In December 1969, Dick Fine took on what became a nightmare assignment – overseeing the medical care for the disastrous Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. Joel Selvin, former rock music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, interviewed Dick for his book, Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hell’s Angels and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day. As Dick told Joel:
The concert organizers only contacted Dick and the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) on Friday afternoon about providing medical support for the concert that weekend. MCHR was founded in 1964 to protect civil rights protest marchers in Mississippi, but spread beyond that. Dr. Fine had helped start the San Francisco chapter, which supplied medical aid to political rallies and protest marches. He pulled together a team of eight doctors, but realized soon after his arrival on Friday night that he was drastically understaffed and undersupplied.
He was relieved to see the Red Cross show up uninvited and set up another medical tent on the hill backstage on Saturday morning, as well as four psychiatric residents from UCSF Hospital, who pitched their “calm center” tents high on the hill. However, no signs pointed patients to their services and no announcements were made from the stage about the availability of medical care.
The Rolling Stones had drafted the Hells Angels to provide security. Coincidentally, one of the Angels was Moose, a patient of Dick’s. Dick knew Moose from treating him in hepatitis clinic. Moose, delighted to see his doctor at the concert, attached himself to Dr. Fine as bodyguard and chauffeur, the tough Angel with a metal plate in his skull driving the peacenik doctor in his trademark leather hat on his chopper through the crowd to attend to medical emergencies.
Many of those injured were young women who received lacerations on their heads from Hells Angels pushing the star-struck girls back from the concert stage.
The most seriously injured was Meredith Murdock Hunter. Dick tried to persuade the Rolling Stones to let their helicopter airlift the 18-year-old concertgoer, who had been beaten and stabbed by Hells Angels, to a hospital for emergency treatment, even though he had only a remote chance of survival. The Stones refused, reserving the chopper for their own evacuation. Dick called an ambulance but Hunter died waiting for the ambulance. Dick pronounced him dead, then told his terrified girlfriend the sad news and gave her a sedative. A tragic end to an impossible situation. Dick was surprised more people hadn’t died.
