By Erin Free
In the rock documentary genre, one movie stands head and shoulders above the rest. Though the likes of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, Ondi Timoner’s Dig!, the Britpop saga, Live Forever, and Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster might strut the same stage, The Rolling Stones’ 1970 masterpiece, Gimme Shelter, is literally a film like no other. Directed by documentary pioneers Albert and David Maysles (Salesman, Monterey Pop, Grey Gardens) and Charlotte Zwerin (Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser), Gimme Shelter is classic filmmaking not by design but by nightmarish serendipity.
The filmmaking trio was engaged by The Stones – then at the absolute height of their creative powers – to document the band’s 1969 tour of America. After shooting some incendiary performances at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the project changed shape when The Stones decided to end the tour by holding a free outdoor concert. This, however, was not as easy as it seemed, with the proposed show caught up in legal red tape and bounced around a variety of proposed venues. When the ramshackle show finally found a home at The Altamont Speedway outside of San Francisco, it proved to be one of the blackest days in music history. With the notorious Hell’s Angels on board as security, the day was punctuated by beatings, drug casualties and hopeless organisational chaos as the crowd swelled to over 300,000. In the only logical and tragic end point, the concert climaxed with The Hell’s Angels beating and stabbing a confused fan to death.
Gimme Shelter captures it all like a waking nightmare, starting with the sizzling swagger of The Stones at Madison Square Garden, and then descending into the moral mire of Altamont, which resembles a ragged battlefront, its images of stoned hippies totally at odds with the feral, brutal stance of The Hell’s Angels. From the oozing charisma of The Stones to the percolating violence of Altamont, Gimme Shelter is one of the most incisive and excoriating documents of the sixties that you’ll ever see. Final word: Gimme Shelter is a work of staggering genius.
