How “Hair” Changed Broadway
by Ashley Griffin, Guest Editorial
Editor’s Note: Later this month, a musical will be having its world premiere. While I can’t legally provide too many details about the show(I certainly will after it opens), what I can say is that it’s magnificent. It is so good, in fact, that I feel it will provide a monumental shift in the way musical theatre is composed, cast, staged, etc. When thinking about the history of Broadway, I feel this has only happened a handful of times. To discuss this more, Ashley Griffin has written the following series to talk about each show that had such an impact. ~ Chris Peterson
To read the earlier parts of this series, click below:
“Hair” was the very first rock musical.
Thank you for coming to this TED Talk. Ok, I’ll elaborate.
“Hair” was a 1968 Broadway musical written by James Rado and Gerome Ragni. They met doing an off-Broadway show in 1964 and quickly began collaborating.
“Hair”, while it does have a through line, is primarily a collage of events and characters during the “hippie age” in NYC. Rado had actually aspired to be a Broadway composer in the Golden Age tradition, whereas Ragni came from an experimental theater background. It was the perfect pairing to create this new kind of musical – an experimental premise and style supported by a narrative structure. The main characters were autobiographical, with Claude being Rado’s stand-in and Berger, Ragni, and their relationship was reflected in the musical.
The show examines a group of 1960s-era young people struggling for meaning and personal identity while dealing with the Vietnam War and exploring drugs and the sexual revolution. The bare bones of the plot involve Claude deciding whether or not to burn his draft card while bonding with his best friend Berger and falling for Berger’s girlfriend, Sheila (whom Berger treats terribly.) Eventually, Claude decides to report for military service and dies in Vietnam.
Rado described the inspiration for the show as “a combination of some characters we met in the streets, people we knew, and our own imaginations. We knew this group of kids in the East Village who were dropping out and dodging the draft, and there were also lots of articles in the press about how kids were being kicked out of school for growing their hair long…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…we hung out with them and went to their Be-Ins (and) let our hair grow.”
Many cast members were recruited directly from the streets, and Rado continued, “It was very important historically, and if we hadn’t written it, there’d not be any examples. You could read about it and see film clips, but you’d never experience it…this is happening in the streets, and we wanted to bring it to the stage.”
Allegedly, the musical’s title was inspired by a museum trip where Rado and Ragini saw a painting of a tuft of hair by Jim Dine. The title was “Hair.”
Rado and Ragni were eventually connected with composer Galt MacDermot, a 1961 Grammy winner for his composition “African Waltz” who led a decidedly non-hippie life. But he shared Rado and Ragni’s passion for bringing a rock sound into a musical score and quickly started setting Rado and Ragni’s lyrics to music.
Everyone rejected the show until they took it to Joseph Papp, who ran the New York Shakespeare Festival and wanted “Hair “ for his (still under construction) new theater, The Public, in the East Village. The show would be the first work by living authors that Papp produced. It was hugely instrumental in establishing the off-Broadway to Broadway pipeline. After its run at the Public, the show transferred to a discothèque at 53rd and Broadway called the Cheetah, then moved to Broadway three months later.
Ironically, the changes made to the show between its run at the Cheetah and Broadway made it MORE experimental and less narrative-driven (the opposite of most development trajectories), largely brought about by the addition of experimental director Tom O’Horgan. O’Horgan was known for using nudity onstage and was the driving force behind the infamous addition of nudity to “Hair.”
The show went on to have numerous touring, West End, and international productions, as well as a film adaptation. The soundtrack became hugely popular – something that had been happening less and less with Broadway scores. “Hair” forced Broadway to reckon with rock music and introduced the rock musical as a Broadway genre - the following decade was riddled with rock musicals like “Godspell”, “Pippin” and “Jesus Christ Superstar,” and now they are a mainstay of most Broadway seasons. Songs from the show went on to be recorded by numerous artists, including Nina Simone, Barbara Streisand, Sarah Brightman, Liza Minnelli, Three Dog Night, and Sesame Street.
At the time, Broadway reflected the drastic generation gap that had hit the culture at large… the original production of “Hello, Dolly!” opened on Broadway the same year Rado and Ragni wrote “Hair.” For many adults and those of an older generation in 1968, “Hair” was their first real introduction to why the hippies were doing what they were doing. It was easy to look out and see a bunch of wacky teenagers acting counterculturally, but “Hair” provided a look into their world – into how they were feeling and where their “wacky” actions were coming from. And for the younger generation, “Hair” was the first musical that reflected their experience.
It was a move away from Broadway as pure “entertainment” and into being a reflection of what was going on in the world at the time – something that hadn’t happened since the 1930s (1937’s “The Cradle Will Rock” being a prime example.) It featured a diverse cast of young people and was one of the rare examples (at the time) of the writers being in their own work – Rado played the role of Claude on Broadway, and Ragni played Berger off and on Broadway. The performers weren’t typical musical theater performers but required expertise in a wildly different musical style.
“Hair” is a big reason Broadway didn’t “die” in the 1970s. The show heralded a new way for Broadway to reconnect with the current culture, not just become an art form of the past. Opera and ballet, for example, are still creating vital new works, and they are primarily known for presenting pieces that were first created a hundred years ago or more. “Hair” kept Broadway’s vital lifeforce beating much longer than it could have, and is why we have rock, pop rock, or even folk musicals today and aren’t primarily reviving Golden Age musicals.
“Hair” paved the way not only for “Rock of Ages”, but “Once”, “Bright Star” and even “Hadestown” and “Six”. It proved that experimental work could be not just commercially viable but incredibly successful, even in some of the most traditionally conservative venues in the world. The show encouraged experimentation on Broadway. 1973’s “Rocky Horror,” 1992’s The Who’s “Tommy,” and 2001’s “Urinetown” all owe a debt to “Hair’s,” paving the way for contemporary experimentalism on Broadway.