ALTAMONT, Calif. -- It was billed as a West Coast Woodstock -- a huge free concert in a windswept cow pasture and headlined by the Rolling Stones. Instead, the gathering 30 years ago became one of the most violent days in the history of rock 'n' roll, and perhaps the last act in the halcyon era of hippie love.
"It was an ending, a transition, the end of the Flower Power move towards community," said Charles Pressler, associate professor of sociology at Purdue University North Central. "That idea of community was exploded at Altamont."Repeated attempts to recreate the original Woodstock have been doomed to revive images of the deadly Altamont concert of Dec. 6, 1969.
Woodstock '99 was no exception. The August event attracted 200,000 people to upstate New York and ended in an orgy of violence with fires, looting and women sexually assaulted in a vicious mosh pit right in front of the stage.
Promoters at Altamont, who had expected about 10,000 people, were overrun as more than 300,000 flocked to the hillsides and dusty meadows some 40 miles east of San Francisco 30 years ago.
They were drawn by the bill -- including Santana, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young -- and the dream of recreating the Woodstock festival held that August on Max Yasgur's farm.
But a series of missteps turned the gathering deadly. As the Stones rocked on stage in the evening chill, a member of the notorious Hells Angels motorcycle gang, hired as security, attacked and stabbed Meredith Hunter, an 18-year-old man from Berkeley. Hunter died. Alan Pasaro, who admitted stabbing him but said someone else struck the fatal blows, was eventually acquitted.
"It was important to everybody, a free concert, everybody coming together," recalled Vic Henan, a publicist in San Jose who was 16 when he hitchhiked to Altamont with three friends. "We were going to have our own Woodstock. But it turned ugly very fast."
All the usual festival concert problems -- scarce bathrooms, no food, no water -- were made worse by the choice of the Hells Angels as security. They rode their bikes through the crowd, armed with pool cues and knives, and were paid with $500 worth of beer.
Doctors treated more than 800 people on LSD. Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane was beaten unconscious. Two New Jersey men died when they were run over as they slept. Another person drowned in the nearby California Aqueduct.
"What happened? What went wrong?" Mick Jagger said shortly after the concert.
The area today doesn't look much different than it did 30 years ago.
Cows still wander the hills and pastures, which are dotted with trees and well-worn farm houses.
The concert, designed as a "thank-you" from the British rockers after a successful U.S. tour, was immortalized in the film documentary "Gimme Shelter" by Albert Maysles and his brother Donald.