Timmons Brothers - Remembering Live Concert Tragedies

Timmons Brothers - Remembering Live Concert Tragedies on the 50th and 40th Anniversaries: The Rolling Stones and The Who

On Saturday, December 6, 1969, the Rolling Stones arranged a counterculture free rock festival at the Altamont Speedway in northern California to cap off their 1969 USA tour with a concert that would be the West Coast equivalent of Woodstock less than four months earlier in both scale and spirit. Without securing a venue for the festival until two days before the show, the hasty move resulted in numerous logistical problems including a lack of planning, of facilities, of food, and questionable security. It became be an epic event, but for all the wrong reasons when four people died.

On Monday, December 3, 1979, The Who was in Cincinnati as part of their World Tour for a sold-out concert with the majority of the seats being unassigned general admission tickets that were first-come, first-served. Although the concert was not scheduled to start until 8 p.m., a radio station announced that ticket holders would be admitted at 3:00 p.m. This resulted in confusion with an early large arriving crowd, only two unlocked arena doors, and a surge of many people who thought the concert was starting early. The event left eleven concert-goers dead and twenty-six others injured.

Tonight, the Timmons Brothers remember these two tragedies on the 50th and 40th anniversary of each and why we cannot forget these and other similar live concert tragedies.

Timmons Brothers December 18 , 2019