Artist:Band of Horses Hometown: Charleston, South Carolina Song: “Crutch” Album:Things Are Great Release Date: January 21, 2022 Label: BMG
In Their Words: “I think like a lot of my songs, ‘Crutch’ starts with something from my real life. Obviously ‘Crutch’ means some of the things that I was dependent on. My relationship for one. I think I wanted to say, ‘I’ve got a crush on you,’ and I thought it was funny how relationships also feel like crutches. I feel like everybody has had a time when nothing goes right and you still have to carry on. I think that feeling hits you in this song even if you don’t know what the specifics are.” — Ben Bridwell, Band of Horses
Natalie Hemby’s new single “Radio Silence” puts her cunning sensibility as a songwriter on full display, while drawing on the strengths of co-writers Rosi Golan and Daniel Tashian. No slouches themselves, Golan is an accomplished songwriter whose music can be heard on countless TV shows and films, and Tashian is a writer and producer in Nashville with credits such as Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour.
With this dream team in support, Hemby’s weighty single encapsulates the anxiousness of being cut off from a friend — a true story that hits close to home. “This song is basically about being ghosted by a friend, only not because of a fallout, but because your friend doesn’t want to drag you into their struggles, so they shut down,” says Hemby. “I was the friend, and Rosi Golan was the one reaching out. We wrote the song with Daniel Tashian.”
An acclaimed writer and two-time Grammy Award winner, Hemby will releasing her first major label record as a solo artist, following her work with the Highwomen, the collaborative group with Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires. “Radio Silence” and lead single “Heroes” precede Pins And Needles, an album that leans on her rock and roots musical influences, due out October 8 on Fantasy Records. “Pins And Needles is the record I never got the chance to make and I always wanted to,” she adds. “It’s the late 90’s sound, which is the sound of my young adult life.”
Of all the things we’ve felt in the last year, anger isn’t an emotion that gets recognized as often as others. “Bullocks,” says British singer-songwriter Frank Turner. In his new single “The Gathering,” Turner lets the rage out while singing an upbeat rock number all about the optimism of coming together again. The song is energetic, exciting the audience with a glimmer of how “sensational” and “biblical” it will be when we are finally able to gather again. The stomping rhythm of the riffs in the verses is broken up by his roaring voice, rallying the troops around a strong sense of optimism about the return to “normal life.” His call was heard by heavy-hitting drummer Dom Howard (Muse) and electrifying guitarist Jason Isbell, who contributed the strong backbeat and a monstrous guitar solo, respectively.
The new single also comes attached to the announcement of a string of outdoor live shows aptly called The Gathering that will help kickstart the return of live performance for artists in the UK. The shows, imagined and designed by Turner and record label Xtra Mile, will be fitted with all measurements necessary to be flexible; socially distanced if required by mandate or filled to capacity if allowed. As Turner says, “At a time when the pandemic has wreaked havoc all across the live music industry, I feel like it’s important to get back to the basics — playing live music to entertain a crowd. This summer, with Xtra Mile and friends, I’m taking the punk approach — do it yourself, find a way. I can’t wait.”
Watch the official lyric video for Frank Turner’s “The Gathering” below.
You may have heard The Band’s third full-length album, Stage Fright, but you’ve never heard it like this.
Released in August 1970, Stage Fright features two of the group’s biggest hits, its title track and “The Shape I’m In.” A year later, The Band embarked on their first European tour in five years after a regrettable outing backing Bob Dylan, during which folk fans booed the singer’s electric aspirations. Not sure what to expect, their 1971 European tour proved to be one of The Band’s most successful, as crowds all over the continent displayed frenzied adoration at their shows.
So to celebrate not only a classic album, but also the memory of a landmark tour, The Band has unveiled a 50th anniversary edition of Stage Fright. Its original multi-track masters are presented by Bob Clearmountain in a new stereo mix; guided by The Band’s Robbie Robertson, it’s also reissued in the originally planned song order. The set includes alternate versions of “Strawberry Wine” and “Sleeping,” plus seven unearthed cuts, compiled as Calgary Hotel Recordings, 1970, which capture a late night hotel jam session between Robertson, Rick Danko, and Richard Manuel.
The expanded album also offers a wealth of previously unheard recordings from that tour. Presented on a second disc (a simple continuation on the digital release), Live at the Royal Albert Hall, June 1971, bears witness to what was truly a peak performance for a group loved and revered by so many. The 20-song set, originally recorded to a four-track tape machine, has been remixed and remastered for a clearer experience of the electrifying performance, providing fans an opportunity to be transported right back to London, 1971. Hear The Band perform classics from their first three records as well as covers of Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder with the deluxe 50th anniversary edition of Stage Fright.
Jackie Venson, Austin, Texas’s resident singer, songwriter, guitar shredder, and joy dispenser, took a couple of months to restart the locomotive momentum of her career after it was halted by the coronavirus pandemic in March of 2020. A summer of stepping up her touring and festival appearances trashed, she had to purposefully and intentionally consider a way forward.
She chose the path less traveled, but she never trekked it alone. By the end of 2020, Venson’s totally independent team had landed her at number 10 on Pollstar’s Top 100 livestreamers chart for the entire year — higher than superstars Luke Combs, Brad Paisley, and even K-pop, heartthrob boy band BTS’s stream counts, with streams totaling more than 2.8 million viewers.
“It felt like the train stopped and then I created work for myself,” Venson admits, describing an intentional pivot to virtual, streaming shows and alternative programming that never felt like she was giving up the most important parts of her art and expression. Just the opposite. Venson is a rare example of a musician who has utilized the pandemic to not only discover a new, novel way forward in an industry that promises burnout, extractive power dynamics, and the commodification of selfhood even in the best, most profitable cases. She also grew her fan base, her community, and found enough time to release five projects in the last calendar year, as well.
Jackie Venson’s Shout & Shine livestream (viewable in the player above or here) — which highlights many of the entrancing, charming, entertaining aspects of Venson’s music, creativity, and most of all her stunning improvisation — will debut on BGS on Wednesday, February 3, at 4pm PST / 7pm EST. We began our interview talking about joy, which is not only present in every note of Venson’s playing, but is the first song of her Shout & Shine concert and the title track of her 2019 album.
I wanted to start by asking you about joy. It feels so obvious and palpable in your music, especially in your playing style. Not just in how you’re so engaging and charismatic, and not just because it’s the title of your 2019 album, Joy. On “Surrender,” for instance, you sing, “Feet are so tired, but I keep running/ Heart is so heavy, but I keep singing.” That sounds like the radical act of choosing joy, to me.
JV: Well, it’s literally what I’m feeling while I’m actually playing the music. It’s just really cool to be able to play the guitar. I worked really hard to be able to play the guitar and when I look in the mirror I see the same face who started guitar, I guess ten years ago now, except this person can play the guitar! This person can play the guitar, and everybody likes listening to this person who can play the guitar. Not only is this person having a really good time doing something she set out to do ten years ago, but everybody else is enjoying it and having a good time on a base level — and by base level I mean, often they’ve just walked in the room. [Laughs] They weren’t there ten years ago! They’re enjoying it, objectively, and I’m sitting here looking at the depths of [the music] and then I’m watching other people, who don’t even know the story, just having a good time. That is pretty awesome and actually, I’m pretty sure that’s why most people set out to play instruments. They see somebody having fun doing it and they want to have fun, too.
It sounds like gratitude is equally important to you. You’re clearly expressing so much gratitude for being able to do this thing that creates so much joy in your own life and in others’.
Well, absolutely. Gratitude is the foundation of joy. You can’t really have joy if you don’t have gratitude.
One thing that jumped out at me from your livestreams and performances is the way you sing along with your guitar lines, the way you’re constantly in dialogue with yourself and your own voice. It made me think of the age old tradition of fiddling and singing along with yourself — and of course, it makes me think of jazz and bebop solos as well — but I wondered where singing along with the line in your head came from for you?
My dad told me the best way to learn how to improv solos. I had been working on trying to improv from even the time I played piano from when I was like fifteen. I remember getting another piano teacher who knew jazz so that they could teach me how to improvise. Obviously, [Laughs] that’s the wrong angle. I was four years into playing guitar before I learned that I was approaching improvisation the wrong way. The funny thing is that my dad told me, when I was fifteen, he was like, “All you need to know about improvising is that you just think of a melody and you play it, and after you play the melody you thought of a few times, you start messing with it.” So you play it, and add a note here or subtract a note there, and he’s like, “That’s all you’ve got to do and then it’s a great solo!” Because a melody isn’t just playing notes randomly, it has purpose. You want your solos to have purpose. My dad told me that fifteen years ago and I just didn’t hear him. I wasn’t ready to hear him. It took the guitar and years and years of singing, as well, to put it all together and arrive at the destination my dad tried to usher me to.
I’m a picker and a teacher as well, and I’m sure you’ve had this happen, you’ll get students who are so intimidated by the idea of improvising, I’ve had students just cry when you say, “Can you try improvising something?”
It’s a touchy subject! It’s like singing, how people are way more sensitive about their singing. They’ll show you their drum licks all day, but you ask them to sing and they’re like, “Noooo!!”
It’s the vulnerability!
It’s a new level of vulnerability. But here’s the thing, it’s not very hard, all you have to do is just listen to a crapload of music, stuff a bunch of melodies into your brain, and then, just think about all of the melodies you know and think about them a lot. Always listen to music. Keep listening to the music you already have listened to and listen to new music. If you’re constantly listening then you’re going to be sitting on stage and everyone’s going to point to you to solo — say Cm going to F — BOOM! All of a sudden you’re playing, [Sings] “They smile in your face/ All the time they wanna take your place” on the guitar. You’re playing “Back Stabbers,” because suddenly you’re going from Cm to F7 and you know it will sound good. You know? [Laughs] Because you’ve heard that melody and it’s not very hard! A beginner could play it. [Hums line] But you’re crushing it with some tone and everybody in the audience is thinking you’re a master. When really, what you’re playing is not that hard. It’s just musical.
My jaw literally dropped when I was doing my research for this interview — you released five projects in 2020. Two double, live albums, the two volumes of Jackie the Robot, and also Vintage Machine. You also landed in the top ten of Pollstar’s livestream chart for the entire year. I hear you say “the train ground to a halt,” and I see a new train that didn’t just start up, but is roaring. I’m sure you see that, too. What does that pivot feel like now that you’ve got some retrospect.
In that moment, it felt really busy, but it also felt kind of maddening. I was busy, but I was never leaving my house. Then it felt crazy. And in the next moment after that, the numbers started to juice. For a couple of months it was full stop, for a couple of months it was maddening like, “Wow, these numbers are really rad, maybe this is the way.” A couple of months after that I knew this was definitely the way. I stumbled upon the way. I was walking along on a path and then that path had like, a giant tree fall over it and I couldn’t go down it anymore. I saw this side path — you know when you’re in the woods and you see a path but you’re not sure it’s a path or if your eyes are just tricking you?
“Is that a deer trail or is that actually a trail?”
Right. Is that really a trail? It’s like, “I don’t know… but there’s also a giant tree over the path I was on. Can’t go that way. I guess I’m going to go down this path, I hope there’s not too much poison ivy…” [Laughs]
That was the livestream path. There was maybe one creature that walked down this path, one way, one time. It appears there’s a path, but it clearly hasn’t been followed very often. That’s what it felt like, to be on this uncertain path, which then ends up opening up and it turns out I was right the whole time. The way I feel now is not the way I felt when it was all happening. The way I feel now is all because of having retrospect on my side. And the development — the direction things are going in. It’s a lot more clear than it was six months ago.
As if today couldn’t be any more extra… Y’all, I just found out I was named number TEN on @Pollstar‘s top 100 live streamers for ALL OF 2020. Completely independent, my team is small but we fight hard! ❤️❤️❤️ pic.twitter.com/d1kkaF4teX
I have found myself repeating throughout the pandemic that we should be building the world we want to exist after the pandemic while we’re in it. To me that’s what it sounds like you’re describing, finding this other path. Looking to the future, what will you be bringing with you from this time, into whatever a post-COVID reality looks like?
The thing I’m taking with me is the fact that there’s never any need to be desperate, there’s never any reason to act out of desperation. There’s no person or contract to be signed that holds the “keys to the kingdom.” There is no kingdom. We are IN the kingdom. We just exist within different perspectives of it. Maybe your perspective in the kingdom right now is that you’re a baby band, you’ve just established yourself. You’re in the same kingdom as Beyoncé! You’re just standing in a different spot than her. There are thousands of spots you can stand in this kingdom. Beyoncé’s spot isn’t the only one that’s good. There are lots of places to stand! Millions of artists, that you don’t know about, are standing in pretty sweet spots in this kingdom that we all exist within, together.
There’s no person that’s going to give you her spot. She got to her spot by her own weird, twisty trail to get there. Maybe a deer walked down it once! She took her own path. You’re not going to be able to recreate that, but she just took a path to get to a spot, not the kingdom itself. You consider that spot the kingdom, but we’re all in the kingdom already. The way we used to live had this weird illusion that we all had to climb these ladders, but really you just need to get where you want to be. You don’t need to climb that same ladder just because someone else climbed it, and they’re famous, and you’ve got to do what they did. It doesn’t make any sense, it’s completely futile, and you’re going to just be spinning in your hamster wheel, stuck in the same vantage point. There’s not one guy or gatekeeper who can unlock everything for you. There are people who will say they can, but what happens? You end up stuck at one spot, one vantage point. There’s no one person, one artist who has it all.
Artist:Jeremy Ivey Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Song: “Things Could Get Much Worse” Album:Waiting Out The Storm Release Date: October 9, 2020 Label: ANTI-
In Their Words: “I don’t write a whole lot of positive songs, but I try to have one per record at least. So this my positive message for the world. These are the good old days no matter how bad they seem. Just remember, life could suck a lot more. This song was written in about ten minutes, this is our first take in the studio and the video was shot in a couple hours. All in the moment and off the cuff, the way it should be! Also, watch out for Elon, I don’t trust that guy.” — Jeremy Ivey
This week on The Show On The road, we feature a conversation with Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, two Texans and expert harmonizers who for the last decade have toured the world as Jamestown Revival.
Right before all tours got sent home, host Z. Lupetin was able to hop on the Jamestown Revival tour bus (sorry for the engine hum) to discuss their intimate new record, San Isabel, and their journey from meeting as curious singing teenagers in Magnolia, TX to their move out west and back home again. While their previous record, The Education of a Wandering Man, saw them harnessing the muscular roots-rock that can be heard at their powerful live shows, San Isabel strips everything back to their intimate two-voices-around-one-mic, “southern and Garfunkel” sound that brought them together in the first place — and has rightfully won them hordes of fans coast to coast.
They say sibling harmony can’t be compared and we’ve had several sets of twin bands on the podcast, but what about soul-brother harmony? If one thing is clear just sitting on the bus and listening to them weave their stories and songs together, it’s that Clay and Chance were born to sing together.
San Isabel was laid down at Ward Lodge Studios overlooking the San Isabel National Forest in Buena Vista, Colorado and often includes the natural sounds of the nature all around them. Give it a listen — it’s peaceful and powerful and raw and maybe just what we all need right now.
Artist:James Hyland Hometown: Austin, Texas Song: “Ghost” Album:Western Release Date: May 1, 2020 Label: James Hyland Music
In Their Words: “‘Ghost’ is about how strong the past can influence our emotions that drive us to make the decisions that shape our future. This song is about writing and creating songs that my dead heroes would enjoy. I imagine they’re in the room with me as I’m writing and if the line isn’t good enough for the imaginary people there in my room, how could I possibly keep it and play it for the people who are alive? Every couplet counts. The character in the song is haunted by their dead heroes, whose unwritten songs manifest in the writings of the one they influence.” — James Hyland
With a tour scrapped and a new album to unveil, The White Buffalo (musician Jake Smith) will be bringing the concert experience — and a bunch of previously unheard songs — directly to fans for a live-streaming experience on Sunday, April 5. By email, Smith fielded a few questions from BGS about what his loyal listeners can expect, both from the streaming concert and the upcoming project, On the Widow’s Walk, out on April 17.
BGS: You have found an interesting way to connect with fans during this time. Can you tell us what the visual component of this show will look like?
The White Buffalo: It won’t be a bunch of smoke and mirrors. That being said we are shooting for something of a much higher quality both sonically and visually. It will be lit and shot on multiple cameras. We are really trying to elevate the live online streaming experience and people’s homes.
How about the sound — acoustic, full band, or a mixture of both?
We are recording in a studio so the sound will be of the highest quality. It’s going to be full band, a trio like we’ve toured with for years. This time we’re going to have Christopher Hoffee who plays bass on piano on some songs and I’m trying to elevate my guitar tone to bring some dirtier sounds to match the new album.
This event differs from a tour date to some degree, but what goes through your mind in the moments before taking the stage?
I just try to step back and appreciate that this is my job. I feel very lucky to have people care and connect with what I have to say. The live setting cannot be replaced. I think it’s the most visceral way to absorb music.
With a new record on the way, I am sure you will drop in some new material. What is that experience like for you as a writer, sharing something new for the first time?
It’s a bit nerve-racking playing songs that no one’s ever heard but it’s exciting for the most part. On the upcoming album I again tried to run the scope and breadth of emotions. Dark, gothic, lighter, hope-filled, optimistic, heartfelt, heavy… It’s hard to judge what songs will really resonate with crowds until you get out and play them.
You have already introduced the world to “The Rapture” prior to the album. What was on your mind when you wrote that?
That one’s a twisted, primal tale of murder. The first few lines just spilled out of silence as they do. From there I put myself in the shoes of this fantasy character and it was obvious to me where he’d end up. He’s trying to restrain his evil ways but the animal in him is too wicked and strong.
What surprised you the most about the time you spent making the new record?
Truly how fast everything came to be. I wrote and finished the bulk of the songs within a couple weeks after an inspired and validating meeting with Shooter. During two sessions we recorded the whole thing in 6-7 days. The recording process was the most honest, organic thing we’ve done to date. With Shooter Jennings producing and sitting in on piano, we’d all sit in a room and record what happened. Recording and documenting live takes until we felt like we had the right feel and emotion for the song. It sounds simple but it was about catching those real, live, special moments.
So much of the live experience is about connection. Will there be a way for fans to have that interaction with you during this event?
I’m hoping so. I’m hoping they’ll feel it. We plan on bringing the same unbridled passion for performance as we do to live shows. There will be an interactive part of it as well, a little Q&A. That’s something we don’t do at shows, so trying to fill the distance a bit with that.
What would you like your audience to take away from this experience, in the midst of these uncertain times?
Hoping to give people an escape. To connect with them through the music… make them feel pain, joy, hope, fear… Take them on an emotional journey… for them to have a respite in the these crazy times and be entertained and lose themselves in the moment.
A spry country tune driven by Chris Hillman’s hyperactive mandolin and Sneaky Pete Kleinow’s spacy guitar solo, the Flying Burrito Brothers’ “My Uncle” is not a song about family. The uncle they’re harmonizing about is Uncle Sam, who in the late 1960s wanted members of the band to kill others and possibly be killed in Vietnam. Gram Parsons had already secured a somewhat dubious 4-F deferment, making him ineligible for military services for health reasons, but the Army continued its pursuit. “So I’m heading for the nearest foreign border,” Parsons sings, resigning himself to the ignoble fate of a draft dodger.
In the late 1960s, rock and roll was rife with anti-war songs. Some were angry, like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son.” Others were riddled with mortal dread, like “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” by Country Joe & the Fish. But few sounded anything like “My Uncle,” an album cut from The Gilded Palace of Sin. For one thing, as the Flying Burrito Brothers ponder what they owe their country, they sound more melancholy than outraged, as though they’re singing a breakup song with America.
For another thing, they dressed their anti-war sentiments up in the threads of country music, which was already viewed as both musically and politically conservative: a counter to the counterculture, representing the moral/silent majority that finally put Nixon in the White House in 1968. “Okie From Muskogee” was the defining country hit of the era, a song that tsk-tsks the hippies, roustabouts, and even the conscientious objectors burning their draft cards. Merle Haggard may have written it to gently puncture the sanctimonies of an older generation, but listeners heard no irony or distance in lyrics about wearing boots instead of sandals and respecting the college dean.
Given the canonization of Parsons over the last few decades, as well as the gradual breakdown of genres and styles over time, it’s easy to forget just how contrarian it would have been for a West Coast rock band to embrace country and bluegrass. The Flying Burrito Brothers had risen from the ashes of the Byrds, a group which earlier in the decade had included Gram Parsons for just one album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. A relative flop upon release, it nevertheless invented country rock with a set of twangy originals and covers of songs by Cindy Walker, Haggard, and the Louvin Brothers. Aside from Dylan, who was covered by everybody in the late 60s, these weren’t especially hip influences at the time.
Draft dodging may have been anathema to country music, but “My Uncle” is at its heart about more than just protest. “A sad old soldier once told me a story about a battlefield that he was on,” Parsons and Hillman harmonize. “He said a man should never fight for glory, he must know what is right and what is wrong.” The Flying Burrito Brothers plumb that stark moral divide on “My Uncle” and every other song on their debut, parsing temptation from salvation, wickedness from righteousness, and painting a picture of an America where you might easily confuse one for the other. Country music becomes the ideal vehicle to explore ideas about violence, consumerism, free love, and more broadly, the notion of sin.
The idea of sin illuminates every song on The Gilded Palace of Sin. The rollicking “Christine’s Theme” opens the album with a woman bearing false witness: “She’s a devil in disguise, she’s telling dirty lies.” “Juanita” imagines an angel rescuing the band from booze and pills. “Hot Burrito #2” invokes Jesus Christ by name — not cussin’ but praying. “Do Right Woman,” a Dan Penn/Chips Moman number popularized by Aretha Franklin, is transformed from a lover’s plea into a preacher’s wagging finger. “Dark End of the Street,” by the same Memphis songwriting duo, is about coveting your neighbor’s wife: “It’s a sin and we know that we’re wrong.” When the Flying Brothers get to the bridge, “They’re gonna find us,” they might as well be talking about angels and demons.
“Sin City,” the album’s centerpiece, is the band’s version of Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which mixes Biblical imagery with twangy country harmonies to create a startlingly dire depiction of Los Angeles as both Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s a place where avarice rules all, leaving even the determined and upright struggling for footing. “That ol’ earthquake’s gonna leave me in the poorhouse,” the Brothers sing, echoing Edwards’ assertion that all humans as sinners are “exposed to sudden unexpected destruction.” Wealth won’t buy redemption or avert damnation: “On the thirty-first floor, that gold-plated door won’t keep out the Lord’s burning rain.” (That’s likely a sly reference to Larry Spector, the Byrds’ former manager, who lived on the thirty-first floor of a luxury LA high-rise).
Jesus shows up for a verse of “Sin City,” and he may or may not reappear in the close “Hippie Boy,” a spoken-word homily in the style of Hank Williams’ moralizing alter ego Luke the Drifter. Hillman tells the story of a boy caught up in the violence between the right and the left. In his 33 1/3 book on Gilded Palace of Sin, Bob Proehl suggests the band might have been inspired by the riots at the Democratic National Convention the year before. “The so-called riots in Chicago were actually more of a police action,” he writes, “a beatdown instigated by the gestapo tactics of Mayor Daley’s police force right in front of the delegates’ hotels.” Even before the song concludes with a rousing chorus of the old hymn “Peace in the Valley,” the song is a damning attack on anyone who would employ violence in the name of morality.
While they are using country music to interrogate the genre’s own high moral standards, the Flying Burrito Brothers don’t come across as scolds. Instead, they’re doing something more ambitious yet far more personal: They’re trying to find their own way in this sinful America, trying to find the moral high ground in shifting sands. On “My Uncle” they sing about dodging the draft with guilt and sadness, but they understand it is a moral predicament. “Heading for the nearest foreign border” is preferable to enlisting and killing. That makes The Gilded Palace of Sin unsettlingly prophetic fifty years after its release, maybe even inspiring in its spirit of dissent and moral defiance.
None of the Brothers would ever sound quite so political or quite so driven by moral inquisition on subsequent albums. Their follow-up, 1970’s Burrito Deluxe, sounds good but has little of the brimstone determination of their debut. Parsons left the group shortly after its release, and his pair of solo albums drive the roads of a murky, mythological America.
However, less than a year after the release of The Gilded Palace of Sin, the Brothers witnessed Biblical calamity firsthand when they played the Altamont Free Concert. Billed as a West Coast alternative to Woodstock, it included San Francisco bands Santana and the Jefferson Airplane, with the Rolling Stones headlining. The crowd of 300,000 was already agitated when the Brothers played their early set, and by the time the Stones took the stage, they were volatile, and hostile. During a performance of “Under My Thumb,” one of the Hell’s Angels working security stabbed and killed a black man named Meredith Hunter, stopping the show and casting a pallor over the event, if not the entire decade. It was intended as a show of countercultural unity, but it must have seemed like God smiting the hippie generation: the end of the 6os in great and gory conflagration.
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