Mick Jagger

The Maysles Brothers' Gimme Shelter, now rereleased in theaters on its 30th anniversary, documents the Rolling Stones' 1969 tour of America and ends, as the tour did, at the free concert at the Altamont Speedway in the hills west of San Francisco. The concert degenerated into mayhem when booze and acid-addled Hell's Angels, hired to keep order in front of the stage, discharged their task by beating concertgoers over their heads with leaded pool cues. Altamont's violence was capped by the murder of a young black man, Meredith Hunter. Captured on film, Hunter's murder cemented the festival's reputation as the official end of the 1960s counterculture. Even worse, Gimme Shelter showed that the counterculture was not going to redeem or change anything, especially the human impulse to violence.