Rolling Stones: The Road To Altamont (Part 2)

Last week Scott & Blake dove into the birth of the Rolling Stones' touring empire. In Part II, they find out what it cost. After reinventing the modern mega-tour in 1969, the Stones faced backlash from a counterculture that suddenly saw them as corporate villains. Their response, a massive free concert celebration in Northern California, was meant to be an olive-branch. Instead, the Altamont Speedway Free Festival became the moment rock lost its innocence. Poor planning, a ground-level stage, and hundreds of thousands of restless fans turned the show into a pressure cooker. The "security" detail, Hells Angels paid with beer, only exacerbated the slow-motion disaster. By the time the Stones took the stage, violence was already erupting in the crowd. What followed was a tragedy and a cultural rupture, immortalized on film and etched into rock history. This is the finale of the tale of rock idealism's brutal collision with reality—and why, ultimately, the 1960s dream of peace and love couldn’t survive the business it created.