RCA Victor
Producer: Andy Wiswell
Track listing: Aquarius / Donna / Hashish / Sodomy / Colored Spade /
Manchester England / I’m Black / Ain’t Got No /Air / Initials / I Got Life / My Conviction / Don’t Put It Down / Frank Mills / Be-In / Where Do I Go? / Black Boys / White Boys / Easy to Be Hard / Walking in Space / Abie Baby / Three-Five-Zero-Zero / What a Piece of Work Is Man / Good MorningStarshine / The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)
April 26, 1969
13 weeks
Hair began its life as a story written on scraps of paper by two actors named Gerome Ragni and James Rado. Within a few years, those bits and pieces were turned into a story worthy of a musical. To write the music to to accompany their story of “the age of Aquarius,” Ragni and Rado tracked down composer Galt MacDermot.
“They had a complete book and lyrics when I met them,” MacDermot recalls. “And I worked from the lyrics.” MacDermot composed the score to the in a mere three weeks in order to make a deadline for the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater. Hair opened there on October 29, 1967. But by the time the musical made it to Broadway, on April 29, 1968, MacDermot had composed additional material.
Only days after Hair became the first rock musical to open on Broadway, the cast was ushered into RCA’s Studio B to record the original cast album. RCA executives suspected that they had a hit on their hands, as the musical was drawing huge crowds at the Biltmore Theatre and had received a rave review from the New York Times.
“Actually, I think we went into the studio a little too soon,” admits MacDermot. “After about a month or so, the cast and the band would have known it much better.” As is the case with most original cast albums, the sessions were squeezed in between performances. “We just did one song after another,” MacDermot says. “We worked well into the night, but we did it all in one day. Most of the numbers were done live, just like we did them in the theater. But, then at the very end we did a little bit of overdubbing.”
The music wasn’t the only thing memorable about Hair, as the cast featured a few notable performers. Writers Ragni and Rado played the lead characters George Berger and Claude Hooper Bukowski, respectively, yet singer/actress Melba Moore and actress Diane Keaton are the cast members who became Hair‘s most well-known alumni. Moore is featured on “Ain’t Got No,” “Air,” “White Boys,” “Good Morning Starshine,” and “The Flesh Failures,” while Keaton sings on “Black Boys.”
Hair wasn’t only a hit with theatergoers and the critics — many of the era’s pop stars were also tapping into “the age of Aquarius.” The Fifth Dimension’s Billy Davis Jr. was so knocked out by the play’s opening number “Aquarius,” he and group covered the song and album-closer “The Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In).” The Fifth Dimension’s version of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” topped the Hot 100 on April 12, 1969. Two weeks later, the original cast album hit Number One in its 39th week on the Top LP’s chart.
The success of the album came to a shock to MacDermot. “I was surprised. I was so involved in what I was doing that I had no time to look at the charts, and then a guy from RCA called me and said we were Number One.”
Hair‘s chart triumph continued on May 10, 1969. With the original cast album and the Fifth Dimension single still the top album and single in the country, the Cowsills’ version of “Hair” hit number two. Other Hair hits included Oliver’s “Good Morning Starshine,” which reached number three, and Three Dog Night’s “Easy to Be Hard,” which made it to number four.
Hair is also notable for another reason: It is the last original cast recording to have topped the album chart.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of April 26, 1969
1. Hair, Original Cast
2. Blood, Sweat & Tears Blood, Sweat & Tears
3. Galveston, Glen Campbell
4. Greatest Hits, Donovan
5. Cloud Nine, Temptations