Altamont Free Concert lineup
Updated: June 2025
The musical lineup and Rolling Stones set list for the Altamont Free Concert, also known as the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, on Saturday, Dec. 6, 1969, headlined by the Rolling Stones. The concert concludes the 1970 documentary film “Gimme Shelter,” by Albert Maysles and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin.
The Altamont concert is well known for the stabbing death of 18-year-old Meredith Hunter in a confrontation with Hells Angels. Other deaths, and even births, have been attributed to this concert.
Many accounts of the events at Altamont, including descriptions in newspapers and magazines shortly after the concert, are contradictory. Crowd number is given generally as 300,000. An extensive account in Rolling Stone in January 1970 uses 300,000 multiple times. An Associated Press article that appeared in print on Dec. 7, 1969, says “estimated at between 200,000 and 300,000.” That article also says, “The concert featured 19 rock bands,” which is false. A United Press International article appearing in print on Dec. 8, 1969, says, “300,000” young rock fans.” A headline in the Dec. 8, 1969, Lodi News-Sentinel says “300,000 At Bash” and refers to “more than 300,000 people” in the first paragraph and later says that on Saturday, the crowd “swelled to an estimated $300,000.” None of those articles reveals the source of the numbers, which may have come from law enforcement or concert organizers or perhaps just reporters making a guess.
The Lodi News-Sentinel article lists one of the bands performing as In God We Trust. No record could be found of such a band performing at this event. The article also lists the Grateful Dead as performing, though the band did not. In “Gimme Shelter” film footage, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh are shown alarmed at hearing of violence around the stage and apparently declining to play. According to the account in Rolling Stone, the Dead were “prime organizers and movers of the festival” and were “scheduled to play just before — and then, as the day wore on, just after — the Stones. But by the time the Stones had finished their set, the scene was too tense to risk stretching the day out any longer.” The source of this detail is unknown. According to the article, “Members of the Grateful Dead refused to discuss it at all, at least not for the record.”
Cameras from the “Shelter” film crew captured the stabbing of Hunter, the Hells Angels fight involving Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin, and numerous tense moments between the Hells Angels and crowd members. Apparently, it is not certain whether the stabbing was filmed by Baird Bryant or Eric Saarinen, both part of the film crew. The film shows the major interruptions during the Rolling Stones’ performance of “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Under My Thumb” but apparently shows at least some crowd footage that occurred during a different song than the one being heard.
The documented lineup at the Altamont concert, in order of performance:
Santana
Jefferson Airplane
The Flying Burrito Brothers
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
The Rolling Stones
Rolling Stones set list:
“Jumpin’ Jack Flash”
“Carol”
“Sympathy for the Devil”
“The Sun is Shining”
“Stray Cat Blues”
“Love in Vain”
“Under My Thumb”
“Brown Sugar”
“Midnight Rambler”
“Live With Me”
“Gimme Shelter”
“Little Queenie”
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
“Honky Tonk Women”
“Street Fighting Man”