May 2, 2011

SCOTT
ARMATO HAIR

The Shining, Streaming, Gleaming, Flaxen, Waxen

Musical that Rocked Broadway
 Hair |1

Within the turmoil and tumult of 1960s America, several “voices of a generation”

emerged. Names like Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Bob Marley, and Jerry Garcia dominated the

musical dialogue, and names like William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, and

Allen Ginsburg were ruling the literati. Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were opening new

doors in the art world while Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were taking giant leaps for

mankind. Timothy Leary was seducing the youth of America to “tune in, turn on, and drop out,”

while Martin Luther King, Jr. was exposing his dream of America.

The country was at war – a war that, unlike any other since the Civil War, polarized the

country. The war wasn’t waged only in Vietnam, it was being waged in the cities, in the schools,

and across the dinner table. The segmentation was generational, or so it seemed: it was wild-

haired young people revolting against the conservative views of their parents. This anti-

establishment sentiment echoed throughout the streets, shaking the foundations and questioning

the long-held beliefs of every aspect of American culture – from politics to religion, from race

relations to sexuality.

It was a particularly fruitful era for the arts. Everything from music to the visual arts

were turned on its ear, and the theatre world was no exception. Avant garde theatre was on the

rise, with names like Ellen Stewart, Jerzy Grotowski, and Joseph Chaikin leading the charge,

breaking new ground far from the midtown theatre establishment in smaller houses downtown.

Through it all, two men were able to distill a moment in time and memorialize it on the

stage. Two men who were a part of the movement as much as the movement was a part of them.

Two men who acknowledged that the time was right for the theatre to finally become the agent

of social change it had sought to be since Shakespeare.

But was the world ready for Hair?

 Hair |2

James Rado and Gerome Ragni were two actors working in the avant garde theatre at the

time. They’d met at an audition for Hang Down Your Head and Die, a 1964 off-Broadway flop,

becoming fast friends (Horn, 1991). While Rado was more involved in established theatre –

he’d studied with Lee Strasberg and appeared on Broadway in the original production of The

Lion in Winter as Richard Lionheart – Ragni was introducing him to the more experimental

happenings downtown (Miller, 2003). Having christened the Open Theater with its name

(Grode, 2010), Ragni was on the cutting edge of experimental theater, working closely with

Ellen Stewart, Joseph Chaikin, and Hair’s eventual director, Tom O’Horgan (Horn, 1991).

The two men recognized the potential in each other, and began collaborating on Hair a

year later, before the term “hippie” had even been coined (Horn, 1991). Based on their

observations of the anti-war sentiment and spirit of experimentation burgeoning around them,

Hair began to spring to life in the minds of its creators.

A major influence in the development of Hair was Megan Terry’s Viet Rock. An Open

Theater production focusing on strong anti-war themes bolstered with the use of folk rock, the

creation and form of Viet Rock had strongly influenced Ragni, who had been involved in many

of the workshops. “Viet Rock was a play partly written, partly group devised through

improvisation in rehearsal (Miller, 2003).” The scenes in Viet Rock were connected in

“prelogical ways” – instead of one scene following logically from the previous scene, these

scenes were connected psychologically (Miller, 2003). As such, Hair developed as a series of

vignettes and lyrics with the loosely connective material of Claude’s indecision over whether or

not to burn his draft card; the first version of the script was finished in the middle of 1966 (Horn,

1991).
 Hair |3

After a production of Viet Rock at Yale, Ragni had a chance meeting with Joseph Papp,

artistic director of the New York Shakespeare Festival, on the train back to New York. Ragni

had with him several handwritten pages of script, and showed them to the impresario, who was

interested in reading the rest of the script. Ragni delivered the script to Papp the next morning,

later saying, “On going through the rest of Hair, without the music, my reaction wandered all

over the place. Some of it was boring and some of it was interesting. The thing that struck me

was that it had to do with the loneliness of young people, and that’s why I became involved in

the material” (Miller, 2003).

The two had unsuccessfully attempted to write the score for the show. While they were

shopping the script around to various Broadway producers, they came in contact with music

publisher Nat Shapiro who originally sent their work to Herbie Hancock. When Hancock’s

setting of the song “Hair” came back to them, the words had been rearranged, much to the

chagrin of the authors (Grode, 2010). They sent the script on to Galt MacDermot, a Canadian-

born, South African-educated jazz composer with no previous experience in writing for the

theatre (Miller, 2003).

MacDermot said, “I thought it was funny. That was my response. It amused me. And

then I just started writing the songs. The songs fell right in tune.” (Rapaport & Held, 2007).

MacDermot was a far, far cry from the hippies with whom Rado and Ragni were used to working

– MacDermot was a father of four with a house in Staten Island (Miller, 2003). MacDermot’s

African education strongly influenced the music for Hair, with the rhythms of the Bantu tribe

making several appearances throughout the score. The Bantu’s quaylas, wherein unstressed

syllables fall on stressed beats, abound throughout the score of Hair (Miller, 2003). For
 Hair |4

example, in “What A Piece of Work Is Man,” the lyric is sung thus, with the bold syllable being

an unstressed syllable on a stressed beat: “…how no-ble in reason, how infi-nite in faculties….”

Once MacDermot was aboard, Papp chose Hair to open his new Public Theater. After

several directorial choices, including the future director of the Broadway production, Tom

O’Horgan and Open Theater founder Joseph Chaikin, the production team eventually settled

upon Gerald Freedman, the Public’s associate artistic director (Horn, 1991). Freedman made

several textual changes, rearranging some scenes and deleting others. While Ragni and Rado

had a “wonderful instinct for theater,” Freedman maintained that they had no instinct for form.

Critic Clive Barnes commented: “I’m absolutely sure that if Freedman had not done whatever he

had done in the initial stage, [Hair] would never have gone anywhere,” (Horn, 1991).

That original off-Broadway production bore little resemblance to the version of Hair that

eventually found its way to Broadway. In addition to “the tribe” – the band of hippies that make

the ensemble of the show – there were characters meant to represent the parents of the tribe

members. The adult characters sang the opening number, “Red, White, and Blue” (later

reworked as “Don’t Put it Down”). At this time “Aquarius” was buried in the middle of the

second act, and the show ended with “Exanaplanetooch” and “The Climax” (Miller, 2003).

While Hair may not have gone anywhere without Freedman, Hair would have gone

nowhere without the intervention of Michael Butler. The scion of the outrageously wealthy

Butler family of Chicago, Butler had political aspirations as an anti-war liberal candidate, losing

narrowly in an Illinois race and eventually setting his sights on the Bureau of Indian Affairs

(Horn, 1991).

Seeing an advertisement for Hair in the ew York Times, Butler was immediately

interested, though for all the wrong reasons. The show’s contemporaneous marketing efforts
 Hair |5

featured a famous photograph of Geronimo, Sitting Bull, and a few other chiefs, with several

members of the show’s tribe superimposed, playing into the tribal aspect of the American Tribal-

Love Rock Musical. Believing the show to be about Native Americans, Butler attended with

Oliver Coquelin, owner of several discotheques (Horn, 1991).

“I fell in love with the show,” Butler says, “mainly because I was getting ready to run for

the Senate against Dirksen, with both Daly’s and Kerner’s blessings. And I thought I’d like to

that the show back to Illinois to show my constituents what I thought of the Vietnam War,”

(Horn, 1991).

After the six-week engagement, Papp was more concerned with the next offering in his

season than pursuing further productions of Hair (Horn, 1991). Nonetheless, he joined forces

with Butler to bring the Freedman-directed production to one of Coquelin’s discos, The Cheetah

(Miller, 2003). The production was marred with problems – including having to perform the

show with curtain at 7 pm and no intermission in order to accommodate the disco crowd. These

facts were combined with lackluster publicity; the Cheetah production was not nearly as

successful as the Public’s production, running for 45 performances (Horn, 1991). Undaunted,

Butler wanted to bring the Papp/Freedman production to Broadway; Papp, however, was less

convinced of its success (Miller, 2003). After Papp allowed his options on the rights to expire,

Butler and Bertrand Castelli – a writer/producer “of considerable repute in Parisian art circles” –

secured the first class rights, with Butler acting as domestic producer and Castelli as the

international producer (Horn, 1991).

Between the Cheetah production and the Broadway production, the show underwent a

major overhaul. Tom O’Horgan, the creative team’s original choice for director, came aboard.

Under O’Horgan’s eye, Hair’s already tenuous script was loosened even further. Three songs
 Hair |6

were removed and thirteen new songs were added with some changes in order: the song that

eventually became the anthem of the age, “Aquarius”, was given its now-familiar prominence as

the show’s trippy opening number (Horn, 1991).

Casting for the show was difficult, continuing 12 days after opening night (Grode, 2010).

While Rado and Ragni were cast to play Claude and Berger respectively, O’Horgan wanted none

of the original cast to make the transition to Broadway. Mostly professional actors filled the

cast, though some with more than a passing interest in hippieness. Sally Eaton was perhaps the

most “hippie” of all the tribe. Several classically trained actors such as Natalie Mosco and Diane

Keaton joined the tribe, but, eventually, the creative team resorted to wandering the streets,

chasing down anyone who vaguely looked right (Davis & Gallagher, 1973).

Aside from the rewrites, O’Horgan’s major contribution to the development of Hair was

his own rehearsal techniques. He called them “sensitivity exercises” – his primary aim was to

get the cast to deconstruct the self and begin functioning as one large organism. The now-usual

trust exercises were employed: O’Horgan would separate the cast into smaller groups with one

person at the center who was to fall in any direction expecting his fellow tribe members to save

him (Davis & Gallagher, 1973). This paved the way for one of the show’s more intense

moments: Berger diving from a nine-foot platform into the waiting arms of several tribe

members below (Grode, 2010). Other exercises were not as traditional – Natalie Mosco

remembers an exercise in which tribe members were asked to lean slightly forward with their

mouths open. The goal of this exercise was to let one’s entire body relax to the point where

saliva began to pool and drip to the floor; the body was to follow (Grode, 2010). This training

was instrumental in the many slow motion scenes throughout the show.
 Hair |7

The move to Broadway was not an easy one. While the tribe was in rehearsals downtown

at the Ukrainian Hall in the East Village, the midtown theater establishment, represented by

names like Shubert and Nederlander, did not like what they saw and were unwilling to take the

risk on Hair. At Castelli’s urging, Michael Butler’s father interceded, convincing his friend and

theater owner David Cogan to make the Biltmore available (Horn, 1991).

Hair opened on Broadway on April 29, 1968. Now a commonplace occurrence, its

opening marked the first time an off-Broadway show successfully made the trip to Broadway. It

was the first time Broadway saw a fully racially integrated cast: while African Americans had

been seen on Broadway as early as Show Boat, Melba Moore’s replacing Lynn Kellogg as Sheila

was the first time “white” roles were made available to African Americans. It was the first time

rock music had been heard on Broadway, and it was the first musical to deviate from the

accepted book form. Hair broke new ground as the first of what would eventually come to be

called the “concept musical”. Most memorably, Hair was the first time nudity had been seen on

the Broadway stage (Horn, 1991).

“Much has been written about that scene… most of it silly,” wrote Gene Lees in High

Fidelity (Lees, 1969). Nudity had not been part of either the Public production or the Cheetah

production (Horn, 1991). It was added, almost as an afterthought, during rehearsals at the

Ukrainian Hall, and when O’Horgan mentioned it, most of the cast thought he was going too far.

The costume designer, Nancy Potts, suggested body stockings for the girls and briefs for the

guys. O’Horgan informed her that he had “three guys who were ready and willing to strip”

during the Be-In at the end of Act I (Davis & Gallagher, 1973).

The scene was more-or-less forgotten about during rehearsals, and it wasn’t until the first

preview that those “three guys” made themselves known: Steve Curry, Steve Gamet, and, of
 Hair |8

course, Gerry Ragni. Emmeretta Marks and Shelly Plimpton eventually joined them after the

first few previews, Marks saying that she did so because she wanted to see if she was “free

enough” and that it was “very relevant” at that point in the show (Davis & Gallagher, 1973).

Erroll Booker said that standing up naked in public did him “an unbelievable amount of good.”

Lorrie Davis eased into it, removing only her bra the first few times, then disrobing but holding

the scrim under which everyone stripped just below her navel, then eventually fully taking part.

Regarding that first time, she says, “I never felt so free.” (Davis & Gallagher, 1973)

While the nude scene has captured the common consciousness since 1968, Hair was,

believe it or not, about much more than good looking naked people. The plot itself had several

influences. Astrology was a guiding influence, much more than the theme of the opening

number. The show had a company astrologer, Maria Crummere. In addition to running the

charts on all of the cast members (Davis & Gallagher, 1973), she was also instrumental in

picking opening dates during which the stars aligned to ensure success (Horn, 1991).

Hair abounds with the typical hippie themes. Free Love is exemplified in many of the

characters and songs – Sheila sings “I Believe in Love”, Woof sings “Sodomy”, and Jeannie

gives us a run-down as to who is in love with whom early in the first act. Very few couples are

mentioned in her speech: the tribe is more like a web. The anti-war theme pervades the entire

show, and race relations become a major theme: Hud sings “Colored Spade”, listing all of the

racial slurs that have been slung at him. Environmentalism is a theme: Jeannie sings “Air” in

which she laments the condition of the environment (Horn, 1991).

In Hair, drugs are more than a theme, they are a way of life both onstage and off. The

tribe makes frequent references to drugs throughout the show, stringing together some of their

favorites in “Hashish”. They are frequently depicted smoking marijuana and taking LSD, and
 Hair |9

much of Act II is devoted to Claude’s bad acid trip (Horn, 1991). The drug use in the show

mirrors that of much of the cast offstage. In addition to their own exploits, drug use was

institutionalized by the production – those willing in the tribe were treated to “supervitamin”

shots before curtain. By all accounts, these shots contained much more than B12: the suspicion

was that they contained amphetamines (Davis & Gallagher, 1973).

Shakespeare’s influence on the script and score cannot be ignored. Claude’s indecision

throughout the piece has led to comparisons to Hamlet, as well as him being dubbed “The

Melancholy Hippie”. The song “What a Piece of Work Is Man” is lifted directly from Hamlet,

and during the reprise of “Manchester, England” during the finale, they sing Romeo’s last lines,

“Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips: O, you: The doors of breath, seal

with a righteous kiss,” before segueing into Hamlet’s last line “The rest is silence” as Claude

dies.

The critical response to Hair was, for the most part, overwhelmingly positive. In his

review for the ew York Times, Clive Barnes said, “What is so likeable about Hair…? I think it

is simply that it is so likable. So new, so fresh, and so unassuming, even in its pretensions”

(Barnes, 1968). John J. O’Connor, in his review for The Wall Street Journal, wrote “…the

message is exuberantly defiant and the production explodes into every nook and cranny of the

Biltmore Theater. The result: This Hair stands Broadway on its marcelled toupee” (O'Connor,

1968). The ew York Post wrote, “Mr. MacDermot's songs have a pleasant lift to them, and the

eager young performers know how they should be put over, which is with zest. Then there is the

advantage that the talented Tom O'Horgan has staged the production with a feeling for speed”

(Watts Jr., 1968).

 H a i r | 10

Three members of the Critic’s Circle – Clive Barnes, Henry Hughes, and Emory Lewis –

voted Hair the best musical of the year. In Variety’s poll of New York drama critics, Hair won

two awards: Ragni and Rado were named best lyricists of the season, and McDermot was

honored with the Drama Desk-Vernon Rice Award for best score. However, the musical was

shut out of the 1968 Tonys. After Butler had been assured by the League of New York Theaters

and Producers that the opening date of Hair was sufficient to warrant inclusion at the Tonys, in a

later decision the League decided that plays that had already opened off-Broadway were not

eligible for the awards. Butler sued and won; however, too late for inclusion in the ceremony.

In the following year’s ceremony, Hair was nominated for two awards – Best Musical and Best

Director of a Musical – winning none (Horn, 1991).

While the show failed to win any Tonys, the original Broadway cast recording won the

Grammy for Best Score from an Original Cast Show Album and exceeded $1 million in U.S.

sales (King, n.d.). Recordings of songs from the show were popping up everywhere, and the

trend has continued. Hundreds of artists have contributed recordings of “Good Morning

Starshine” and “Easy to Be Hard”. The Cowsills had a hit with their recording of “Hair”.

Perhaps the best–known recording of two of the show’s songs, the 5th Dimension’s recording of

“Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” topped the charts and won the Grammy for Record of the Year

(Grammys.com).

In an unusual move, the production company behind Hair authorized several productions

outside of New York while the show was still on Broadway. Within months, there were

productions in Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and London (Miller, 2003). Seattle and

Miami were soon to follow. By 1970, Hair was playing in nine U.S. cities and supporting an

unprecedented three national tours, dubbed the Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter tours. By the time
 H a i r | 11

of Hair’s closing on Broadway, it had been seen in 36 countries by over 30 million people

(Horn, 1991).

The various productions of Hair met with resistance the world over. In St. Paul,

Minnesota, an overzealous minister, in a vain attempt to disrupt the show, released 18 white mice

into the 1,500 seat theater (Horn, 1991). The Mexican production, deemed “detrimental to the

local youth,” was shut down by the government after one performance, causing the cast to go

into hiding (Johnson, 2004). In Munich, the authorities intervened and in early performances,

the nude scene was played behind a sheet labeled “VERBOTEN” and riddled with the names of

all of Germany’s WWII concentration camps. The authorities quickly relented (Johnson, 2004).

Even in Paris, where onstage nudity was commonplace, the show was met with resistance from

the local Salvation Army (Horn, 1991).

Two U.S. Supreme Court decisions sprang from productions of the show. The

Memorial Auditorium’s refusal in Chattanooga, Tennessee, caused the Supreme Court to decide

that the censorship amounted to unlawful prior restraint (Warren, 1972). In Boston, the Chief of

the Licensing Bureau took exception to the portrayal of the American flag in the piece. While

the scene was removed before opening, the District Attorney's office began plans to have the

show stopped based on "lewd and lascivious" actions taking place onstage. The Hair legal team

sought and received an injunction against criminal prosecution from the Superior Court

(Desecration of Flag Ires Hub More than the Nudity in "Hair", 1970). The D.A. appealed to the

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and, at the request of both parties, five of the justices

viewed the production. The justices, appalled at what they saw, ruled that "each member of the

cast [must] be clothed to a reasonable extent," and the cast defiantly played the scene nude later

that night (Livingston, 1970). The next day, April 10, 1970, the production closed, and movie
 H a i r | 12

houses, fearing the ruling on nudity, began excising scenes from films in their exhibition. After

three Federal appellate judges upheld Hair’s appeal, the D.A. brought the case to the U.S.

Supreme Court. In a 4-4 decision, the Court upheld the lower court's ruling, allowing Hair to re-

open on February 22 (Supreme Court Clears "Hair" for Boston Run, 1970).

The “Mercury” touring company met with violent reactions in Cleveland, Ohio. The

hotel at which the cast was staying was met with an arsonist’s fire, killing seven, among them the

wives and newborn children of tribe members Johnathon Johnson and Rusty Carlson. Later in

the run, a bomb was thrown at the Hanna Theater, damaging the façade and breaking windows of

the theater and nearby stores. Neither crime was ever investigated (Johnson, 2004).

Hair effectively marked the end of stage censorship in London. While the office began

to be marginalized over the preceding few decades, after the Lord Chamberlain refused to license

Hair, Parliament passed the Theatres Act 1968, stripping him of his licensing power. As such,

Hair was the first theatrical performance to play on London’s West End without the Lord

Chamberlain’s approval since 1737 (Lewis, 1968).

By the time Hair closed on Broadway, it had been seen by over 30 million people

worldwide (Johnson, 2004). With a staggering ticket price of $11, the weekly breakeven point of

the Broadway production was only $34,000, with income potential between $60,000 and $68,000

(Davis & Gallagher, 1973).

In 1977, the original production team attempted a revival. Again at the Biltmore,

O’Horgan, instead of using the same organic direction style he’d employed in the original

production, attempted to recreate the original performance from shady memories. There were

differing opinions as to whether the now-dated book should be updated, and, while references to

Anita Bryant, Reverend Moon, Idi Amin, and Andrea McArdle were included, it was “in
 H a i r | 13

chronological limbo, too old to be socially relevant and too recent to be staged as a museum

piece” (Horn, 1991). It was generally “reviled” by the critics, closing after 43 performances.

(Horn, 1991).

A 1979 film was attempted. Director Miloš Forman was in the audience at the first

preview at the Public. He, like everyone else, was blown away by what he saw, and particularly

moved by the music. He greeted the authors backstage after the performance, and was surprised

to find that Rado and Ragni were fans of his work, which had, theretofore, only had wide release

in his native Czechoslovakia. He immediately offered to direct the eventual film (Rapaport &

Held, 2007).

In the early 70s, Rado and Ragni had several lucrative offers to bring Hair to the screen,

but rejected them all, preferring to wait for Forman to come available. While Hair was a

bankable name in Hollywood, Forman was not. He’d not yet directed an American film, and,

while his work was well-known in the intelligentsia and in film circles, he was not yet a big

enough name to direct (Horn, 1991).

Rado and Ragni completed a script for the film, but under the urging of producer Lester

Persky, Forman brought in Hollywood veteran Michael Weller to complete a script. Forman

said, “Hair was such a brilliant piece of theatrical genius that you have only two ways how to

make a film out of it, either photograph the stage play faithfully or let me make, absolutely free,

my own version” (Horn, 1991). Had Rado and Ragni insisted the former, says Forman, he’d

never have done the latter.

Much of Rado and Ragni’s original story, such as it was, had been changed. Claude is

fresh in New York from the Midwest, with a few days to explore the city before he is to report

for boot camp. Sheila, no longer a liberal college student, is a rich debutante who catches his
 H a i r | 14

eye. The character of Chrissy is dropped from the film, as is nearly one-third of MacDermot’s

music. In what is, perhaps, the greatest diversion from the Biltmore version, a mistake sends

Berger to die in Vietnam in Claude’s place (Forman, 1979). “It seems that Miloš Forman

regarded the hippies as some sort of aberration,” says Rado (Horn, 1991). He saw them

portrayed as “oddballs” without any real connection to the hippie movement. In the view of

Rado and Ragni, “a screen version of Hair has yet to be made” (Horn, 1991).

Through the late 80s and 90s, interest in the piece began to grow. While there were few

major productions, it wasn’t until the 2007 Central Park revival that Hair was to be given a

welcome return to New York. Produced by Joe’s Pub and the Public Theater, the three-day

event helmed by Diane Paulus was an outrageous success (Gans, 2007). After a second limited

engagement in 2008, the production moved to the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in March of 2009

(Blank, 2009), eventually winning the Tony for Best Revival, the first time it had gone to a show

whose original production had been shut out of the Tonys.

Hair’s legacy is difficult to ascertain. While the 70s saw a few rock musicals on

Broadway, the expected revolution of rock was not to come. MacDermot’s own Two Gentlemen

of Verona found receptive audiences and a Tony for Best Musical, but his other scores – the ill-

fated Dude and a second collaboration with Ragni, Via Galactica – were unrepentant flops.

Broadway saw a few rock musicals, namely Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, and the folk-rock

stylings of Godspell, but by the end of the 70s, the genre was all but gone. Broadway began to

see R&B infused scores such as Dreamgirls and The Wiz by the end of the decade, but tastes in

the 80s had turned to European megamusicals with pop-infused scores such as Les Miserables

and Phantom of the Opera (Horn, 1991). It wasn’t until 1992 with The Who’s Tommy was rock

– real rock – welcomed back to Broadway, and the score for that show had been written the same
 H a i r | 15

year as Hair’s. In more recent years, 1996’s Rent and this decade’s Spring Awakening and ext

to ormal have pointed to a renaissance of the genre.

In his uber-prescient review of the original Biltmore production, John J. O’Connor wrote,

“No matter the reaction to the content, though, I suspect the form will be important to the history

of the American musical” (O'Connor, 1968). Hair’s contribution to the musical theater pantheon

is that of the so-called “concept musical”, wherein the show is built around an idea, rather than a

conventional plot. Hair opened the door for musicals such as A Chorus Line, Company, Sunday

in the Park with George, and nearly every Hal Prince/Stephen Sondheim collaboration. This

form has dominated the musical form for the last half-century.

Hair’s enduring legacy, however, is as far from the stage as it is on the stage. In a 1988

interview with Barbara Lee Horn, Café LaMama’s LaMama, Ellen Stewart, in her typical

effulgent style, sums it up thus:

Hair came with blue jeans, comfortable clothing, colors, beautiful colors, sounds,
movement…. And you can go to AT&T, and see a secretary today, and she’s got
on blue jeans….
You can go the Philippines, you can go to Indonesia, you can go to Russia, you
can go to Rumania, you can go to France, to Germany, to Italy, to Africa, you can
go to Australia, you can go anywhere you want, and what Hair did, it is still doing
twenty years later, and this came from Tom O’Horgan. A kind of emancipation, a
spiritual emancipation that came from his staging. Now his staging was based on
the vision of these two boys [Ragni and Rado], so it was not his alone, but he took
the vision and made it possible for the world to share….
And I’m saying that Hair until this date has influenced every single thing that you
see on Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, anywhere in the world, you
will still see elements of the experimental techniques that Hair brought not just to
Broadway, but to the entire world (Horn, 1991).

So, was the world ready for Hair? No, it wasn’t: the show met resistance at nearly every

turn. So, instead, Hair changed the world.

Not a bad legacy for a musical.

 H a i r | 16

Works Cited

Barnes, C. (1968, April 30). Theater: Hair -- It's Fresh and Frank; Likable Rock Musical

Moves to Broadway. The ew York Times , p. 40.

Blank, M. (2009, February 03). PHOTO CALL: The Cast of Hair Meets the Press.

Retrieved May 1, 2011, from Playbill.com: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/125889-

PHOTO-CALL-The-Cast-of-Hair-Meets-the-Press

Davis, L., & Gallagher, R. (1973). Letting Down My Hair. New York, NY: Arthur Fields

Books, Inc.

Desecration of Flag Ires Hub More than the Nudity in Hair. (1970, 02 25). Variety.

Forman, M. (Director). (1979). Hair [Motion Picture].

Gans, A. (2007, September 22). The Long and the Short of It: Hair Plays the Delacorte

Sept. 22-24. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from Playbill.com:

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/111236-The-Long-and-the-Short-of-It-Hair-Plays-the-

Delacorte-Sept-22-24

Grammys.com. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2011, from Search Results.

Grode, E. (2010). Hair: The Story of a Show That Defined a Generation. Philadelphia,

PA: Running Press Book Publishers.

Horn, B. L. (1991). The Age of Hair: Evolution and Impact of Broadway's First Rock

Musical. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

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