James Rado, co-writer
I was in a play on Broadway that got such bad reviews it opened and closed on the same night. I had been cast opposite an actor called Gerry Ragni and told him about my dream of writing a musical. It was the mid-60s, a time when hippies were appearing in the East Village. They seemed like creatures from outer space, so open, loving and beautiful. They touched our hearts. The anti-Vietnam-war protests on the streets were dramatic and thrilling. Gerry and I thought we could write a show about all this.
I’d seen a painting at the Whitney Museum, of a comb holding a clump of hair that had been pulled out. It was just called Hair – and that gave us the title for our musical. Galt MacDermot, our composer, set everything to music, even the stage directions – unlike Herbie Hancock, who was asked to write music for one of our songs, and returned it with half the lyrics cut.
Fate seemed to be at work with the show. Gerry was on a train one day when he met the producer Joseph Papp, who had a new venue in New York, the Public Theater, and needed a show to open it. Two weeks later, we had the job.
The show needed actors with long hair but there was no such thing at the time, so we would approach suitable people in the street, tap them on the shoulder and say: “Excuse me, do you sing?” The songs we’d written really pushed the envelope and there was a mood of permissiveness among the actors, too. Once the show moved to Broadway, there was more and more drug use backstage. Whenever the fire marshal came round, the stage manager would get on the intercom and say: “Marti Whitehead, please report to the stage manager’s desk.” Then everyone knew to throw their joints away.
The Public Theater wouldn’t let us do the nude scene, but our Broadway director Tom O’Horgan was all in favour. In fact, he changed it so that instead of just two people, the entire cast took their clothes off. I played Claude, the leader of the hippies, and Gerry played Berger, a free spirit – until we got fired from our own show. The play had opened a production in Los Angeles and we went over to visit, watching from the back of the theatre. We decided to take our clothes off during the interval and walk down the aisle naked.
The producer heard about it and decided we were a liability. When we flew back to New York, we’d been fired and there were armed guards on the door of the theatre keeping us out. So we wrote on a bedsheet “We want our baby back!” and picketed the theatre. They let us back on stage eventually.
After that, Gerry and I started fighting more and more. It had become too intense: we had to get away from each other. But we found our way back to each other as friends, even writing a second show called Sun, which has never been produced. Maybe someone will put it on before I die.
Shelley Plimpton, Crissy
It was a wonderful, exciting time. Everything was changing. I was working at the Night Owl Cafe in the Village when Jim and Gerry came in looking for musicians. I had long hair and was innocent-looking, and they asked if I could sing, dance or act. I said: “No. Who are you?” My friend talked me into auditioning so I sang With a Little Help from My Friends. They liked it, but they didn’t have a role for me – so they wrote a song, Frank Mills, for me instead.
Jim and Gerry were yin and yang: Gerry was outgoing and wacky, Jim quiet and thoughtful. Galt was the grownup in the room. We became like a close-knit family – a tribe, as we called it. The nude scene didn’t bother us: we weren’t shy about our bodies. We were anti-war, of course, and went on the anti-Vietnam marches and to be-ins at the park. But they said we hated the soldiers, which just wasn’t true.
One night Keith Carradine [father of Shelley’s daughter Martha] made some pot brownies and brought them in. A lot of the cast ate some, as well as the sound man and the lighting guy. It was kind of an interesting show after that. We all had to hang on to one another: “Where is the audience? What am I doing? Which way is up?”
Martha was born in 1970. When I began to show, they had me play the part of the pregnant girl, Jeanie. That was a lot of fun, but it became too dangerous because she has to go up a ladder. After Martha was born, she’d be backstage with me. Many stage managers have held her while I sang Frank Mills.
A lot of the show is about masculinity and male friendship. Heather MacRae – who played Sheila, the woman caught in a love triangle with Claude and Berger – was magnificent. I remember sharing a dressing room with Diane Keaton and Melba Moore, too. They were getting their careers together while I was just having a good time. I never felt like acting was my calling.
The 50th-anniversary production Hair the Musical tours the UK from 21 March.
This article was amended on 15 March 2019 because an earlier version referred to Hair’s director as Tim Horgan instead of Tom O’Horgan.
