Original Broadway production photo of ‘Hair’ from Playbill.

By Randal Hill
Guest Columnist

Editor’s Note: Randal C. Hill, Brandon, Ore., is a retired English teacher with a master’s degree. While attending college in Long Beach, Calif., he worked as a DJ at two radio stations. Later, he taught language arts at Fairvalley High School in Covina, Calif., where he offered “The Rock and Roll Years,” an elective fine arts class that featured invited guest speakers: Jan and Dean Bobby Vee, Freddy Cannon, to name a few. He has extensive writing credits including the first three editions of the House of Collectibles’ The Official Price Gide to Collectible Rock Records, which was reviewed on NBC’s Today show. He has done numerous personality profiles of rock and pop artist for the record-collector magazine Goldmine. 

“Hair” was a pop-culture phenomenon that rocked and shocked over 30 million theatergoers during the late 1960s. So, what was all the fuss about? Well, actually, a number of things. “Hair” rejected every Broadway convention when onstage hippies promoted peace, love and understanding, as well as plentiful doses of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

And — briefly — naked flesh.

The “Hair” history began in 1964 when two off-Broadway actor pals — James Rado and Gerome Ragni — decided to create a rock musical about Manhattan’s East Village longhairs. Dubbed “The Tribe,” these young counter-culturists spent their days hanging out, getting high and avoiding the draft. (At the time, hippies nationwide were protesting the Vietnam war, racism and sexual politics.)

Rado once described the inspiration for his would-be participants as “a combination of some characters we met in the streets, people we knew and our own imaginations … There was so much excitement in the streets and the parks and the hippie areas, and we thought if we could transmit this excitement to the stage, it would be wonderful.”

While Rado and Ragni focused on dialogue, they assigned songwriting chores to a straight-laced, non-counterculture Canadian named Galt MacDermot, who explained years later, “I never even heard of a hippie when I met Rado and Ragni.” McDermot did, however, share their enthusiasm about creating a radical rock ‘n’ roll drama.

The show’s title was inspired by a museum stroll that Rado and Ragni took one afternoon, when they spied a painting of a tuft of hair (not surprisingly labeled “Hair”) by pop artist Jim Dine, who had been associated with numerous art movements over the years.

In 1967, the first production of “Hair” opened 40 blocks away from the Great White Way in an East Village off-Broadway venue called the Public. The presentation featured 20 songs and fully clothed performers. Broadway investors had soberly turned thumbs down on the controversial offering; “Hair,” however, quickly became the hot ticket for hip, younger Big Apple theatergoers.

On April 29, 1968 — six months after making its debut — a revised “Hair” opened at Broadway’s Biltmore Theater and included some major changes. Thirteen additional songs had been added. The stage cast had become multi-ethnic. And, because a city ordinance allowed nudity if the actors remained motionless, the end of Act One featured a dimly lit tableau of the unclothed.

Four years later, Broadway’s first rock musical closed after a record-breaking 1,750 performances. When the original stage cast recording sold three million albums, New York Times critic Charles Isherwood advised, “For an escapist dose of the sweet sound of youth brimming with hope that the world is going to change tomorrow, listen to ‘Hair’ and let the sunshine in.”

During its remarkable run, “Hair” had generated million-selling singles for the Fifth Dimension (“Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In’), the Cowsills (“Hair”), Three Dog Night (“Easy to Be Hard”) and Oliver (“Good Morning Starshine”).

A dazzling light at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, “Hair” would eventually inspire Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease and Dreamgirls.