It was the era of the hippie, of being free ; the era of Vietnam war and peace marches, and protests. It was an era of rebellion, of marijuana and LSD and symbolizing all of that comes “Hair”
The full title of the Broadway musical was Hair; The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical. After a somewhat hit and miss off-Broadway year, it was revised and had news songs added before it opened in the big time on Broadway in April 1968, and by May 1969 was a certified smash hit and on its way to and incredible 1,750 performances.
Canadian composer
But as a musical, it was the songs that carried it through its Broadway performances and later that year in London England, an even greater 1,997 shows.
What is not widely known is that the man behind the musical score was Canadian composer Galt MacDermot.
Born in Montreal in 1928 as the son of a diplomat he attended the prestigious Upper Canada College in Ontario, and later Bishop’s University in Quebec. He earned a Bachelor of Music from Cape Town University in South Africa.
By 1964 he was living in New York City and already won a Grammy for African Waltz, a tune performed by Cannonball Adderly.
In 1967 he was approached to write the music for a new “counterculture” type of musical. He was actually the antithesis of the hippie movement with short hair a wife and children and living on Staten Island.
Nevertheless the songs almost became anthems for the hippie movement, such as the title track Hair, as well as Aquarius, Good Morning Starshine, Let the Sunshine In, and Easy to be Hard.
In May of 1969, songs from the musical were heard on radios all over North America, and the world. Indeed, even as the Broadway production was in full swing, a west coast version was also a hit in Los Angeles and ran for two years, and before long there were nine different and simultaneous productions running in cities across the US.
By this time in May, versions of Aquarius/let the Sunshine In had already hit the Number 1 spot on the US charts a couple of weeks earlier, and “Hair” had just hit number 1. Both were also number 1 on the RPM charts in Canada.
The Broadway original cast recording was a hit, winning a Grammy in 1969 and selling 3 million copies by December 1969.
When a film version came out in 1979, it too was a hit, along with the subsequent soundtrack album which had some orchestral changes and a new song by MacDermot, “Somebody to Love”
As someone who had carefully studied Bantu and other African music, MacDermot said there were a lot of African rhythms in Hair, but also insisted that the songs should have variety, with different sounds from rockabilly, to rhythm and blues to acid rock.
It all worked to create one of the most successful musicals ever.
MacDermot continued to work and had many other successes such as the Broadway rock musical Two Gentlemen of Verona which won a Tony award in 1971.
For reasons beyond our control, and for an undetermined period of time, our comment section is now closed. However, our social networks remain open to your contributions.