‘The Altamont Festival was a complete failure in comparison to the Woodstock Festival’ How accurate is this proposition?

The proposition ‘The Altamont Festival was a complete failure in comparison to the Woodstock Festival’ is accurate to a high extent. Although both festivals were similar in nature, intentions and time frame (both occurring in 1969), the two demonstrate a contrast, and are often compared on the overall success, the Woodstock Festival named one of ‘The Top 50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll’ by The Rolling Stone, and the Altamont Festival described as “a funeral of sorts” (D Talbot, 2012). The Altamont Festival was a free concert organised by the Rolling Stones, after receiving claims that their American Tour was overly expensive, and they were using it to profit immensely. It took place after The Woodstock Festival, which occurred at a dairy farm in Bethel, a small town close to New York. Woodstock was originally not a free concert, had an expected duration of two days and only catered for up to 100,000 people. In the end, Woodstock’s fences were removed, it was deemed a free concert which lasted three days, attracting over 500,000 people. Altamont took place just off of a speedway in Northern California. Approximately 300,000 people attended the concert, and caused a lot of havoc for the surrounding residents, the performers, other attendees and the security. Altamont is commonly known for the death of Meredith Hunter, the Hells Angels security who were heavily under the influence of alcohol and drugs at the time, and the unruly crowd who were extreme in their actions, supposedly due to a bad batch of LSD.

There are minimal aspects of Altamont that were successful, however there are aspects of Woodstock that were highly unsuccessful and provided great difficulty for the organisers, attendees and general population.
According to the New York Times, an estimated 99% of attendees at woodstock were smoking marijuana, and psychedelic drugs such as acid were also very commonly used. (E. Mendenhall, 2000.) An unknown police Sargent stated "As far as I know, the