Altamont’s Bloody End: How the Stones’ Security Gamble and Last-Minute Setlist Twist Lit the Fuse

The Altamont Free Concert is usually remembered as the day the Hells Angels turned a free Rolling Stones show into a nightmare—Meredith Hunter stabbed to death in front of the stage. But what’s less discussed is how the Stones’ own logistical choices invited that chaos. They picked the Angels because local police refused to work the gig for free, and the band’s manager, Sam Cutler, thought the outlaw bikers could handle crowd control for cheap. No radios, no plan, just a pack of drunk, amphetamine-fueled Angels with pool cues and knives.

The setlist change added a smaller fuse. Originally, the Stones planned to close with “Sympathy for the Devil”—a song that already stirred tension in the crowd during the Stones’ 1969 US tour. But after the Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin got knocked out by an Angel during his set, the Stones swapped the closer to “Street Fighting Man,” a raw, provocative track. They also dropped “Under My Thumb” from the set entirely, replacing it with “Brown Sugar” at the last minute—a song about slavery and violence. The combination of aggressive lyrics, a hostile “security” force, and a crowd already on edge turned a concert into a riot waiting to happen. The Angels didn’t start the violence alone; the band’s decisions set the stage.