"The strange thing about Altamont, with all its horrors—brilliantly and intimately documented by the Maysleses and by Stanley Booth in his book The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones—is that one still wishes one had been there. (I interviewed Stanley onstage in 2012 after a screening of the film, and he still seemed traumatized by the gig, all these years later.) The film and Booth’s book can both be usefully cross-referenced with Sonny Barger’s autobiography, in which he concedes that while it may have been a big night for the Stones it was just another night for the Angels! One of the great moments in documentary is when we focus on Barger at the edge of the stage, looking at Jagger as though he might still decide to beat the crap out of him, as no one had looked at him since he was a little boy at school in England."

"The age of innocence that was the sixties ended, it is often said, at Altamont Speedway, miles from the peace and love of San Francisco, one cold fall evening in 1969. The Rolling Stones, frustrated to have missed out on the Woodstock festival weeks earlier, chose this location to stage their own festival, and taking advice from Jerry Garcia, brought in local Hells Angels chapters to handle security, paying them with as much beer as they could drink. The concert was a disaster, and ended with manslaughter. The documentarian brothers Albert and David Maysles were there to film the run-up to the event, the performance itself, and the aftermath. Mick Jagger has never looked so lost onstage, nor would he be quite so out of control again. Strangely, it seemed only to fuel the Stones’ rise to power—but then, the Beatles were about to call it a day. Essential viewing for anyone who loves contemporary music and the culture that surrounds it."