Salem to Salem: Altamont

There's only one reference to Altamont in the book. It's near the end when Billy Peddlarson and his evil hippies lament how they wanted to create "Woodstock" but instead created "Altamont". He references the infamous free Rolling Stones concert in which an audience member was stabbed to death by Hells' Angels (misguidedly hired as security) who were trying to protect Mick Jagger. Any boomers regard Altamont as a defining event, the death of the Sixties etc. In his writing on the great documentary film of the event Gimme Shelter, Richard Brody sums up that Altamont was "the death of the Rousseauian Dream; in which the young people would retreat into nature and create a perfect society".

This thinking guided Peddlarson and his friends, certainly, when they time-travelled back and created Woodstock.