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convention, the song was denounced as an incitement to violence and banned by many radio stations. It reveled in the “sound of marching, charging feet” and the images of “fighting in the street.” Despite showing ambivalence when he sang about “compromise solution,” Jagger once again introduced himself as a revolutionary: “Said my name is called disturbance. I’ll shout and scream, I’ll kill the king, I’ll rail at all his servants.”

At this point, the band seemed to be a mirror of these desires for militancy, rage and chaos. Still, the vision of the evil was romantic. At the Hyde Park concert following the death of Brian Jones, where some five hundred thousand people showed up (including Kenneth Anger with his cameras), Jagger came on stage alone. He looked like a nineteenth-century poet with his long hair and billowing white frock. He also wore a gold studded leather collar and black lipstick. From a large, Bible-like book, he read the elegy “Adonais” by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

Peace, peace! He is not dead, he doth not sleep—

He hath awakened from the dream of life—

The stage crew released several hundred little white butterflies that flew off a few feet, then promptly dropped to earth, dead.

When his Lucifer film bogged down, Anger edited his footage to Jagger’s whining electronic soundtrack and created a short film, Invocation of My Demon Brother. The flashing, pulsing montage of superimposed images included Jagger and Richards in performance, soldiers in Vietnam, Anger as Magus performing an occult ritual, the Devil, 69 flowing lava, volcanic fire, and alchemical symbols—all blurring together in a menacing portent of Lucifer’s resurrection. As the movie played the underground film circuit, the emerging news showed that the revolutionary decade was not going well: there was the American massacre of women and children at My Lai Vietnam, the impending breakup of The Beatles, Bob Dylan’s motorcycle accident, the arrest of Charles Manson, and the most famous concert The Stones ever played.

As documented in the Maysles brothers’ movie Gimme Shelter, Jagger expected the Altamont Free Festival to top Woodstock. He confidently asserted, “It’s creating a microcosm of society which is meant to set an example for the rest of America as to how one can behave in large gatherings.” But by the time they came onstage, darkness had descended. Their fans had been kept waiting for almost three hours since the previous band’s performance. Armed with pool cues and beer, Hell’s Angels—the biker security guards—were everywhere. The Stones started playing “Sympathy for the Devil,” then stopped, as a skirmish became a small brawl. “Something funny always happens when we play that number,” said Jagger.

“Everybody just cool out,” he pleaded. “Just cool out.” But shortly after they started playing “Under My Thumb,” a young black man, dressed in a bright green suit, flashed out of the crowd holding a gun. Hell’s Angels grabbed him, stabbed him, and killed him. Bewildered, Jagger looked like a sad shivering skinny boy in a silly cape, helpless to control the frenzied, drunken bloodlust of these biker Neanderthals. The Stones finished the performance without knowing exactly what had happened.

While Altamont showed that the Sixties were over, The Stones remained saddled with their demonic reputation. “Jagger sought to covet the Devil’s power and got used as a pawn to do His work” went the standard narrative. Rock critic Lester Bangs, in Rolling Stone, blamed more down-to-earth sins: diabolic egoism, hype, ineptitude, greed, and a lack of concern for humanity. “A man died before their eyes. Do they give a shit? Yes or No?” demanded Bangs. Responding in a radio interview with San Francisco’s KSAN, Jagger stressed his helplessness in the face of monumental forces that overwhelmed him and promised that future performances would be tightly controlled. “It taught me never to do anything I wasn’t on top of.” According to groupie girlfriend Pamela Des Barres, Jagger cried and talked of retirement the night after the debacle. 70

As Jagger promised,