Altamont Free Concert

Altamont Speedway Free Festival
Genre	Rock and folk, including blues-rock, folk rock, jazz fusion, latin rock, country rock and psychedelic rock styles.
Dates	December 6, 1969
Location(s)	Altamont Speedway, California, United States
Founded by	Jorma Kaukonen, Spencer Dryden, Grateful Dead
Attendance	300,000 (est.)

The Altamont Speedway Free Festival was a counterculture-era rock concert held on Saturday, December 6, 1969, at the Altamont Speedway in northern-western California, between Livermore and Tracy, on the county border of Alameda County and San Joaquin County, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of San Francisco, California. The event is best known for considerable violence, including the death of Meredith Hunter and three accidental deaths: two caused by a hit-and-run car accident and one by drowning in an irrigation canal. Scores were injured, numerous cars were stolen and then abandoned, and there was extensive property damage.

The concert featured (in order of appearance): Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, with the Rolling Stones taking the stage as the final act. The Grateful Dead were also scheduled to perform, but declined to play shortly before their scheduled appearance due to the increasing violence at the venue. "That's the way things went at Altamont — so badly that the Grateful Dead, prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn't even get to play," staff at Rolling Stone magazine wrote in a detailed narrative on the event, terming it in an additional follow-up piece "rock and roll's all-time worst day, December 6th, a day when everything went perfectly wrong."

...
Wikipedia