Hair, subtitled The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, is a musical about
hippies. It
was written by James Rado and Gerome Ragni (lyrics), and Galt MacDermot (music). It premiered off-Broadway as the inaugural perfomance of the Public Theater, on October 17, 1967, and
moved to the Biltmore Theater on Broadway on April 29 1968 where
it stayed for 1472 performances. It opened at the Shaftesbury
Theatre in London on September 27 1968,
continuing for 1998 performances until closure was forced by the roof
collapsing in July 1973. It
went on to stage productions across the world and continues to be performed
today.
A movie version of Hair was directed by Milos Forman in 1979.
The show challenged many of the norms held by western society at the time. It caused controversy when it was
first staged, and much publicity was provoked by the Act I finale which
included male and female nudity. This became a legal issue when the show left New York on
tour. Stage nudity was acceptable in
The show follows 'The Tribe', a group of politically-active, long-haired
'Hippies of the Age of Aquarius' fighting against conscription to the Vietnam War.
Among them are Claude and Berger — a pair of friends battling against Claude's
draft notice, and Sheila, who is in love with both of them. Jeannie is always
protesting about something, and together with Woof, Crissy,
Hud and Dionne they epitomise the hippy days of the late Sixties.
The many songs include "Aquarius", "Good Morning Starshine", "Let the Sunshine In",
"Hare Krishna", and "Easy to be Hard".
PSYCHEDELIC
MUSIC
In the United States, psychedelic music was particularly characteristic of the West Coast
sound, with bands such as the Beach Boys, Grateful Dead, Country Joe and The Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Vanilla Fudge, Tommy James and the Shondells and Jefferson Airplane in the vanguard. Jimi Hendrix and the Doors
helped to popularize acid rock, a
closely related style of music.
Initially, the Beach Boys with, their squeaky-clean image, seemed unlikely as psychedelic types.
Their music, however, grew more psychedelic and experimental due mostly in part
to writer/producer/arranger Brian Wilson's increased drug usage. Albums like Pet Sounds and
There were also less well known psychedelic bands in outlying regions,
such as the 13th Floor Elevators and Bubble Puppy working out of
In Britain,
although the psychedelic revolution occurred later, the impact was nonetheless
profound within the British music scene. Established artists such as Eric Burdon, The Who and The Beatles
produced a number of highly psychedelic tunes. In the case of the Beatles, this
was especially the case on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band album (which contains the track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", the initials of which spell out LSD (although John Lennon
claimed this was a coincidence and that the name was based on the title of a
drawing by his small son). They also released "
The music of Cream and
of very early Pink Floyd is
representative of British psychedelia.
Independent record producer Joe Meek has been credited with inventing
the phasing sound publicised most notably on the
first
A good number of the bands who pioneered psychedelic rock gave it up by
the end of the 1960s. The increasingly hostile political environment and the
embrace of amphetamines, heroin and cocaine by
the underground led to a turn toward harsher music. At the same time, Bob Dylan
released John Wesley Harding and the Band released Music from Big Pink, both albums that rejected psychedelia for a more roots-oriented approach. Many bands in
The musicians and bands who continued to embrace psychedelia
often went on to create progressive rock in the 1970s, which maintained the love of unusual sounds and extended
solos but added jazz and classical influences to the mix. For example,
progressive rock group Yes sprang out of three British psychedelic bands: Syn
(featuring Chris Squire),
Tomorrow (featuring Steve Howe) and Mabel Greer's Toy Shop (Jon Anderson).
Phish, active from the early 1980s, played psychedelic music with a strong jazz influence and a great deal of technical skill, utilizing elaborate
modal melodies and complex rhythmic accompaniment. In the mid 1980s a Los Angeles-based movement named the Paisley Underground acknowledged a debt to the Byrds,
incorporating psychedelia into a folky,
jangle pop
sound. The Bangles were
the most successful band to emerge from this movement; amongst others involved
were Green on Red and Dream Syndicate.
Recently the group Kula Shaker, under the leadership Crispian Mills, created
much Indian-influenced psychedelic music such as their most recent album
'Peasants, pigs and Astronauts'. A number of bands such as Ozric Tentacles and the Welsh Gorky's Zygotic Mynci continue to play psychedelic music, in a tradition that goes back to
the sixties via acts such as Steve Hillage, Gong and
their assorted side projects.
British bands Anomie and My Bloody Valentine are standard-bearers for British garage psychedelia,
citing Pink Floyd and Hawkwind as their musical influences. Some electronic or electronic-influenced music now termed "ambient"
or "trance"
would have fallen within the category of psychedelia
in the 1966 to 1990 period, such as Aphex Twin or Orbital. Stoner rock acts
like Kyuss and their successors also carry forward the flag of explicitly psychedelic music
into the present day. The Smashing Pumpkins fused psychedelic rock sounds with heavy metal, becoming a highly successful alternative rock act in the 1990s.
Rising from the Japanese noise underground, Acid Mothers Temple mix the subtle, relaxing resonance of Blue Cheer and
most obviously Grateful Dead's psychedelic sound, the thought
provoking melodies of French folk, and concrete bursts of noise that run through music of Boredoms.