shoot anybody,' Kantner responds today. 'Our weapons were intel­ today - though the case was subsequently dropped. 'Compare the Airplane's lectual. We just pulled all of America's dirty baggage out into the light, and much-vaunted revolutionary spirit with the not-so-harsh realities,' noted allowed people to make their own healthy decisions. Our watchword was radical critic Ed Leimbacker, 'trumped-up pot busts, Grace giving the power­ "Question authority". People had never really done that before.' to-the-people salute, Marty swearing sweetly on Dick Cavett [US talk show]. Ever since they'd tried to smuggle the word 'trips' onto their first record, That, you see, is where it's at for the Airplane. Theatricality. Harmless words the Airplane had been engaged in constant skirmishes with their record and grand gestures rather than truly radical action.' As Kantner admitted company. 'You should fuck with people who need to be fucked with,' Kantner when the revolutionary fervour had burned out, 'We were all punks in high school and we were always rebelling against authority.' says, 'it's a civic obligation.' By 1969, they'd secured sufficient leverage to force the label to accept the word 'motherfuckers' in a song - they even Yet with 1969's Volunteers album, which included their arrangement of performed 'We Can Be Together' uncensored on an unwitting TV show - 'Wooden Ships', the Airplane set out to make a decisively revolutionary state­ but their freedom didn't extend to the lyric sheet, where the offending line ment. Its heady blend of sloganeering and anthemic choruses certainly was rendered as 'up against the wall fred'. For Ed Leimbacker, this epitom­ convinced the London underground magazine Oz, which declared: 'In the ised the Airplane's brand of 'ineffectual revolution'. It was a conclusion States they so nearly have a revolution. Everything there is so wired up it's shared by certairi members of the band. 'Jack Casady and I are pretty non­ ready to blow. The Jefferson Airplane is a body of people who have always political,' shrugged guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, who described Kantner as been very involved in the American front, and now, for those of us who 'very politically naive'. Casady's judgement was no more supportive: 'I don't still doubt it, they have finally declared themselves Volunteers.' think there was tremendous deep thought about the situation. Paul waving The album was book-ended by two songs built around a bluegrass banjo his guitar over his head like Che Guevara, and pumping his guitar in the air lick that David Crosby had taught to Paul Kantner. 'We Can Be Together' - in military fashion, was all OK theatre.' Only one song on the album offered its title a restatement of the hippie anthem 'Get Together', which the Airplane more than chic rhetoric: Grace Slick's ecology ballad, 'Eskimo Blue Day', had recorded three years earlier - surged towards a rousing chorus, which with its prophecy of global warming: 'Snow cuts loose from the frozen, stole the name of the New York anarchist group, the Up Against The Wall until it joins with the African sea'. Motherfuckers. Kantner's lyrics sent out a warning to the establishment: 'We Jefferson Airplane weren't the only rock band flirting with righteous revo­ are obscene lawless hideous dangerous dirty violent and young ... All your lutionary imagery. Hard rockers Steppenwolf, a group of Canadian emigrants private property is target for your enemy, and your enemy is we.' 'Volunteers', best known for the biker anthem 'Born To Be Wild', delivered a concept meanwhile, delivered the most simplistic of messages ('got a revolution') album about the state of the American national psyche, entitled Monster. Its across a driving R&B rhythm that was far more intoxicating than any call to arms. title suite traced the country's proud history, and charted its decline into

paranoia and r~pression.The suite ended with a verse that was widely inter­ Many observers were cynical about the Airplane's revolutionary status. preted as a call for revolution: 'America, where are you? Don't you care about The jazz magazine Down Beat described 'We Can Be Together' as 'ludicrously your sons and daughters? Don't you know we need you now? We can't fight smug, self-important and self-dramatising'. Worse still, it declared, was alone against the Monster.' Few were drawn to the barricades by this image, 'Volunteers': 'By now it should be obvious even to today's young, middle­ however, and Steppenwolf's moment of political punditry soon passed. class, radical millenarians that a revolution is not a pep rally or a street festival In any case, the relevance of usirig multi-national corporations to sell revo­ but a psychodrama. Successful revolutionaries and even reformers have lution to the masses was moot. 'Pop has become a financial staple of 288 PETER DOGGETr THERE'S A RTOT GOING ON 289

US imperialism,' concluded one underground commentator. 'What's goin rnost in trouble [in 1969] is the so-long-supposed "revolutionary spirit" of down is money. Columbia Records nets billions from sales. On album jacket! rock_ that schizophrenic dream of wishful thinking and self-hype. Take a recording artists are called "revolutionaries", but CBS, which owns Columbia closer look at the Establishment. See, it's made of rubber - it co-opts by has defence contracts to help murder revolutionaries. Rock stars wail ou; expanding, by stretching a little bit further and absorbing all the freaky anger and scream revolt, and leave concerts in Cadillacs.' For the first titne excesses and aberrations .. . Big Brother moves over just enough; and as radicals began to suspect that rock might need liberation as much soon as he gets a piece of the action, the Angry Young Man settles for a the minorities they claimed to be representing. 'How do we deal with the lip-service revolution full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.' rock hip imperialists who are ripping us off?' came one anguished cry. 'We've A so-called 'tribal ' epitomised the problem. Set amongst a got to get the message across to the artists, get them to be non-exploitative.' commune of draft-dodgers, its songs offering a Tin Pan Alley pastiche of The first move to save rock from itself came in Seattle. On 10 August , Hair was ubiquitous in 1969. It was firmly ensconsed on 1969 police attacked audience members at a free rock concert. The incident Broadway and in London's West End, while productions were running in triggered two days of rioting, much of it aimed at the purveyors of 'hip most of the capitalist world's major cities - though not in Mexico, where capitalism' - record stores, boutiques - and major corporations. Later that the governo;J.ent shut it down after one performance. The most surprising year, Seattle high school students boycotted a popular venue, the Eagles aspect of Hair's appeal was that it transcended racial as well as generational Auditorium, after promoter Boyd Grafmyre announced that any audience boundaries. In August 1969, the month of , the Los Angeles cast member suspected of smoking dope or provocative sexual behaviour ('making staged a short run of Hair in San Diego's Mountain View Park, for an out') would be expelled and banned. The kids rejected the offer of assist­ African-American audience. The Black Panthers were primed to picket this ance from the Weatherman collective, and instead formed the Eagles bourgeois distraction, until they discovered that their followers loved it. 10 Liberation Front. Their manifesto encapsulated a sense of alienation that The cast's next stop was Chino Prison, where they converted Mexican­ was shared by critics and fans: 'Rock expresses the ethos of our commu­ American convicts to the tribal rock crusade. nity, its force is filled by our struggle. But over the years, the established But the biggest triumph was yet to come. At an anti-war Moratorium entertainment industry - promoters, agents, record companies, media and demonstration in San Francisco, the local cast of Hair performed before a every name group - have gradually transformed our music into an increas­ crowd of committed activists - exactly the audience that might have been ingly expensive commodity. They have stolen our music. We are taking it expected to see through what Roland Young called 'one of the most deca­ back!' This was a new call: for the first time, 'every name group' was under dent bourgeois trips that has ever gone down'. But Hair's pop anthems suspicion of crimes against its audience. Boyd Grafmyre soon cut ticket received an ecstatic response. So too did Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. David prices at the Eagles, and Gust like at the Fillmore) offered use Crosby bellowed his disapproval of President Nixon's policies so loudly that of the auditorium free for community benefits. Buoyed by their success, the he blew his voice for the band's evening show at Winterland Ballroom. ELF vowed to fight on, and employ the same tactics against bands who Stephen Stills marked the occasion by reviving his Buffalo Springfield hit, charged excessive ticket prices. Although the ELF itself soon faded away, 'For What It's Worth', using it as the launching pad for a diatribe about the the debate about concert tickets lingered on - with unforeseeable results. state of the nation. As the song finished, Stills screamed into the micro­ 'I have very little faith in rock'n'roll entertainers as being anything in this Phone: 'Politics is bullshit! Richard Nixon is bullshit! Spiro Agnew is bull­ society but bourgeois sell-out people,' declared San Francisco DJ Rola!ld shit! Our music isn't bullshit!' It was an ambiguous (not to mention Young, who was fired from his post with KSAN after he repeated militant self-serving) message for an anti-war gathering, which was repeated by both Black Panther rhetoric live on air. 'It's the ability the society has to incor­ Stills and Crosby over the next few months. Stills was sufficiently impressed porate anything into it, and turn it into a commercial item.' Ed Leimbacke~, by his own courage to suggest that he would undoubtedly have attracted shifting his sights from the Volunteers album for a moment, agreed: 'What s government attention: 'If there's a list, I'm on it.' But when CSNY's manager, 290 PETER DOGGETT THERE'S A RJOT GOING ON 291

David Geffen, was asked whether any official pressure was being applied to North Vietnamese government for the release of US prisoners of war. In his clients because of their 'subversive' views, he replied: 'Absolutely none. return, Washington would agree to free Huey Newton and Bobby Seale from David Crosby insists that he has, but I think it's more paranoia than anything. jail. Eldridge Cleaver travelled to North Korea in September for talks with I mean, David has said some of the most outrageous things in concert about }lanai's representatives. He told reporters that 'it's time for revolution to Nixon, but I don't think Nixon cares very much. He probably doesn't know explode', and said that any tactics were valid in the struggle- from bombing who David Crosby is.' US Army bases to assassinating the president. 'We need words that will make the soldiers, sailors, marines and special forces of the US imperialists turn THE PIGS ARE VAMPING their guns against the commanding officers,' he declared. And he called for firing squads to be prepared for Presidents Nixon and Johnson, Army We will witness student disorders in the fall which will surpass anything commanders and 'all warmongers and exploiters'. Moving into his stride, we have seen before. Student militancy will sweep major campuses and Cleaver continued: 'We need articles by journalists that will inflame the flow into the streets of our major cities as the competing factions of masses, that will spur on the revolutionary temptation to kidnap American SDS strive to prove that each is more 'revolutionary' than ,the other, ambassadors, hijack American airplanes, blow up American pipelines and and as antiwar protest organisations seek to escalate the fervor of buildings, and to shoot anyone who uses guns and other weapons in the opposition to the Vietnam War. You will see it most likely by October blood-stained service of imperialism against the people.' 15, certainly by November 15. Safely removed from American jurisdiction, Cleaver was free to utter these (White House internal memo, 12 August 1969) threats. When David Hilliard took to the stage at the San Francisco Moratorium a few weeks later, the spirit of Eldridge Cleaver was burning Presidential aide Tom Charles Huston hadn't chosen those dates accidentally: through his veins. Speaking without notes, he launched into an epic tirade Moratorium demonstrations were scheduled to take place across the USA on about white America's wickedness, and as his adrenalin level rose, so did his both days. Some two million people - only 1 per cent of the American popu­ rhetoric. 'We say down with the American fascist society,' he cried. 'Later lation, but still the largest number so far :- took part in the October event. for Richard Milhouse Nixon, the motherfucker. Richard Nixon is an evil

Film stars such as Shirley Maclaine and Woody Allen spoke against the war in man. This is the fucker that u~eashedthe counter-insurgent teams upon Manhattan. A month later, half a million people gathered at the Washington the Black Panther Party. This is the man that sends his vicious murderer Monument, to sing 'We Shall Overcome' and 'Give Peace a Chance', and listen dogs out into the black community, and invades upon hungry kids and to Arlo Guthrie, Peter, Paul & Mary and (inevitably) the New York cast of expects us to accept shit like that idly. Goddamn that fucking man! We will Hair. The November Moratorium coincided with a White House initiative kill Richard Nixon. We will kill any motherfucker that stands in the way of known as National Unity Week, in which patriotic rallies were co-ordinated to our freedom.' Large portions of the crowd, reliving 1967's love-ins via the overshadow the Moratorium - or so they vainly hoped. More than a million Hair recital and CSNY's brief performance, howled their disapproval. Two handbills proclaiming 'Support the President' were distributed to colleges, where Weeks later, Hilliard was arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder the most of them were burned by student activists. President of the United States - though, like many Panther cases, it was It was in San Francisco that the most controversial Moratorium action eventually dropped before reaching court. took place. The rumpus was sparked by Black Panthers leader David Hilliard, Hilliard's outburst at the Moratorium soon paled alongside events in effectively running the organisation during Huey Newton's prison sentence Chicago. The times were now unravelling so quickly that several compelling and Bobby Seale's embroilment in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, which had Stories ran simultaneously in the same city, and the Panthers had a role to begun on 24 September 1969. The Panthers were floating an adventurous Play in them all. Meanwhile, they remained the target for harassment from form of international diplomacy, whereby they would negotiate with the Mayor Daley's cops. Every month there was another shoot-out, and each 292 PETER DOGGETT THERE'S A RIOT GOING ON 293

time accusations were traded through the pages of the straight and hip press, 'fhere will be no peace in this land.' And so it seemed: almost every day ricocheting back and forth at bullet speed. brought more bulletins of arrests and shoot-outs. The most notorious episode began when an informer within the Panthers' Hampton's murder aroused outrage across the movement, and amongst ranks told the FBI that the party was storing weapons, possibly illegal, in panthers sympathisers outside the USA. But another, even more prominent an apartment at 2337 West Monroe Street. The address was a crash-pad for rnember of the BPP had been attracting even wider news coverage. His many Chicago Panthers, including Fred Hampton, the unchallenged super­ treatment threatened to undermine the Nixon administration's reputation star of local black revolutionary politics, and William O'Neal, an undercover around the globe. It was merely a shocking sub-plot in a prolonged episode FBI agent. O'Neal had worked his way up to Chief of Security in the local that brought the antagonism between straight and hip America into sharper BPP organisation, and had become Hampton's trusted bodyguard. In the relief than ever before, and connected the worlds of politics, radical theatre small hours of 4 December 1969, agents from the tactical unit of the State and music in a tragicomedy of bizarre proportions. Attorney's Office, supported by local police and FBI, raided Hampton's resi­ dence. When the first shots rang out, Hampton's friend Louis Truelock tried THEATRE ON TRIAL to wake him with the immortal lines: 'Chairman! Chairman! Wake up! The 'fhe place, once again, was Chicago: the United States District Court, pigs are vamping!' But Hampton had apparently been drugged, and didn't Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. The plaintiff: the United stir. His partner, Deborah Johnson, recalled: 'I heard a voice from another States of America. The defendants: David T. Dellinger, Rennard C. Davis, part of the apartment saying, "He's barely alive", or "He'll barely make it". Thomas E. Hayden, Abbott H. Hoffman, Jerry C. Rubin, Lee Weiner, John Then I heard more shots. A sister screamed from the front. Then the shooting R. Froines and Bobby G. Seale. The presiding judge: Julius ]. Hoffman (no stopped. I heard someone say: "He's as good as dead now".' relation). The charges: that between 12 April and 30 August 1968, the defend­ Nine minutes of almost constant gunfire resulted in the death of Hampton ants entered into a conspiracy with other parties, named and unnamed, to and his comrade Mark Clark; and serious injuries to four other Panthers. travel across state lines with the intent of inciting a riot; encourage the use State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan made the official statement: 'The imme­ of incendiary devices; and obstruct police officers in their duties. The back­ diate violent criminal reaction of the occupants in shooting at announced drop: the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The small print of police officers emphasises the extreme viciousness of the Black Panther the charges - pages of 'Overt Acts' and 'Counts' - added up to a compre­ Party. So does their refusal to cease firing at the police officers when urged hensive summary of attempted urban revolution, aimed at eight men who to do so several times.' But examination of the crime scene suggested that had been carefully selected as representatives of the entire anti-war move­ only two out of the dozens of shots came from within the apartment; the ment - radicals, academics, Yippies and Panthers alike. rest originated from the police. Far from initiating the gunfire, Hampton Hoffman and Rubin represented the movement's surreal wing, a respon­ and Clark had been shot down in cold blood; evidence suggested that sibility they carried happily into the trial. Having promised that they would Hampton had been unconscious when his fatal wounds were delivered. The shake the establishment, they regarded their inclusion as a badge of honour. press took up the case, and Hampton was added to the Panthers' growing Seale was indicted specifically for his speech in Lincoln Park, but also as a list of martyrs. 11 At his funeral, the avowedly non-violent Rev. Ralph representative of the black liberation movement. David Dellinger, a veteran Abernathy, Dr Martin Luther King's successor as head of the Southern of peace protests from the 1940s onwards, was one of the leaders of the Christian Leadership Conference, asked: 'If they can do this to the Black Mobe organisation. Rennie Davis, an activist with SDS since the early 1960s, Panthers today, who will they do it to tomorrow? If they succeed in repressing had also supported Mobe. Tom Hayden took a similar route to Chicago, via the Black Panthers, it won't be long before they crush any party in sight - SDs and Mobe, attracting national attention in late 1967 with his trip to maybe your party, maybe my party. I want to tell you this, Fred - you did North Vietnam to secure the release of American prisoners. Lee Weiner was not die in vain. Though my fight will be non-violent, it will be militant. a graduate student with a heritage of anti-war activism, whose chief role in 308 PETER DOGGETT TH E RE'S A RJOT GOING ON 309

the demonstration was scheduled to begin, not a single Weatherman was to proved that the government was prepared to confront its opponents with be seen in Haymarket Square. Gradually, activists began to trickle into the lethal force. It was a time for solidarity, for trusting your sister and brother, city centre, in sheepish tens and twenties. Eventually there were around 300 for believing that the movement's divisions could be healed. marching through the city, shepherded by police cars, mounted officers and That proved to be impossibly naive. The first crack appeared at the start scores of cops on foot. 'Is this it? Are these all?' said one incredulous of December 1969, when Los Angeles police revealed that they were charging policemen as the meagre demonstration passed. Suddenly the activists split members of Charles Manson's 'hate-filled cult band of hippies' with the into three groups, and for a second there was chaos, as the police reeled Tate and LaBianca murders. Most of those who sympathised with the move­ around, trying to determine which direction to follow. Hand-to-hand fighting ment, from political activists to mellow hippies, stared into the eyes they followed. Struggling police and demonstrators careered through plate glass saw on Tv, and wondered what linked Manson's madness with their own windows, or beat each other to the ground with clubs. Richard Elrod, a imagination; what had perverted the late 1960s ideal of communal living, lawyer working for the city council, was photographed as he triumphantly sexual freedom and musical expression to the extent that it could become grabbed hold of a demonstrator. Less than a minute later, he lay on the a springboard for barbaric slaughter. ground, paralysed from the neck down. The police alleged that he had been thrown head first against a concrete wall, but subsequent evidence proved FREEDOM TO DIE that he had tripped and fallen into the wall while trying to make a citizen's On the same day that 'nude hippies' were arrested on the Spahn ranch in arrest. It was the most serious incident of a week in which Weatherman had Death Valley, MickJagger held a business meeting in London with the Rolling promised to strike a decisive blow against the system, but succeeded merely Stones' newly appointed business adviser, Prince Rupert Loewenstein - a in demonstrating the sparseness of their support, and their ineffectiveness merchant banker born into the long-deposed Bavarian royal family. Like the when faced with the forces of the state. As the fighting died down, there Beatles, who had announced early in 1969 that they were in danger of going was one final statement of defiance. A Weather leader made an impromptu bankrupt, the Stones were facing a financial crisis. Their minimal earnings address to a small group of onlookers. 'We have shown the pigs that we from the record contracts they had signed in 1963/64 were being wildly can fight. We have shown the pigs that they have to overextend themselves outstripped by their spending, and the group faced a crippling tax bill. on another front. We have taken the movement a qualitative step further. Loewenstein was recommended to Jagger by a mutual friend, and the Stones We are now going to split into groups of four or five and take to the subways asked him to investigate their business affairs. At their 14 October meeting, and buses. We are going to take the lessons we have learned here in Chicago he told Jagger that to improve their tax status they should become residents home with us as we go back. We are going to bring the war home!' of France for two financial years. Jagger realised that April 1970 would be It was a proud but empty call. Weather activist Shin'ya Ono hastily wrote too soon for the group to organise such a move, and so they fixed April an 18,000-word defence of the Days of Rage, boasting that it had been a 1971 as the deadline. triumphant justification of the group's political strategy. 12 But numbers spoke Three days after this meeting, the Stones flew to the United States, to louder than words. Even during the National Action, events organised by prepare for a lengthy concert tour. Unknown to Decca, their record company other SDS factions had drawn larger crowds than Weather operations. And in London, they were also planning to begin work on an album, which they a week later, the first of the Moratoriums proved that traditional SDS Would hold back until they were ready to launch their own label after the campaigning was far more popular with radical Americans than Weatherman's Decca deal expired in spring 1970. On 27 October, as Bobby Seale's feud street fighting. With Judge Hoffman in Chicago neared its climax, the Stones held a press As the year staggered to a close, paranoia closed in with claustrophobic conference in New York. While the national media asked predictable ques­ speed. The lunacy of the conspiracy trial convinced the movement that a fair tions about the group's image and sexual habits, the underground press trial was impossible in Nixon's America. The assassination of Fred Hampton focused on the unprecedentedly high ticket prices that the Stones were 310 PETER DOGGETT THERE'S A RIOT GOING ON 311

demanding. Jagger insisted that the issue was completely out of their control: As the concert date neared, permission to use Golden Gate Park was with­ 'We didn't say that unless we walk out of America with "x" amount of drawn: San Francisco's city council were concerned that the crowd would be dollars we ain't gonna come. We're not really into that sort of economic unmanageably large. On 4 December, local news bulletins were divided scene. Either you're gonna sing and all that crap, or else you're gonna be a between the arrests in the Tate/LaBianca murder case, the court appearance 13 fucking economist.' by Charles Manson, and the uncertainly surrounding the Stones' concert. Conscious that the controversy was rumbling across the country, Jagger Meanwhile, the group were down in Alabama, recording at Muscle Shoals did his best to maintain his radical image. At each show, the Stones performed studio, and that evening, the night Fred Hampton was murdered, they were their militant anthem, 'Street Fighting Man'. When they reached Chicago, told that a new site had been found for the show: Altamont Motor Speedway, Jagger didn't let the opportunity slip. 'This is for all of you and what you some fifty miles north of San Francisco. As radical journalist Sol Stern and did to your city,' he announced. But the furore over ticket prices refused to his friends discovered, 'Altamont was just a few miles from Santa Rita, the die down. 'Those fuckers are making $2 million on the tour, and Mick Jagger prison farm where several hundred people had been taken and brutalised by practically spit in Abbie Hoffman's face when Abbie asked him for some the Alameda County Sheriff's deputies during the People's Park fighting in bread for the Chicago 8,' one fan remarked in Berkeley. As the tour reached Berkeley. "Far out", said one of the more imaginative Berkeley activists. ''Why its final stand in New York, the Stones made a fateful decision. They had don't we turn the whole thing into a march on Santa Rita after the concert heard that the were planning a free concert in San Francisco's and demand that all the prisoners be freed". And for several minutes, some Golden Gate Park on 6 December. At a Manhattan press conference, Jagger of us were captivated by the image of several hundred thousand marching announced that the Stones would also be appearing at the show. It was news rock enthusiasts approaching the prison, chanting "free the prisoners".' to the concert's promoter, Bill Graham, who was faced with explaining to It was never going to turn out that way. What happened next has passed the city's authorities why he had been keeping the Stones' participation a into rock mythology as the antithesis of Woodstock; the end of the 1960s; secret. the death-knell of hippie idealism. Around 500,000 people fought their way For a few days, the confusion seemed to settle. Besides the Stones and to the barren location, to discover inadequate sound and sightlines, no food, the Dead, the show would also feature the Band, Dr John, Fred Neil and water or toilet facilities, unbearable desert heat, and little refreshment beyond Ali Akbar Khan; and it would be filmed by a crew under the direction of cheap booze and downers. Security was left to the Hell's Angels motorcycle Haskell Wexler, whose most recent movie, Medium Cool, was a critically gang, who were hopelessly incapable of coping with a crowd so large and acclaimed drama-documentary set during the 1968 Democratic Convention. restless. Doom clouded the air from the beginning; the Hell's Angels Proceeds from the film would be diverted to 'groups that do things free'. responded to any annoyance, such as an audience member staring them out Yet the Stones continued to chip away at the radicalism of their gesture. or daring to touch one of their bikes, with mindless violence. Quizzed about his commitment to the revolution at the New York press Any hope of political awareness had vanished. Sol Stern reported: 'The conference, Jagger laughed and said: 'You can't ask a question like that at a first disastrous experience of the day came to the Berkeley radicals who tried thing like this.' According to radical DJ Roland Young, the Stones' true to relate to the crowd in a political way. Some of them circulated with buckets colours were being revealed: 'Mick Jagger was contacted and asked to make collecting money for the Black Panthers' legal defence fund and met with a public appeal for the Black Panthers' defence fund. He said not only would indifference and even hostility from the solidly anti-political rock audience.' he not do that, but if any political speeches were made on the stage, they After an opening set from the Flying Burrito Brothers that barely stirred wouldn't play. And this is the group that put out "Street Fighting Man". See, the massive, sullen crowd, the first big-name band took to the stage. Jefferson it's a shuck and it's a sham.' The San Francisco Mime Troupe had intended Airplane prided themselves on speaking for revolutionary youth, but they to confront the Stones about their apathy; instead they were told that their \Vere powerless in the face of so much darkness. As they performed their presence at the free show would not be welcome. most radical anthem, 'We Can Be Together', fighting erupted, and the band 312 PETER DOGGETT THERE'S A RJOT GOING ON 313 were forced to stop playing. When singer Marty Balin leapt into the crowd }lis body was left bleeding in the dirt, a gaping wound in the side of his to stop Hell's Angels from beating up a spectator, he too was clubbed to skull, while the Stones stumbled through 'Under My Thumb'. The world the ground and briefly left unconscious. That set the vibe for the day: for premiere of their sex'n'slavery drama, 'Brown Sugar', passed unnoticed; they the first time, rock stars had to appear in front of spectators who were hustled through the customary finale of revolutionary defiance, 'Street patently not in awe of their fame. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young delivered Fighting Man', in their desire to end their ordeal as quickly as possible. Then an abridged, faltering set, clearly disturbed by the violence unfolding before it was over, and Meredith Hunter's body still lay in the dust. them. 'Watching [David] Crosby's discomfort on the stage,' Sol Stern recalled, It took a while for the news to spread, but even without the murder or 'I remembered that the same group had played in Golden Gate Park at the a clear sight of the Angels at their most demonic, anyone who was at November Vietnam Moratorium before a quarter of a million peace marchers. Altamont knew that it hadn't been a festival. That didn't stop the leading Crosby had taken an obvious slap at some of the political speakers who had pop paper, the New Musical Express, from rating it as 'the world's most preceded him- Black Panther David Hilliard, Dolores Huerta of the Delano fantastic pop concert ever'. Their starry-eyed reporter misread the main grape strikers and Rennie Davis of the Chicago 8. The told the event: 'Mick came in for a bit of bother when a long-haired blond youth crowd, "We don't need any politicians, politics is bullshit". He implied that jumped on him with intent to kill, but the ever-present Hell's Angels were all we needed to get everything right was the music. But at Altamont his on hand to deal with the bother.' But the paper did provide a tantalising music failed him; it was unable to affect the violence that was engulfing his piece of information that was soon forgotten: 'Though the concert was free, band, and he watched dumbfounded as the Angels kicked his fans in front proceeds from TV coverage and ftlms will all go to an orphanage for of his stage.' Vietnamese babies.' In 1970, Altamont was the focus of a documentary ftlm Sensing that the situation was beyond their control, the Grateful D ead entitled Gimme Shelter, fully endorsed by the Stones. There was no more talk refused to perform, and escaped back to the safety of the city. 'There was of Vietnamese babies. For a free concert, Altamont turned out to be very one thing beforehand that we all should have spotted,' recalled guitarist Jerry lucrative. Garcia wryly. '[Emmett] Grogan wrote up on the blackboard up at the Unlike the NME, the West Coast underground paper, the Berkeley Tribe, Grateful Dead office, just as the site had been changed from whatever the realised what Altamont symbolised. 'Stones Concert Ends It', blared the head­ first one was, a little slogan which said something like "Charlie Manson line on the front page; 'America Now Up For Grabs'. 'Bringing a lot of Memorial Hippie Love Death Cult Festival". Something along those lines, people together used to be cool,' mused George Paul Csicsery. 'But at Altamont something really funny, but ominous.' So there was a lengthy delay until the · . . the locust generation came to consume crumbs from the hands of an Rolling Stones were prepared to perform, heightening the tension and mal­ entertainment industry we helped to create. Our one-day micro-society was evolence of the crowd. The Stones' reluctance was understandable; Jagger bound to the death-throes of capitalist greed. America at Altamont could had been punched in the face backstage as he arrived at the venue. Among only muster one common response. Everybody grooved on fear. One the masses, journalist Lester Bangs allowed himself a moment of elation: communal terror of fascist repression. America wallows in the hope that 'My God, THE STONES, there they are, and suddenly you're transfigured someone, somewhere, can set it straight. Clearly nobody is in control.' Over at the sight of Jagger bursting onstage in an incredible capelike orange-and­ the page, his colleague Henry Dankowski erected a mirror for his readers: black robe.' But the Stones and their majesty soon became irrelevant, with 'We're turning into a generation whose thing is to be an Audience, whose fighting breaking out at their feet, and song after song interrupted, as Jagger lifestyle is the mass get-together for "good vibes". "What do you do?" "I go called out dolefully to the crowd, 'Brothers, brothers, why are we fighting?' to concerts."' The debate about how Altamont had happened, what it meant, By now, brotherhood had long since fled the speedway. Instead, an 18-year­ What it signalled for the 1970s, raged for weeks. One writer interpreted old black kid, Meredith Hunter, drew a gun and was stabbed to death by Altamont as proof that 'Underground Music is Dead' and that 'we should dig the music and forget the imposed social relevance the musicians'. Angels. Or maybe he was stabbed first and drew later. It scarcely mattered. of 314 PETER DOGGETT

Another said that it represented 'rock as commodity': 'as long as the pre­ occupation with material acquisitiveness dominates the rock scene, rock will be almost (not quite) as managed as news releases in Vietnam'. Only two things were certain. After their 1969 US tour, nobody would ever mistake the Rolling Stones for political radicals. That particular piece of mythology was now defunct. And in the wake of Manson and Altamont, it could no longer be assumed that the counter-culture was a storehouse of moral virtue. SECTION III If hippies could kill and watch others being killed in the name of rock and the revolution, then maybe everything the movement accepted as true had to be rethought. The 1960s were over, and so was the assumption that good vibes arid righteous rhetoric could change the world for the better. Activists prepared for 1970, and a push towards a revolution that would be built on violence rather than love.