“Hair” co-creator James Rado dies
James Rado, co-creator of the groundbreaking hippie musical “Hair,” which celebrated protest, pot and free love and paved the way for the sound of rock on Broadway, has died. He was 90.
Rado died Tuesday night in New York City of cardio respiratory arrest.
“Hair,” which has a story and lyrics by Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt Macdermot, was the first rock musical on Broadway, the first Broadway show to feature full nudity and the first to feature a same-sex kiss.
The so-called “American tribal love-rock musical,”
had its world premiere at the Public Theater in New York City’s East Village in 1967 and transferred the following year to Broadway, where the musical ran more than 1,800 performances. Rado played Claude, a young man about to be drafted and sent to the war in Vietnam.
It lost the Tony in 1969 to the more traditional “1776” but won a Grammy Award. The show was revived on Broadway in 1977 and again in 2009, when it won the best revival Tony. It was also made into a movie in 1979.
The “Hair” Broadway cast album spawned four top four singles on the American pop charts, including the No. 1 hit “Aquarius/let the Sunshine In” by the Fifth Dimension, which won the Grammy Award for record of the year and best pop vocal performance by a group in 1970.
“Hair” tells the story of Claude and Berger, best buddies who find freedom in the late 1960s. Between draft-card burnings, loveins, bad LSD trips and a parade of protest marches, the two wander through a New York filled with flower children, drugged-out hippies and outraged tourists who don’t approve of the wild goingson.
Rado was born in Venice,
Calif., and raised in Rochester, and Washington D.C. After serving two years in the U.S. Navy, he moved to New York and studied acting with Paula and Lee Strasberg. He was part of the ensemble of the Broadway play “Marathon ’33” in 1963 and played Richard Lionheart in “The Lion in Winter” in 1966. He met Ragni when he was cast in the off-broadway musical “Hang Down Your Head and Die.”