'Gimme Shelter' Screening

In 1969 the Rolling Stones did a free concert at Altamont, San Francisco. This documentary is the first of its kind as it focused on the tour as opposed to merely showing a live concert.

The feature can be viewed in two different lights, the first a rock n' roll band has a concert, a few people get naked, a few stoned and a person killed or the later being, a poorly prepared concert doused with a violent undercurrent prevalent in American culture.

It was great to see the Stones belting out hits such as “Gimme Shelter”, “Under my thumb” and “Honky-tonk woman”. Mick Jagger plays on his Englishness and comes across ungenuine at times when trying to difuse crowd tension and antics. The unrest is greater heightened by the rivalry between the Hell’s Angels and the Stones. The Bikies, stars in their own right, were acting as security for the night and there is obvious displeasure at being upstaged by this foreign entity on their soil. This concert one suspects, would have shown promoters what happens when a stage is only a metre above the crowd and there is little to no security.

For $24, tonight’s event allowed for a movie, a Q&A time with Sam Cutler, The Stones’ personal tour manager during the ’69 tour as well the bonus of a shoulder rub with a certain Newtonian who fronts The Whitlams.

The Q&A session touched on what was going on behind the scenes, as Sam “finds the film disturbing … and doesn’t make him feel a happy bunny”. Many questions were had, a few Americans in the audience were disgruntled as the theme of violence in America was touched on numerous times, yet the remainder of us walked away a little better informed about a time that shaped the current day’s need for heightened security at concerts.

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