#altamont free concert

[omg-hellgirl]

Keith Richards at the Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969.

[bayareabadboy]

The Rolling Stones

Free concert at Altamont speedway 1969

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 812: Willie Nelson Stardust

My father-in-law passed away on February 23rd after a long battle with Parkinson’s and various other ailments. Over the last six years, my husband and I made frequent trips down to central Oregon to check in on my in-laws and help out around the house. During some visits, it seemed possible that his dad would be around for another decade or more. And on other visits, we wondered if he would be around more than a few months. Things took a rough turn around Thanksgiving of last year and his health declined considerably. My husband spent most of January in Oregon while I’ve spent 2024 fulfilling tour obligations with three different bands and making trips down to visit them during any available downtime.

My father-in-law was a great guy. He grew up in the Bay Area and was around for all the excitement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He was buddies with Pigpen from the Grateful Dead and attempted to go to the Altamont Free Concert but was stuck in the traffic jam when news traveled down the road about all the chaos and violence incited by the Hells Angels. He loved ZZ Top and Creedence Clearwater Revival and Tina Turner. But more than anything, he loved Willie Nelson.

Stardust, in particular, got a lot of spins around their house when I’d come to visit. In some ways, it’s odd that this was their Willie album of choice. After all, the ten songs on Stardust are all covers of old pop standards. Columbia Records was even hesitant to release it considering that Willie was riding strong on his outlaw country reputation at the time. But the album became a huge hit—a quintuple platinum album and a favorite among both fans and critics.

I won’t lie, I prefer Willie’s own songs, but the slow, sparse, and relaxed vibe of Stardust grew on me. I also appreciated how he chose songs with less conventional melodies (“Blue Skies,” “All of Me,” etc) and how his minimalist slow-hand style seemed perfectly suited to those compositions. The stretches of empty space, the chord changes that feel a little counterintuitive at first but then settle nicely into the larger song, the playful but rough-hewn quality to the vocals—it all has a hazy, late night, intoxicating vibe. I don’t even remember when I picked up my personal copy but it’s been a part of my collection for at least two decades.

Over the years, I heard less and less music at my in-law’s house. Television became the more constant companion, perhaps because the sound of people talking filled the conversational void stemming from the reclusive nature of my father-in-law’s disease. But when they began doing hospice at home back in January, they switched back to music. In his last days, we kept the stereo on throughout the day, switching between various CDs from their collection. I was occasionally tasked with picking out music, and I grappled with finding something that was familiar and comforting without running the risk of forever being tainted by the circumstances. Stardust was a family favorite but I never put it on for fear that it would render it off-limits once his father passed.

The hospice nurse called us on a Tuesday in February to say my father-in-law was near the end. He wasn’t eating or drinking and his breathing was labored. My husband and I drove all night hoping to make it to central Oregon in time to say goodbye. He was nearly unresponsive by that point, though he would squeeze your hand if you talked to him. Despite his condition, he managed to to hang in there for another week-and-a-half. In that time, I had to return to Seattle for rehearsals, then had to fly out to the East Coast for a weekend of shows, then flew back to Oregon, then had to fly back to Seattle to check in on a friend that was mentally struggling after being involved in a motor vehicle fatality involving an inebriated man that had been running across a busy highway.

The call came in the afternoon. My father-in-law passed peacefully. My husband and his mother had been listening to Stardust at the time, and he took his last breath during “September Song.”

The struggle was over. It had been a long decline and by the end it was hard to recognize the warm, witty, and vibrant man I first met nearly 26 years ago in the withered and incapacitated person we’d been tending to for the last few months. I was grateful to know my father-in-law for so many years, to have a stockpile of memories of him before things got so difficult. And in the weeks since he’s passed I’ve listened to Stardust a few times. The wistful nature of the album has an added element of sadness, but the memories of listening to it in happy moments outweigh its more recent association. If anything, “September Song” feels like an even more bittersweet reminder to savor the moment and hold your loved one’s close, because seasons change and all things must pass.

Oh, it's a long long while

From May to December

But the days grow short

When you reach September

When the autumn weather

Turns leaves to flame

One hasn't got time

For the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down

To a precious few

September, November

And these few precious days

I'll spend with you

These precious days

I'll spend with you

[vintagerocker69]

The Rolling Stones and Hells Angels MC at Altamont

(L-R) Guitarist Mick Taylor Singer, songwriter, actor, and film producer Mick Jagger , Drummer Charlie Watts and Guitarist, singer, and songwriter Keith Richards of the Rock band The Rolling Stones perform during the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, which was a counterculture rock concert held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in Tracy, California.

[talkinfanfic]

Episode 305 - Talkin' Music with shineswithyou

Summary:

🎧 Find Talkin' Fanfic on your favorite podcast app. Or stream here!

Sara takes (kind of sort of) a break from talking fanfic and bandfic to talk about a different form of storytelling– music, and writing about music! @shineswithyou is a familiar face around Oasis and U2 tumblr, but what you might NOT know is that she has recently embarked on a writing journey of her own, with a substack blog about music and its place as the soundtrack of her own life.

Sara and shines talk about her blog, and the difficulty of “writing words about sounds”; how music is a language in and of itself capable of telling its own (and our own) stories.

Of COURSE we loop it back around to fanfiction and RPF (or, ‘real person fanfiction’), and how bandfic is, at its core, a pure form of love for the musical artist. Other talking points include: how awesome Bono is, and how we wish we could have been at Slane Castle in 2001; the perennial dysfunction of the Gallagher brothers; and the dichotomy of the U2 and Oasis fandoms.

Contact and Credits:

Theme Music: Kyle Laurin "Oasis Supersonic Theme" (Twitter: @cobrakylemusic)

Clips from "Pop Muzik" by M (℗ 1979 Robin Scott Limited) and "Marquee Moon" by Television (℗ 1977 Elektra/Asylum)

Tumblr: talkinfanfic.tumblr.com 

Instagram: @talkinfanfic

Email: talkinfanfic@gmail.com

Time caps:

00:00 - Introduction

14:52 - Interview start

23:07 - Music memories and growing up

30:40 - Tumblr and bandom

34:27 - the pf+hb blog!

39:32 - Blog entry 1 

44:40 - Tom Verlaine and Television

46:50 - Excerpt of blog entry 4

48:56 - shines’ music writing style and influences, and the difficulties of writing about music

57:15 - Art in the time of Covid and intentional listening

01:10:56 - More on Television’s style and ‘Marquee Moon’

01:22:22 - CBGB’s and ‘the scene’

01:28:29 - Music mags!

01:32:05 - Speaking of U2…

01:36:55 - The dichotomy of the U2 fandom vs Oasis fandom

01:43:01 - Rapid Fire Questions!

Episode References

“Pf+Hb” shineswithyou’s substack blog 

Shineswithyou on Tumblr 

Music vid for The Stone Roses’ “She Bangs the Drums” (title inspiration for the blog)

M - Pop Muzik (Official Video) (Youtube) 

Book - "Heartbeat" by Sharon Creech (Goodreads) - a children’s coming-of-age story told in free verse

Music writing rec - Liz Barker’s tinyletter (music writer and blogger, this is Liz’s main website: Words by Liz Barker ) Here is an an excerpt from her novel 

Blog rec - Hanif Kureishi’s substack and a piece he wrote which shines recommends 

Album - Nirvana MTV Unplugged (Spotify)

Album - The Velvet Underground & Nico (Spotify)

Trouser Press - “The biblio of alternative rock”

"The Too-Muchness of Bono" by David Brooks for the Atlantic

Achtoon Baby - U2 music blog project by Kelly and PJ

Fic mentioned - "The Passing of Peggy Gallagher" by Jeevey   

Fic mentioned - “Stop the Clocks” by savageandwise 

Youtube Clip from “My Beautiful Laundrette” (1985, starring Gordon Warnecke and Daniel-Day Lewis, screenplay by Hanif Kureshi. You can stream it on HBOMax)

Film Trailer for “CBGB” (2013) starring Alan Rickman

Book - Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011 (Goodreads)

Documentary - Meet Me In The Bathroom (2022) - Youtube trailer stream on Paramount+ or rent on Amazon Prime Video 

Documentary - "Gimme Shelter" (1970) - “A harrowing documentary of the Stones' 1969 tour, with much of the focus on the tragic concert at Altamont.”

Music Video - “Dark Sunglasses” a single off of Chrissie Hynde’s 2014 album ‘Stockholm’. The album doesn’t appear to be on streaming platforms.

Youtube - Where The Streets Have No Name (Live From Slane Castle, Ireland (2001) (you can see the heart-shaped stage that shines mentions really well at about 58 seconds!)

Shines’ Desert Island Discs: “Achtung Baby” by U2 (but on another day it might be “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends” by Coldplay

Shines is listening to: “Lucifer On the Sofa” by Spoon (album, 2022) 

Shines is listening to: “Wet Leg” (self-title debut album, 2022)

Music Discovery - Paul Gallagher's MixCloud channel (Sara rec, Paul does a weekly playlist with tons of great and lesser known artists. You can listen for free and there’s no ads, but to get the tracklist you have to be a paid subscriber)

Justin Hawkins Rides Again (Youtube channel, and he has a new podcast)

Music Discovery - Shines recommends finding your local independent radio station with real human DJs! You can google, and most colleges have student run stations, and TuneIn is a site that has a “find a local station” feature you can try out!

Fic Rec - “cheaper than a dime” by harmonising (Beatles RPF, George & Paul gen) -  Shines says it’s a “beautiful, angsty study of Paul and George’s relationship, written in a choppy, time-jump style”

Fic Rec - “Dare, Disturb the Universe” by @penaltybox14 (ao3, Bruce/Steve)

Fic Rec - “Wharf Rats on the Stage” by @penaltybox14 (ao3, Bruce/Steve)

Fic Rec - “Fictitious Characters” and “You Wanted Me Alone” by @likeamadonnau2. Shines says: “gorgeously written and very meta - an alternative history of U2’s early days framed by Bono & Edge’s relationship, & written by them.”

Rapid Fire Questions (starting at 01:43:01)

Beatles or Stones?

Which of these best describes your inner rock star? (I picked ladies because they don’t get talked about enough): Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett, or Stevie Nicks? 

What’s the best way to experience music? Live show, or headphones and vinyl?

You have a free Wednesday afternoon. Are you going to the Man City Match with Noel, or spending a day at the pub with Liam?

The Doctor suddenly appears with the TARDIS and offers to take you to ONE of the following shows: 

Jan 1969 - Beatles on the rooftop of Apple Corps in London

1974 - sneak into one of Television’s regular sets at CBGB’S

Nov 1995 - Oasis at Earl’s Court, London

Sept 2001 - U2 at Slane Castle, Ireland

What’s your desert island record?

Name a recent album you’ve been enjoying. 

Any music discovery recs? (ex. For me, Paul Gallagher’s mixcloud shows / Justin Hawkins)

Can you give me a couple of RPF band fics off your bookmarks list?

What does music mean to you?

[rollingstonesdata]

ROLLING STONES ON VIDEO: Altamont Festival rare footage Unveiled by Library of Congress (2022)

Altamont Festival rare footage Unveiled by Library of Congress (2022)Silent, edited footage of the free concert at Altamont Speedway on the afternoon and evening of Saturday, December 6, 1969. The film begins and ends with a shot of burning wood. The footage taken in the daytime features Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Keith Richards and…

[ultra-francesca-mercury]

december 6, 1969

The Rolling Stones headline the Altamont concert at a speedway in California. It's a free event with Jefferson Airplane and Santana also on the bill, but it turns violent when the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, who are hired as security, kill a crowd member. The concert is documented in The Stones movie Gimme Shelter.

[rockmusicassoc]

Bummerversary 12/6/1969: The Rolling Stones perform a free concert at the Altamont Speedway with Jefferson Airplane and others. Hell’s Angels provide security, a fan dies, and the 60s scream to a halt in one night. #RollingStones #GimmeShelter #Bummerversary

[theintelligenceoflove]

🎶🎶🎶

Send me 🎶 and I'll match you up with an album in my collection.

Okay so my very first choice was Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos. HOWEVER I won't officially have that until tomorrow so you are getting, perhaps the coolest and rarest piece of my collection. The original pressing of the Woodstock album.

You got this album in part because your blog doesn't tell us whose lane you are in. And so what better than an album with a variety of artists? But also because your commitment to doing the ships is like, you have to think about each of the boys so much that you really do have the vibe of all kinds of music. There's also something to be said about your peacekeeping with the ships and stuff.

I could talk about Woodstock for HOURS part of why I moved from labor history to late 20th-century cultural movements is so that one day I can study Woodstock for my job. (if you could not tell I fucking love knowing about the music and culture of the 60s and 70s) But this album in particular, outside of the festival it documents, is interesting for a couple reasons.

First, its not in chronological order which bothers the SHIT out of me. CSNY appears before folks that came before them. Jimi Hendrix is in the middle despite closing out the festival. It DOES include Hendrix's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" though which is both the best performance of the festival and also one of, if not the most, culturally relevant guitar performances in all of American history.

Second, CSNY's piece was allegedly recorded in a studio. They did perform live of course but apparently rerecorded their set for the album. The Woodstock performance was only the second time the group had performed together and on the album, you can hear Stephen Stills tell the crowd of 300,000 people that they're scared shitless. (Jefferson Airplane is the only group that appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock, and the Altamont Speedway Free Concert, the three biggest festivals of the 60s. However, David Crosby and Stephen Stills appeared at all three as well, CSNY was at Woodstock and Altamont. Crosby appeared with the Byrds, and Stills with Buffalo Springfield at Monterey I am 60% sure that Monterey happened after Neil Young left the Springfield)

Finally, of course, the entire festival was not included, it was three days long. But it's interesting to see who wasn't included. The Grateful Dead were at the festival but are not on the album, Neither are The Band or Janis Joplin despite all three groups' popularity.

This got out of hand I'm so sorry ibreally could talk about it for hours

[justforbooks]

Eamonn McCabe, who has died suddenly aged 74, was a photographer, photo editor, educator and broadcaster, and served as the Guardian’s picture editor for 13 years. And when he wasn’t shooting, editing or talking about images, he was collecting awards for doing so. His work won him picture editor of the year an unprecedented six times and sports photographer of the year four times, creating groundbreaking photographs for the Observer. From his early pictures, such as one of a table tennis player with a very high throw, or an image of Björn Borg’s gimlet eyes on a tennis ball, it was recognised that Eamonn, like Borg, had his own way of perceiving the world. He was bringing something different to sports photography and his trophy cupboard started to fill.

In 1985 he won news photographer of the year for his photographs of the Heysel stadium disaster in Brussels. He was there to cover a football match, but sport was forgotten when the tragic events unfolded. He said that witnessing this horror had a lasting effect on him and perhaps hastened his departure from sports photography. “I went as a sports photographer, thrilled to be covering Juventus against Liverpool, and ended up a news photographer, as the whole thing turned into a terrifying disaster in which 39 supporters were killed … I never processed the films from the game itself. They didn’t seem to be very important.”

Editing pictures became the route out of weekly witnessing English football at its worst, and in 1988 Eamonn was recruited as picture editor of the Guardian by its then editor, Peter Preston, to help the paper see off the new Independent with its well-printed photography. Eamonn’s unique way of seeing and framing the world worked as well behind a desk as behind his cameras. He understood how a news or feature photograph is used and cropped is often as important as its content.

Eamonn was born in Highgate, north London. His father, James McCabe, was a taxi driver and his mother, Celia (nee Henchy), a hotel receptionist. They went on to open a hotel in Manor House opposite Finsbury Park. The young Eamonn grew up among the same postwar streets as another photography great, Don McCullin. At Challoner school in Finchley, it seems he spent most of the time playing football and boxing – he left school with just a couple of O-levels. He started work in a solicitor’s office, then in the accounts department of a brewery, but ledgers and spreadsheets were not for him and he got a job as a junior in an advertising agency. A previous incumbent of his lowly position had been David Bowie.

After a couple of years he got the travel bug, left the ad agency and headed to the capital of flower power in the 60s, San Francisco. He enrolled for a film-making course, but discovered a love for stills photography rather than movies. Eventually he had to leave – with the visa he held, he was in danger of being sent to Vietnam. But first he had a Rolling Stones gig to go to: “Mick Jagger laid on a free Stones concert on 6 December 1969 at the Altamont Speedway, northern California. Three hundred thousand people turned up. I had my cameras and pushed my way upfront to the tiny stage that had been hastily produced. By most accounts, the Hells Angels were hired as security for $500 worth of beer. If Woodstock was the dream, Altamont was the nightmare – the stage was much too low and the Angels didn’t like the sight of nudity and weighed into the crowd with snooker cues. A big guy next to me got the worst of it and I just ran. You don’t argue with the Angels high on beer.”

Returning to the UK, he worked in the photo unit of Imperial College, followed by a job with the London Photo Agency (LPA). He worked in the darkrooms and took pictures at rock concerts. This was a far more exciting world for a 23-year-old. Eamonn said: “The Rolling Stones, the Who, the Beach Boys – they were our heroes. Theirs was the music we listened to anyway ... there was a rawness about them that made good pictures.”

However, in the LPA building, there was another picture agency, Sporting Pictures, where Eamonn got some shifts shooting football matches. He had always been keen on sport, specifically football, and he was a lifelong Tottenham Hotspur fan. Like many sports photographers, if he hadn’t been sent to an event to take pictures, he might well have been there as a fan.

In 1974 Eamonn decided to set up his own picture agency in north London – working for the local papers in the area, but crucially shooting all the home matches of the north London rivals Spurs and Arsenal. He distributed pictures to the national papers. Within a couple of years he landed a contract with the Observer. The paper allowed and encouraged him to develop a style – what became known as “an Eamonn McCabe picture” – a different angle, perhaps away from the peak of the action; a detail; something graphic; a strong use of black and white; a touch of humour. The Guardian’s sports photographer Tom Jenkins said: “Formal shape and a whimsical sense of humour played a large part in McCabe’s sports work, like his picture of the bald Bristol City goalkeeper John Shaw looking like he was about to boot his own head into the centre-circle. Eamonn was always on the lookout for something different.”

According to Jenkins, a picture of the boxer Sylvester Mittee wrapping his hands with bandages before a training session is a prime example of this: “A close-up moment that probably no other photographer at the time would have bothered with.” Eamonn himself explained the choice of lens: “I grabbed a 180mm lens, quite long for indoor work, but it paid off. The effect was to throw everything out of focus except the bandaging and texture of his fingers.”

He documented just about every sport and covered three Olympic Games. And he photographed the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer – as a sports photographer he was able to capture the kiss on the palace balcony with his long cricket lens.

The peerless sports journalist Hugh McIlvanney wrote of being Eamonn’s colleague at the Observer in a foreword to his first book, Sports Photographer (1982): “Working with Eamonn McCabe can be hazardous to a reporter’s ego. His photographs often convey the essence of an event or a performer with such dramatic succinctness that the writer assigned to the same job is left with the feeling of having turned in a 1,500-word caption.”

As well as shooting sport, Eamonn also played for an amateur team, the Nine Elms Dynamos: “One morning, when we were getting a real spanking,” he wrote, “a long-haired centre forward scored yet another goal and ran back past me as I was lying face down in the mud: ‘You didn’t get a picture of that one, did you?’”

After Heysel, Eamonn was offered his first picture-editing job, on a new magazine, Sportsweek. It seemed a perfect journal for the move from shooting to editing photography. Unfortunately, the proprietor was Robert Maxwell. It was a good product with great photography, edited by Eamonn, but it lost money and Maxwell soon tired of the losses. The Guardian needed a new picture editor. Perhaps an award-winning sports photographer with very little editing experience might not have been everyone’s choice, but Preston knew it could work.

Paul Johnson, until recently deputy editor of the Guardian, said that Eamonn “transformed the look and feel of the newspaper almost overnight. Some senior colleagues felt the photographs were just too big and were squeezing out words, until gently reminded, with a smile, that no reader had ever complained about the lack of words in the Guardian (the wrong words, yes, all the time, but not lack of them).”

Eamonn recruited new photographers and ensured that photography was not an afterthought. He got his picture choice printed on 20in x 16in paper by the Guardian darkroom and argued hard for his selection in news meetings. Johnson said: “Eamonn had a compelling visual literacy but also warmth and charisma. People loved working for him, people loved working with him.”

Eamonn was in his element as the Guardian covered the big news events that seemed to come with increasing frequency at the time – the downing of the Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, the Clapham rail crash, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

In 2001 Eamonn decided to “go back on the road”. He had a need to create his own images. He stayed on at the Guardian, but this time shooting something a bit quieter: portraits. He photographed many notable people, from Tony Blair to Iris Murdoch, Lou Reed to Desmond Tutu. The Guardian feature writer Simon Hattenstone said: “Eamonn was astonishingly quick, he never panicked, and he was fantastically unobtrusive. Often the photo was done before the subjects had time to smile or stiffen up.” He favoured a direct approach with his portraits. He liked his subjects to confront his camera and, by extension, the viewer.

Many of these photographs are in the National Portrait Gallery collection. He also photographed artists and their studios for the Guardian and the Royal Academy magazine, including Frank Auerbach, Grayson Perry, Bridget Riley, Howard Hodgkin and Maggi Hambling.

Eamonn was keen to pass on his knowledge and inspire others. A steady stream of hopefuls brought portfolios to his desk, where he dispensed advice and encouragement. His educational work extended to TV programmes such as Britain in Focus (2017) for the BBC. He was often chosen by the broadcast media as a photo pundit – he was recently interviewed about imagery of Queen Elizabeth – and his relaxed manner and thorough knowledge made him a natural on TV or radio. He published six books – the last one, on aerial photography, demonstrates the breadth of his photographic knowledge.

As well as honorary professorships at Thames Valley (Preston responded to the appointment by nicknaming him “Prof”) and Staffordshire universities, Eamonn was visiting senior fellow in photography at the University of Suffolk and held an honorary doctorate from the University of East Anglia.

He moved to Suffolk a few years ago and immediately got involved with photography in the county. He taught at the university in Ipswich and when PhotoEast – the Ipswich-based photo festival – was founded, Eamonn was asked if he would become the patron. He agreed without question.

Eamonn was always a dapper dresser and, once he had left his sports photographer’s waterproofs behind, his tweed coat and jaunty hats looked the part in the small town of Saxmundham where he lived. Although he was a Londoner who enjoyed the pubs, jazz clubs and art galleries of the city, life in the country gave him land- and seascapes to photograph and a vegetable garden to tend. He swapped soccer for golf – he played a round two days before he died.

On hearing the news of his death, Eamonn’s erstwhile neighbour McCullin said: “McCabe was like all great photographers – he never stopped working. Like most of us, his life was photography.” The answer to which is one of Eamonn’s favourite sayings, “It’s better than working, Rog”.

In July 1997 Eamonn asked Rebecca Smithers, a Guardian journalist, to marry him while they were on a press trip to New York – they were married at City Hall a couple of days later. He is survived by Rebecca and their daughter, Mabel; by Ben, his son from a previous marriage, to Ruth Calvert, that ended in divorce; and by Marian, his sister.

Alan Rusbridger writes: The email from Eamonn McCabe popped into my inbox just after breakfast one day in the spring of 2009. “What is it with X [here was the name of an internationally acclaimed fashion photographer whose work had been featured in that day’s Guardian]? I don’t get it. That photograph (?) of Y [here was the name of the subject in the offending portrait] has to be one of the worst we have ever printed ... I spent years trying to get that sort of crap out of the pages. What next, handshakes and big cheques?”

I revisited the image this week. It was, indeed, sensationally bad – poorly lit, awkward shadows, overexposed, lazily composed, clumsily cropped and barely in focus.

I don’t think Eamonn was bitter about the prices his fellow lensman could command (upwards of £40k for a plate). More likely, he felt puzzled – and, on behalf of press photographers the world over, a bit insulted. As a former picture editor, he knew that a dozen or more staff or freelance photographers – none of them remotely household names – would have come up with a better photograph given five minutes and a bare wall.

Eamonn was a press photographer to his fingertips. As a sports photographer on the Observer, he had lightning reactions and an instinctive eye for composition. Even if you didn’t know the name, you’d recognise many of the iconic images from his years on the touchline.

The former Times writer, Simon Barnes, wrote of his images: “People in sports journalism talk about an ‘Eamonn McCabe shot’ even when McCabe did not take the picture. They are talking about a style, a vision, a way of looking at sport.”

It was an inspired move when my predecessor as editor of the Guardian, Peter Preston, hired Eamonn to be picture editor in 1988 – the time of a crucial redesign. The paper had always employed distinguished staff photographers, but they were often let down by the quality of printing and by lacklustre design. Eamonn did, indeed, ban the “crap” – especially the cliched picture that told you nothing. He favoured the bold, the unexpected – images that not only caught your eye but lingered in the mind. He was encouraging to young photographers; always approachable … and always up for a pint or two at the end of his shift.

He was a late convert to the power of colour – once railing against the distracting glare of hi-vis jackets in an image of rescue workers at a train crash. But, in time, he came to accept the inevitable.

And then, remarkably, he had a third career (via a flirtation with landscape) as a portrait photographer, usually illustrating the culture pages’ profile of distinguished writers, artists and musicians. Unlike some internationally acclaimed photographers he could mention, he might only be given a few minutes and inadequate light in which to bag his shot. Nine times out of 10 he memorably and sensitively captured his subject.

It’s difficult to think of a comparable figure in photography – one who successfully crossed genres and who also had a spell generously editing the work of his peers. He was also one of the warmest and most collaborative figures in Fleet Street.

“Journalists are far too bashful to refer to any of their newspaper work as ‘art’,” wrote Barnes in an introduction to Eamonn’s work in 1987. Hence, perhaps, Eamonn’s snort of derision for the picture in the Guardian back in 2009. But Eamonn was truly a kind of artist, as well as an unpretentious pressman. He was a very rare thing.

🔔 Eamonn McCabe, photographer, born 28 July 1948; died 2 October 2022

📷 Photo above: Eamonn McCabe looking at his negatives in the press room during the 1988 British Open Golf Championships in Lytham St Annes.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[omg-hellgirl]

Mick Jagger performing "Sympathy For The Devil" at the Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969.

[history105rockandrollblog]

Lecture 10: ALTAMONT: If Woodstock was hailed as a celebration of “peace and love,” the Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969 (at Altamont Speedway in northern California) - the brainchild of The Rolling Stones - was seen as its opposite: a dark, disorderly concert that saw the Hells Angels, who furnished security at the event, stab a concertgoer (Meredith Hunter) who allegedly climbed on the stage with a gun. Some eyewitnesses disputed the claim that Hunter had a gun. A Hells Angel guard stabbed him, a terrible moment captured on film here in about the last 30 seconds of this footage (luckily, it’s very difficult to see in this film).

[fortheturnstiles]

barely spoke in class today because my brain is full of rocks but i DID jump at the chance to explain woodstock and the free concert at altamont to everybody when the professor brought it up . so that’s a win

[whitepolaris]

Vortex I: The Governor's Pot Party

In the 1960s, social and political upheaval and the Vietnam War brought American culture to a boiling point. Young people rejected traditional values, embraced drug use and communal lifestyles, and repeatedly confronted the stewards of what they believed was an unjust government. By 1969, seminal events like the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in upstate New York seemed to suggest that the counterculture's momentum was unstoppable.

In truth, however, the era of hippies and flower children was waning fast. That year, the Manson murders and the Rolling Stones' Altamont free concert, at which four attendees died, called attention to what many saw as the dangerous, radical side of youth culture.

In addition, the spirit of protect, or the contention that peace and justice were worth fighting for, often took a back seat to sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Oregon governor Tom McCall was banking on that "front-seat triumvirate" in 1970, as Portland was preparing to host an American Legion convention in late August.

McCall knew that the People's Army Jamboree, a coalition of local antiwar groups, was planning mass protects around the city during the convention. This was due to a planned keynote speech by President Richard Nixon, as well as the convention's "Victory in Viet Nam" theme. The FBI informed Governor McCall of the potentially volatile situation, in which an estimated fifty thousand protectors and twenty-five Legionnaires would likely confront one another on the streets of Portland.

In May of that same year, a protect at Portland State University had turned ugly when police in riot gear clashed with students. The last thing McCall wanted was for the summer of 1970 to be bookended by violence in Portland. Meeting with McCall, some members of the People's Arm Jamboree suggested that a free music festival might help to defuse tensions and mitigate the number of protesters. In a risky move for the Republican governor, McCall agreed to sponsor such a festival, suspecting he was sacrificing his political future in the process.

Paying tribute to Oregon's environmental sensibilities, the events was dubbed "Vortex I: A Biodegradable Festival of Life." The venue, Milo McIver State Par, was forty miles from Portland, (hopefully) a safe enough distance from which to keep the peace. Leaving nothing to chance, McCall personally-and heavily-promoted the festival on TV.

It worked. Between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand, would-be war protestors made their way to "the governor's pot party" near Estacada. There, they were rewarded with laissez-faire enforcement of drug decency laws, and lots of rock music.

In Portland, only about a thousand benign dissenters were in attendance for Nixon's last-minute cancellation.

Many local veterans of the Age of Aquarius consider Vortex I the definitive hippie event. In some ways, it was more grassroots than Woodstock, despite the iron of being the only state-sponsored music festival in U.S. history. There were no big-name performances; all the talent was strictly local. Plus, unlike Woodstock, which took place in a muddy field, Vortex I was held in a lush park.

Far from damaging his political career, Vortex I became the first of several innovative efforts credited to Governor McCall. He was easily reelected for a second term and was noted for his work in ecology. McCall later gained some notoriety by saying in a CBS News interview, "Come visit us again and again . . . but for heaven's sake, don't move here to live!"

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The Rolling Stones and Hells Angels MC at Altamont

(L-R) Singer, songwriter, actor, and film producer Mick Jagger and Guitarist, singer, and songwriter Keith Richards of the Rock band The Rolling Stones perform during the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, which was a counterculture rock concert held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in Tracy, California. (Photo by Jeff Hochberg/Getty Images)

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Anarchy and Mayhem Accompanies The Free Altamont Rock Concert