http://youtu.be/Rn4f9KO3wRk
“The unceasing and apparently unstoppable violence causes a sense of unreality to take hold. Time slows down, crawls to a halt, as when on drugs, and I pity the poor bastards on LSD. Still, somehow, and I have no idea how, the show lurches toward an end. I hear the opening chords of “Street Fighting Man,” signaling, as they had the whole tour, that the show is finishing. I climb down off the top of the van, and start walking back to where I think the helicopter should be. I walk from the stage into complete blackness for there are no lights strung into this desolate hillside. As rapidly as I can I walk to toward where I expect the helicopter to be, wanting nothing more than to get out of there. I bump against a chain-link fence in the dark and realize it is between me and the chopper. I walk along it. I wonder if I will be stopped but I see no one. I wonder if there was someone, whether they would let me pass, honor the usually sacrosanct passes I carry. I come to a gate but it is locked. I take off all my cameras and push them under the fence, get down on my back, and slither under but a strap from a case gets hooked and I am momentarily stuck, heart pounding. But I manage to unhook it and free myself. I see a few lights in the distance in front of me and I run toward the chopper.
The music has stopped from the stage and that means the Stones will be rushing to get to the helicopter as well. By the tome I get there are others already jammed in. But someone recognizes me and pulls me on board. I crawl onto the floor, lying across someone’s legs.
The helicopter tries to take off in the normal manner, straight up, but it can’t. We are too many. It starts to taxi, gathering speed down the runway, until it finally lifts, with agonizing slowness, off into the night sky. Nobody speaks as the helicopter passes over the darkened hills. It lands with a bump, overloaded, taxiing to a stop.
I didn’t know what had happened, didn’t know then that someone had been stabbed to death. I just knew it had been out of control and very ugly, and I was glad to be out of there, glad that it was over. I went back to the conservative hotel on the top of Nob Hill in San Francisco, climbed into bed between clean sheets, and went to sleep.”
(From ETHAN RUSSELL: AN AMERICAN STORY available here.)
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