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Yeesh. And I don't think George Lucas was a camera man at Altamont either. Has anyone else ever heard that?
Right then, that I can buy. And George was from, and based in, that area, so it makes sense. But I had a pretty good idea he wasn't really credited, at this point I would think it would be fairly well-known. His camera jamming up and footage being unacceptable explains it. Still, I'm surprised I've never heard that.
I knew he wasn't the one that filmed the stabbing. I've read/heard the Maysles talk about who it was. I can't recall exactly who, whether it was one of the brothers themselves or someone else, but I know it wasn't Lucas. That would be known.
I think guy who wrote the original piece is wrong about several things.
Talk about your favorite band.
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Inside the LC : The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon -Stones content of course !
Posted by:
SwayStones
()
Date: January 31, 2011 20:03
[informationfarm.blogspot.com]
At the tail end of 1969, Parsons and his fellow Burrito Brothers had the dubious distinction of playing as one of the opening acts at the Rolling Stones' infamous free show at Altamont. Gram had become a very close confidant of the Stones, particularly Keith Richards, and he would later be credited with being the inspiration for the country flavor evident on the Stones' Let it Bleed album.
Parsons had first met up with the Stones when they were in Los Angeles in the summer of 1968 to mix their Beggar's Banquet album. Also hooking up with the Stones around that same time was Phil Kaufman, a recently-released prison buddy of Charlie Manson. Kaufman initially lived with the Manson Family after being released in March of 1968, and he thereafter remained what Kaufman himself described as a "sympathetic cousin" to Charlie. He also went to work as the Rolling Stones' road manager for their 1968 American tour, which is the type of job apparently best filled by ex-convict friends of Charles Manson.
In late summer of 1969, following the probable murder of Brian Jones in July, the Stones were back in LA to complete their Let It Bleed album and prepare for yet another tour. According to Ben Fong-Torres, writing in Hickory Wind, "Mick and Keith stayed at Stephen Stills's [sic] house near Laurel Canyon ... Before Stills, the house had been occupied by Peter Tork of the Monkees." (For the record, other reports hold that the Peter Tork house was in, not near, Laurel Canyon
On December 6, 1969, temporary Laurel Canyon residents Mick and Keith, along with permanent Laurel Canyon residents Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Flying Burrito Brothers, all gathered at a desolate speedway known as Altamont to stage a free concert. By the time it was over, four people were dead and another 850 concert-goers were injured to varying degrees, mostly by members of the Hell's Angels swinging leaded pool cues.
The Angels had, of course, been hired by the Stones to ostensibly provide security. That decision is almost universally cast as an innocent mistake on the part of the band, though such a claim is difficult to believe. It was certainly no secret that the reactionary motorcycle clubs, formed by former military men, were openly hostile to hippies and anti-war activists; as early as 1965, they had brutally attacked peaceful anti-war demonstrators while police, who had courteously allowed the Angels to pass through their line, looked on. It was also known that the Angels were heavily involved in trafficking meth, a drug that was widely blamed for the ugliness that had descended over the Haight.
Perhaps less well known was that more than a few of those biker gangs had uncomfortably close ties to Charlie Manson, particularly a club known as the Straight Satans, one of whose members, Danny DeCarlo, watched over the Family's arsenal of weapons. At least one of the performers taking the stage at Altamont, curiously enough, also had close ties to the motorcycle clubs; as was revealed in his autobiography, Crosby "had friends in every Bay Area chapter of the Hells Angels."
The death that the concert at Altamont will always be remembered for, of course, is that of Meredith Hunter, the young man who was stabbed to death by members of the Hell's Angels right in front of the stage while the band (in this case, the Rolling Stones) played on. The song they were playing, contrary to most accounts of the incident, was Sympathy for the Devil, as was initially reported in Rolling Stone magazine based on the accounts of several reporters on the scene and a review of the unedited film stock.
Most accounts claim that Hunter was killed while the band performed Under My Thumb. All such claims are based on the mainstream snuff film Gimme Shelter, in which the killing was deliberately presented out of sequence. In the absence of any alternative filmic versions of Hunter's death, the Maysles brothers' film became the default official orthodoxy. Of course, someone went to great lengths to insure that there would be only one available version of events; as Rolling Stone also reported, shortly after the concert, "One weird Altamont story has to do with a young Berkeley filmmaker who claims to have gotten 8MM footage of the killing. He got home from the affair Saturday and began telling his friends about his amazing film. His house was knocked over the next night, completely rifled. The thief took only his film, nothing else."
Contrary to the impression created by Gimme Shelter, Hunter was killed not long into the Stones' set. But as the film's editor, Charlotte Zwerin, explained to Salon some thirty years later, the climax of the movie always has to come at the end: "We're talking about the structure of a film. And what kind of concert film are you going to be able to have after somebody has been murdered in front of the stage? Hanging around for another hour would have been really wrong in terms of the film." What wasn't wrong, apparently, was deliberately altering the sequence of events in what was ostensibly a documentary film.
One of the young cameramen working for the Maysles brothers that day, curiously enough, was a guy by the name of George Lucas (it is unclear whether it was Lucas who captured the conveniently unobstructed footage of the murder.) Not long after, Lucas began a meteoric rise to the very top of the Hollywood food chain. Also present that day, and featured in the film gyrating atop a raised platform near the stage, was the King of the Freaks himself, Vito Paulekas.
Many of the accounts of the tragedy at Altamont include the demonstrably false claim that Hunter can unmistakably be seen drawing a gun just before being jumped and killed by the Angels (some accounts even have Hunter firing the alleged gun). The relevant frames from the film are included here for your review. What can certainly be fairly clearly seen is the large knife being brought down into Hunter's back. But a gun being brandished by Mr. Hunter? If you can see one, then you either have far better eyes than I, or a far more active imagination. Or both.
The Angel who was charged with the murder and then ultimately acquitted, Alan David Passaro, was found floating facedown in a reservoir in March of 1985 with $10,000 in his pocket. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, Passaro's acquittal was not based on the jury having been convinced that Hunter had drawn a gun, but rather on the fact that the knife wounds that killed Hunter were apparently upstrokes, which meant that they were not the wounds inflicted on-camera by Passaro. He and/or someone else continued to stab Hunter after he was down, and it was those wounds, which the cameras didn't clearly record, that killed him.
About one year after Altamont, otherwise obscure singer/songwriter Don McLean penned the lyrics to what was destined to become one of the most iconic songs in the annals of popular music: American Pie. Those lyrics are essentially a chronological recitation of various tragedies that shaped the world of popular music. Not long after a reference to the August 1969 Manson murders and their connection to the Laurel Canyon music scene (Helter Skelter in a summer swelter, The birds flew off with a fallout shelter, Eight miles high and falling fast), and just before a reference to the October 1970 death of Janis Joplin (I met a girl who sang the blues, And I asked her for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away, I went down to the sacred store, Where I'd heard the music years before, but the man there said the music wouldn't play), can be found a verse, reproduced at the top of this post, in which McLean characterizes the death of Hunter as a ritualized murder.
I, of course, would never make such a wild and reckless claim.
[informationfarm.blogspot.com]
At the tail end of 1969, Parsons and his fellow Burrito Brothers had the dubious distinction of playing as one of the opening acts at the Rolling Stones' infamous free show at Altamont. Gram had become a very close confidant of the Stones, particularly Keith Richards, and he would later be credited with being the inspiration for the country flavor evident on the Stones' Let it Bleed album.
Parsons had first met up with the Stones when they were in Los Angeles in the summer of 1968 to mix their Beggar's Banquet album. Also hooking up with the Stones around that same time was Phil Kaufman, a recently-released prison buddy of Charlie Manson. Kaufman initially lived with the Manson Family after being released in March of 1968, and he thereafter remained what Kaufman himself described as a "sympathetic cousin" to Charlie. He also went to work as the Rolling Stones' road manager for their 1968 American tour, which is the type of job apparently best filled by ex-convict friends of Charles Manson.
In late summer of 1969, following the probable murder of Brian Jones in July, the Stones were back in LA to complete their Let It Bleed album and prepare for yet another tour. According to Ben Fong-Torres, writing in Hickory Wind, "Mick and Keith stayed at Stephen Stills's [sic] house near Laurel Canyon ... Before Stills, the house had been occupied by Peter Tork of the Monkees." (For the record, other reports hold that the Peter Tork house was in, not near, Laurel Canyon
On December 6, 1969, temporary Laurel Canyon residents Mick and Keith, along with permanent Laurel Canyon residents Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and the Flying Burrito Brothers, all gathered at a desolate speedway known as Altamont to stage a free concert. By the time it was over, four people were dead and another 850 concert-goers were injured to varying degrees, mostly by members of the Hell's Angels swinging leaded pool cues.
The Angels had, of course, been hired by the Stones to ostensibly provide security. That decision is almost universally cast as an innocent mistake on the part of the band, though such a claim is difficult to believe. It was certainly no secret that the reactionary motorcycle clubs, formed by former military men, were openly hostile to hippies and anti-war activists; as early as 1965, they had brutally attacked peaceful anti-war demonstrators while police, who had courteously allowed the Angels to pass through their line, looked on. It was also known that the Angels were heavily involved in trafficking meth, a drug that was widely blamed for the ugliness that had descended over the Haight.
Perhaps less well known was that more than a few of those biker gangs had uncomfortably close ties to Charlie Manson, particularly a club known as the Straight Satans, one of whose members, Danny DeCarlo, watched over the Family's arsenal of weapons. At least one of the performers taking the stage at Altamont, curiously enough, also had close ties to the motorcycle clubs; as was revealed in his autobiography, Crosby "had friends in every Bay Area chapter of the Hells Angels."
The death that the concert at Altamont will always be remembered for, of course, is that of Meredith Hunter, the young man who was stabbed to death by members of the Hell's Angels right in front of the stage while the band (in this case, the Rolling Stones) played on. The song they were playing, contrary to most accounts of the incident, was Sympathy for the Devil, as was initially reported in Rolling Stone magazine based on the accounts of several reporters on the scene and a review of the unedited film stock.
Most accounts claim that Hunter was killed while the band performed Under My Thumb. All such claims are based on the mainstream snuff film Gimme Shelter, in which the killing was deliberately presented out of sequence. In the absence of any alternative filmic versions of Hunter's death, the Maysles brothers' film became the default official orthodoxy. Of course, someone went to great lengths to insure that there would be only one available version of events; as Rolling Stone also reported, shortly after the concert, "One weird Altamont story has to do with a young Berkeley filmmaker who claims to have gotten 8MM footage of the killing. He got home from the affair Saturday and began telling his friends about his amazing film. His house was knocked over the next night, completely rifled. The thief took only his film, nothing else."
Contrary to the impression created by Gimme Shelter, Hunter was killed not long into the Stones' set. But as the film's editor, Charlotte Zwerin, explained to Salon some thirty years later, the climax of the movie always has to come at the end: "We're talking about the structure of a film. And what kind of concert film are you going to be able to have after somebody has been murdered in front of the stage? Hanging around for another hour would have been really wrong in terms of the film." What wasn't wrong, apparently, was deliberately altering the sequence of events in what was ostensibly a documentary film.
One of the young cameramen working for the Maysles brothers that day, curiously enough, was a guy by the name of George Lucas (it is unclear whether it was Lucas who captured the conveniently unobstructed footage of the murder.) Not long after, Lucas began a meteoric rise to the very top of the Hollywood food chain. Also present that day, and featured in the film gyrating atop a raised platform near the stage, was the King of the Freaks himself, Vito Paulekas.
Many of the accounts of the tragedy at Altamont include the demonstrably false claim that Hunter can unmistakably be seen drawing a gun just before being jumped and killed by the Angels (some accounts even have Hunter firing the alleged gun). The relevant frames from the film are included here for your review. What can certainly be fairly clearly seen is the large knife being brought down into Hunter's back. But a gun being brandished by Mr. Hunter? If you can see one, then you either have far better eyes than I, or a far more active imagination. Or both.
The Angel who was charged with the murder and then ultimately acquitted, Alan David Passaro, was found floating facedown in a reservoir in March of 1985 with $10,000 in his pocket. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, Passaro's acquittal was not based on the jury having been convinced that Hunter had drawn a gun, but rather on the fact that the knife wounds that killed Hunter were apparently upstrokes, which meant that they were not the wounds inflicted on-camera by Passaro. He and/or someone else continued to stab Hunter after he was down, and it was those wounds, which the cameras didn't clearly record, that killed him.
About one year after Altamont, otherwise obscure singer/songwriter Don McLean penned the lyrics to what was destined to become one of the most iconic songs in the annals of popular music: American Pie. Those lyrics are essentially a chronological recitation of various tragedies that shaped the world of popular music. Not long after a reference to the August 1969 Manson murders and their connection to the Laurel Canyon music scene (Helter Skelter in a summer swelter, The birds flew off with a fallout shelter, Eight miles high and falling fast), and just before a reference to the October 1970 death of Janis Joplin (I met a girl who sang the blues, And I asked her for some happy news, but she just smiled and turned away, I went down to the sacred store, Where I'd heard the music years before, but the man there said the music wouldn't play), can be found a verse, reproduced at the top of this post, in which McLean characterizes the death of Hunter as a ritualized murder.
I, of course, would never make such a wild and reckless claim.
[informationfarm.blogspot.com]
Re: Inside the LC : The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon -Stones content of course !
Posted by:
stones78
()
Date: January 31, 2011 20:30
There's this "conspiracy" tone on this article.
Re: Inside the LC : The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon -Stones content of course !
Posted by:
bustedtrousers
()
Date: January 31, 2011 22:05
Quote
He also went to work as the Rolling Stones' road manager for their 1968 American tour, which is the type of job apparently best filled by ex-convict friends of Charles Manson.
In late summer of 1969, following the probable murder of Brian Jones in July, the Stones were back in LA to complete their Let It Bleed album and prepare for yet another tour.
Yeesh. And I don't think George Lucas was a camera man at Altamont either. Has anyone else ever heard that?
Re: Inside the LC : The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon -Stones content of course !
Posted by:
ineedadrink
()
Date: January 31, 2011 22:29
imdb: According to Albert Maysles (in 1999 while he visited UCLA), George Lucas was one of the cameramen for this shoot. Unfortunately his camera jammed after shooting about 100 feet of film that night. All of his footage was deemed unacceptable and wasn't used in any version of the final product.
Re: Inside the LC : The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon -Stones content of course !
Posted by:
bustedtrousers
()
Date: January 31, 2011 23:01
Quote
ineedadrink
imdb: According to Albert Maysles (in 1999 while he visited UCLA), George Lucas was one of the cameramen for this shoot. Unfortunately his camera jammed after shooting about 100 feet of film that night. All of his footage was deemed unacceptable and wasn't used in any version of the final product.
Right then, that I can buy. And George was from, and based in, that area, so it makes sense. But I had a pretty good idea he wasn't really credited, at this point I would think it would be fairly well-known. His camera jamming up and footage being unacceptable explains it. Still, I'm surprised I've never heard that.
I knew he wasn't the one that filmed the stabbing. I've read/heard the Maysles talk about who it was. I can't recall exactly who, whether it was one of the brothers themselves or someone else, but I know it wasn't Lucas. That would be known.
I think guy who wrote the original piece is wrong about several things.
Re: Inside the LC : The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon -Stones content of course !
Posted by:
Green Lady
()
Date: February 1, 2011 09:31
Given the way the author's mind works (everything is a conspiracy) then he would never believe that George Lucas's camera jammed. OBVIOUSLY he must have filmed something so incriminating that it was suppressed by the conspirators (whoever they were), and he was bought off by having his "meteoric rise" arranged for him by the same all-powerful conspirators (but then why didn't they do the same for the kid from Berkeley?).
I love the way that a phrase like "unobstructed footage of the murder" can be made to appear sinister by the insertion of the word "conveniently". As if anybody in that chaos could have organised an unobstructed shot ....? Anyway, it didn't look very unobstructed to me the last time I saw it.
This doesn't make sense, either. If the object of the exercise was to have a public murder filmed, then why would one person's footage be suppressed while another was given a "conveniently unobstructed" shot?
As you can probably see, conspiracy theories are not my thing.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-02-01 09:43 by Green Lady.
I love the way that a phrase like "unobstructed footage of the murder" can be made to appear sinister by the insertion of the word "conveniently". As if anybody in that chaos could have organised an unobstructed shot ....? Anyway, it didn't look very unobstructed to me the last time I saw it.
This doesn't make sense, either. If the object of the exercise was to have a public murder filmed, then why would one person's footage be suppressed while another was given a "conveniently unobstructed" shot?
As you can probably see, conspiracy theories are not my thing.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-02-01 09:43 by Green Lady.
Re: Inside the LC : The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon -Stones content of course !
Posted by:
Glam Descendant
()
Date: February 1, 2011 10:58
>But I had a pretty good idea he wasn't really credited
George Lucas' name is most certainly in the credits to GIMME SHELTER. Check the DVD if you doubt it.
George Lucas' name is most certainly in the credits to GIMME SHELTER. Check the DVD if you doubt it.
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