"Most people think that the concert at Altamont was the antithesis of Woodstock. But one of my students at UCSB recently commented that you could tell a lot about what went wrong at Altamont by watching what went right at Monterey. I couldn’t agree more . . . It’s fascinating to watch both of these films and compare what happened just a few years and less than a hundred miles apart. First off, Monterey Pop, which may be my favorite of all Criterion DVD packages. The booklet is printed on nature-rough hippy-grade paper stock that you would have first encountered on the streets of Haight-Ashbury, in the form of a free press or psychedelic poster on a telephone pole, and later on your thrift-store coffee table with a pile of pot about to be rolled next to it! Yes, it is this evocative! The DVD box set includes amazing outtake performances with Laura Nyro, Quicksilver Messenger Service, TINY TIM (!), and Buffalo Springfield . . . and another DVD, Jimi Plays Monterey and Shake! Otis at Monterey, contains the complete performances by Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding (with commentary by the ever-enlightening Peter Guralnick, who knows the history of Memphis musicians better than anyone alive). The accompanying doc of a conversation between record producer Lou Adler and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker is such a coup—not only do you hear how the concert came together and how it was organized during the entire event, but you also get to hear Lou Adler’s story. A lot of people don’t know (although smarty-pants me did) that Adler started his music career with Herb Alpert, as songwriting and producing partners . . . and he has awesome stories of Paul McCartney hanging out at Cass Elliot’s house in Laurel Canyon . . . There’s endless music-nerd gold like that! The color in the film is all that psychedelia had to offer—vibrant, otherworldly, and hyperreal. There’s an innocence throughout Monterey Pop that exceeds the “positive vibes” of Woodstock a few years later and that is of course completely nonexistent in Gimme Shelter. You can also see in Monterey Pop the cops in the crowd (who were replaced by Hells Angels at Altamont) and SEATING! My student pointed out there were folding chairs on the lawns at Monterey—very civilized. Now that wasn’t throughout the concert grounds, but it was more in the tradition of the Newport Folk Festival than the mayhem to follow in Altamont. Also like Newport, the performers were in the audience—they were not in some rarefied backstage area, cut off from the fans or their fellow performers—and you get to see the moment when Mama Cass Elliot in the audience has her mind blown by the powerful performance of young Janis Joplin. There’s a fabulous interview with Papa John Phillips, who cofounded the event with Adler, and a gorgeous photo exhibit by photographer Elaine Mayes. Gimme Shelter director Albert Maysles was one of seven cameramen on Monterey Pop. And I need to point out that you do see a few Hells Angels on the lawn toward the end of Monterey Pop. So the Angels already had a presence at large outdoor rock events that far back. I’ve talked to a lot of people who were at Altamont as performers, friends of bands, and audience members, and the consensus is that nothing in this film was manipulated in the least: the vibe was bad from the very start, and the filmmakers didn’t create that in the editing room. Interestingly, the film is shot much darker than the saturated colors in Monterey Pop—but then again colors were becoming less vibrant in pop culture and fashion at that time too. But interestingly—here you have some of the same players—you have Jefferson Airplane, who are almost humble on the Monterey Pop stage (despite the fact that Grace Slick shows off her powerful rock pipes at Monterey—she was the first true female rock singer and very underrated in my opinion), having to stop their set at Altamont when singer Marty Balin is dragged off the stage and beat up by the Hells Angels. The Grateful Dead play a soothing jam at Monterey and don’t even make it to the stage at Altamont. Chris Hillman with the Byrds plays an evening set to the Monterey audience, and in Gimme Shelter his band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, only get two songs done before the mayhem drives them off the stage at the Speedway. Watching Charlie Watts listening to the interviews with the promoter and with Hells Angel Sonny Barger makes Watts your favorite member of the band if he wasn’t already . . . His quiet devastation over the murder at his band’s concert is profound to witness (and you do feel as though you are let in on a very private event)."

"I've read since that Hex Enduction Hour was going to be the last Fall album and that Mark was going to split the band up if it didn't work. The rest of us weren't aware of this. I guess it could have been like David Bowie splitting up the Spiders From Mars onstage at the Hammersmith Odeon, but obviously this proved not to be the case. I put this in here because it was the last Fall album that I did, and everything that we'd learned just came together. I was on Live At The Witch Trials, but that was a pop album. It sounds like a totally different group… well, it did have different musicians on it, I guess. Mark obviously wasn't clear on what he wanted The Fall to sound like at that point in time; Dragnet was just the sound of a load of kids who couldn't play being thrown in a studio and being excited and being in their favourite band but… [laughs] well, Dragnet is a mystery to me, that album… I remember recording it and the production… it never sounded the same twice. I realised that wasn't how we sounded live. It didn't sound like The Fall. It sounded amazing in its own way but it didn't sound like The Fall. It didn't capture what we were doing. But with Hex Enduction Hour, everything came together at that one point. We did some of it live in a cinema in Hitchin and some of it in a studio in Iceland that had lava walls. Apparently it's still talked about to this day, The Fall's stay in Iceland. No one went to Iceland then, The Stranglers had played there, Jaz Coleman ran off there to find the ley lines, but that was it. I think we first went there because we were invited by Einar from the Sugarcubes. He instigated it. It was so bleak there. There was no tourism. And the mentality of the Icelandic people was like that of The Fall, to be honest. It was a real case of us versus them. They were out on a limb. Iceland didn't integrate. It was a really strange community of people. They were really nice but otherworldly. That was my swansong really. I mean I'm on that Room To Live album as well, but I listen to Hex and I hear a glorious racket. I think that's when Mark really got to grips with what he wanted The Fall to sound like, and ironically you find out later that it was going to be the last Fall album. Mark's stream of consciousness really comes together, the way he makes words up like in the title, he really got a handle on where he wanted to take his own art. And with the band it was all because we'd been playing together for a long time. Steve Hanley couldn't play bass when we were together in [pre-Fall group] The Sirens, I taught him the root notes and I couldn't play guitar either… I still can't, if I'm honest. Steve found his feet and found his sound, so he became the engine room of The Fall. The sound of it is right, despite being recorded in these two totally different environments. I remember when I heard 'Hip Priest' on Silence Of The Lambs, because I was the only person left in the cinema when it came on… I tell a lie, it was just me and the wife. Jonathan Demme was a massive Fall fan. Yeah, it was peculiar that… but then again it's the music that a serial killer's playing in his house, so is it really that weird? Mark's given me grief over the years, but how can you take any of it to heart? Anything he says is water off a duck's back. He's a character… almost a cartoon character. I've got a massive soft spot for Mark and I'm a massive fan. Round the corner from here there used to be a venue called The Arches Bar and a mate of mine was having his birthday party in there in the mid-80s. I was upstairs, and my mate said Mark Smith's downstairs and he wants a pint with you. So I thought, right, well, we've both grown up since then, let's have a drink and put it all behind us. So I had a couple of pints with him, and we had a really good time together. I'd been listening to The Fall, he said – and he'll deny this – I've got your album and I'm keeping an eye on what you're doing and I think it's great. I mean we were both drunk, but by the end of it we were kind of mates again. Then about three months later they reissued a load of Fall albums on Cog Sinister, so I rang him up and said, 'Am I going to get paid for any of this?' And he said, 'No you're not!' [makes noise of phone being slammed down] So it was straight back to square one."