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[0:12] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider, and welcome to Fifty Key Stage Musicals: The Podcast, a companion piece to the Routledge Press publication, Fifty Key Stage Musicals, which is available for purchase by going to Routledge.com or clicking the link below in today's show description.

[0:27] Robert W. Schneider: Today's episode focuses on chapter 21, the 1968 production of Hair.

[0:32] Robert W. Schneider: And with us today is Elizabeth Lara Wollman, author of The Theater Will Rock, a history of the rock musical from Hair to Hedwig, a fantastic book.

[0:41] Robert W. Schneider: There is a link to it in our show description. Purchase a copy because it's amazing. Dr. Wollman is a professor of music. She has published articles on the relationship between gender stereotypes and rock radio programming, the impact of the economy on the development of the Broadway musical, the critical and commercial reception of rock musicals, and New York theater scenes in the 1960s and the 1970s.

[1:04] Robert W. Schneider: She is the author of Hard Times, the adult musical in 1970s New York City, and A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical. With Jessica Sternfeld, she was co-editor of the Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical and is currently co-editor of the journal Studies in Musical Theatre.

[1:21] Robert W. Schneider: Dr. Wollman, I'm so happy that you are joining us today.

[1:24] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Thank you. I'm really happy to be here.

[1:26] Robert W. Schneider: So I know that you know Hair very well. So the first question I'm going to ask you is what makes Hair a key musical in the musical theater genre?

[1:36] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Um, well I would say there are a number of reasons why it was important and why it sort of remains important. One, the biggest one I think was that it came along at a time. I mean, it came along really, if you're thinking about it, who's counting, 15 or 20 years after rock and roll had really sort of started, elsewhere in the culture, which is, and I think that it's a standard thing to say, like, oh, it took Broadway such a long time to catch up. But I also feel like it's really important to make clear just what a big gigantic moment rock and roll was. I mean, people do kind of overstate it in certain ways. It gets a little bit exaggerated, you know, like suddenly everything changed. Yeah. But it, which I I'm not gonna go that far because you know, we all still wear clothing and stuff, like not everything changed, but like I don't like comments like that, like that very ahistorical.

But um, the generation gap, the widening generation gap, and just the fact that suddenly there was this entire new market that opened and kind of included and took young people into consideration in the first place, was sort of an unprecedented thing that happened in the post-war era. And um, I think that a lot of standardized mass entertainment and popular entertainment forms weren't ready for that kind of major social, cultural, and economic shift that happened.

[3:13] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: So Broadway, especially given that musicals were written, you know, that a lot of it relied on sort of written music and notations and orchestrations and things that people could read in an orchestra pit. It wasn't really, people didn't take rock music very seriously initially. And so I think that first of all, um, it's sort of it, I think in that way it's a little bit comparable to Hamilton, which is a similar sort of, I mean, yes, there's been rap, yeah. I mean, if you look at the history, there's been some rap on Broadway before there's been off Broadway attempts at rap but I think that the general population was sort of like no these are just not things that are going to jive they're never going to jibe it'll never work and then all you really need is somebody to come along and know what they're doing and be able to mix those sounds and to blend them sound blend the sounds in really educated well informed organic ways that are not just kind of condescending to one side or the other and it took a long time for Broadway to do that.

So I think that Hair was fairly remarkable in ushering in proof that there was a market that there was a market for young people to see Broadway shows because that was kind of falling by the wayside as a result of the generation gap that was a big problem in the late 1960s.

[4:32] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: And I think that it sort of infused Broadway with a new energy that kind of felt like it came out of nowhere but really had been something that people had been attempting for quite a while since rock music sort of started I mean since rock and roll kind of quote unquote exploded into the general population. So that is one. The other thing that I think gets it gets less credit for because I think everybody immediately says oh yes it's it's the music and the score is remarkable and I think that the score really still holds up as a catchy interesting score and eclectic score um but there was a lot of activity that was going on off and off of Broadway that um was really interesting and creative and and risky in a way that Broadway, I'm not gonna say that Broadway was not.

I mean, it's not this is not like a big gigantic binary where everything off and off off Broadway was just amazing and interesting and creative, and everything on Broadway was kind of like boring and old, because that's not the case. But um there were a lot of things that were going on off Broadway that had started to reflect in Broadway's straight plays, you know, so a lot of experimental, certainly a lot of nudity, that's one, but a lot of reflection of what was going on in the culture. That was a lot faster to happen in Broadway theater, brought in in dramas, um, I suppose comedies too, but it took a little while longer for it to really influence the musical.

[6:14] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: And um there were some. I mean, I think that I think that Cabaret, I think anything that people refer to as a concept musical. Um, there was some experimentation going on. There was some attempt at sort of like changing the art form. And you see a lot of these, you know, Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof were much more serious and much more kind of um of the time in certain ways than other musicals to come before them. They were bigger and they were a little bit more immersive and they were they were all being driven by uh by you know, this artiste. And that actually was in some ways, I think, being informed by off Broadway, which was again experimenting with with edgier with more social commentary at the time.

Um, and it took a while for that to influence musicals that were successful. I mean, it's not that they weren't tried, it's just that the proper balance wasn't achieved. And I think that Hair managed to do all of this in ways that felt like it came out of nowhere. And it felt like it was seamless, but it really was. It took a great deal of effort and a great deal of time. And this was just the right kind of the right combination of timing, experimental energy off Broadway energy, popular music energy, young people energy that all kind of managed to culminate in 1968 when it got up to Broadway.

[7:35] Robert W. Schneider: And would you make a case that Hair is in that concept musical genre, or do you feel that it's not a part of that genre?

[7:43] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Um, you know, I'm not I'm actually not a huge, I don't uh is this a terrible thing to say? Like I don't care very much. Uh I I know that, and and I feel like that's gonna insult people that are really serious about like the notion of concept musicals, but I've never been entirely clear, frankly, on on what exactly a concept musical is and how it really distinguishes itself from any other kind. I mean agreed. Yeah, the director has a vision and the like and and and now this is gonna be the end of my career in saying this because like this is like, but but no, so so truly, like no offense to people that really think about this and and try and pick this apart. But yes, to this to some extent, I mean, it's a theme, and and and the director, Tom O'Horgan was again somebody that was coming from off Broadway, and he was really interested in infusing all sorts of avant-garde things that had not really made it into Broadway.

So sure, I mean, if that's if that's a term that you like and you want to stick with it, why not? But I don't um, yeah, I I don't I maybe, maybe not. It's not really my wheelhouse kind of and of course, no creator, I think, goes in saying, let's create a concept musical, it's let's tell a story. Which methods they use to tell that story or negotiate.

[9:03] Robert W. Schneider: Right.

[9:04] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Right. And then I mean the thing is, and sorry, but like it the 60s was a time when there was a lot of there, there was a lot of money, there was a lot of there was a lot of um emphasis on people like Bob Fosse and Hal Prince and these and these sort of um larger than life characters that were that were behind the scenes of of great musicals. But you know, so yeah, I mean I think that in some ways, yes, although Tom O'Horgan certainly didn't have quite the name for himself, certainly not on Broadway by that point. This made him a name on Broadway for a while, and he was asked back a bunch, but um he was more of an off-Broadway presence and an avant-garde presence.

[9:41] Robert W. Schneider: Um, I'd like to go back to something you said a little bit earlier, just for some historical clarification, which is you said that the post-war in the United States allowed for a new generation to have music that was specifically being tailored for them. What exactly was happening at that time to allow this to occur?

[10:00] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Um so first of all, this country was just in great shape after World War II. If you think about the fact that we were not, I mean, with the exception of Pearl Harbor, there was no, there was nothing, you know, there many countries in Europe were basically rebuilding um very significantly economically devastated. Um and in the United States, we sort of came out of the, you know, we entered into the post-war era in like a like we are the heroes, we are the champions. We were um, if not before, we were absolutely definitely established as a as a world superpower by the end of the war. Um so there was a lot of, and the 1950s was a period of enormous economic prosperity and a great deal of, you know, of a move out to the suburbs, a lot of, and I should say an economic prosperity for the middle for the for the white middle class.

I mean, it was not that, you know, it's always easy to say that a country is like, oh, it's great. Like not everybody was benefiting from that. But the people that did, you know, so when we talk about the move out to the suburbs, we talk about um the GI Bill, people going to back to college, there's a baby boom. There's so there's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of stuff in the country. And what that ended up doing, I think was ultimately allowing the products of the baby boom. And I think this is a hugely general thing to say, but it's but it's generally the direction that that Broadway theaters went in the time, is that there was a big separation in terms of taste cultures. So there were um a number of young people who suddenly for the first time in American history were being raised um to be kind of independent tastemakers from their parents.

My father, who was a uh born during World War II, remembers in his very young life with his parents who were much older and had, you know, so had him as older people, um, that he never, it never would have occurred to him to dictate any kind of like who got to listen to the radio at the end of the day, who got to put on the family television that they finally got, like who got the rights to, he said, like it was just not a question.

[12:20] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: It was his parents. Like his parents basically, and if you think about that, I think that that is not all that unique before the war, where, you know, the family is a family unit. The older, like the family elders, the father and the mother are the ones that get control over the entertainment in the house, really kind of exploded in terms of marketing directly to young people who suddenly, for the first time in American history, are treated as independent from their parents and who have spending money who that can thus sort of economically dictate what it is that they are putting their money on, right? So all of a sudden we have this enormous shift, and maybe not every single person in the country, right?

But a significant number of young people who are suddenly saying, No, I don't want to, I don't want to go to this with you. Like I want to listen to this station. I want to put on television is growing significantly in the 1950s, right? Radio has been around for several, like a generation at this point. Like, so there's a lot more in the way of access to stuff that I think previous generations didn't have. And once that happened, it resulted in such a division between older tastes and younger tastes that anything associated with older. So Broadway certainly, I mean, maybe not, there were a lot of people in the 50s and 60s who were young, you know, a lot of college students and young people that were going off to look at and to listen to things that were happening off and off off Broadway.

But Broadway, um, in the post-war era suddenly became not so suddenly, but but event, you know, rather rather quickly became this thing where it was like, no, no, this is what old people do. Like, I'm not interested in this. Like I've because I've got now my own new stuff. And the older generation, I think, first of all, couldn't have seen that coming. Like you don't, you don't know when there are these, I mean, you know, can you can you see a seismic shift happening when it's happening right around you? Um, and a lot of people, I think, do what people do with the seismic shifts that are happening right this minute, which is to get defensive, to mock it, to belittle it, to say, oh, that's not that's not what we do, that's not how we do it.

Like, okay, well, that's not how you do it. That's how this entirely new, incredibly strong population is doing it, right? So I think that ended up really affecting Broadway. And so again, the desire to bring a musical to Broadway that was like hair was really in effect a lot earlier. But I think a lot of composers were sort of of the side of like, yeah, but this is noise, this is garbage. Like we don't, we don't know what this is. You know, there's something really tender and awfully sad about um Irving Berlin, his last show had like a, it was about the president. I'm now blanking, I can look it up. Mr. President. Mr. President, yes. And it had like a it had like a everybody broke into a twist, like a big rock and roll dance in the middle of it.

And it was just kind of like here's Irving Berlin, who like, you know, has been a lot has been working since what, like 1907? And here he is at the very end of his career, like trying to come up with this like here's a new dance the kids are doing. And it's just it becomes both condescending and a little bit sad, you know. Um, so there needed to be sort of new blood, there needed to be new understanding of uh new nuance, um, a real so what I don't think it's remotely surprising that hair came from where it did or had the history of that it did. Um, but it did really work towards shifting, I think shifting the market. It took a while, but but it did. Can you tell us a little bit about the development of hair? Whose idea was it? How did it come to the stage, even to begin with?

[16:23] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Yeah. Um, so Gerome Ragni and James Rado were two actors who, and again, you know, I think lore would have it that they were, that they were like, they were avant-garde actors, they were hippies and they were off the grid. But really, these were these were um both trained professional actors, both had some Broadway chops, both of them had done some theater at, I mean, you know, theater was a porous, like you did Broadway, you did off-Broadway, you did some workshop, you did some avant-garde little thing, and you know, wherever. And so that's what they had been doing. And the two of them met, they um were doing a they they met, I think, in an off in a Broadway flop, and then kind of, you know, a show that like lasted in a like a drama that lasted a day or two or whatever, and then they lost touch and then they reconnected.

They were in a show in 1966 that was again an off-Broadway, um, it was with the open theater. So it was Megan Terry was the director, and it was called Viet Rock, and it was a again a collaborative uh group written. So Megan Terry served as the director, but essentially she had the cast come in with newspaper clippings and impressions and photographs and personal experiences that had to do in some way or another with the Vietnam War, which was which was happening at the time. And they together sort of crafted an experimental musical. I think that off Broadway at the time would have shuddered at being called having anything be called a musical. And in fact, many of the people that I interviewed at the time, like, so they're like, no, no, this was a this was a play, this was a piece with music.

Like it was not, it was like, okay, so yeah, it was actually a musical, but we don't call it that because that was something that happened on Broadway, right? You didn't do that. So, but anyway, so they had like, you know, somebody playing guitar and they wrote some songs and then they and they enacted this um this this piece about going to Vietnam and dying and then being reborn. And so that was that was which actually really kind of models along the idea of hair, if you think about Claude's journey, right? But the two of them at this time, 1966, had in fact been um very strongly influenced by the counterculture. They were both spending time in Greenwich Village, they were living together in Jersey City, and they were uh, you know, kind of coming up with this idea that they were going to do uh a musical.

Um, and they wrote the musical and then they approached Joe Papp, who had just signed a lease on the former um, it was a Hebrew home for the ages, which is now the public theater. So it was a big, sort of empty, dilapidated, abandoned, enormous monstrosity in what was at the time not the greatest neighborhood in the world. And they um took a chance. And so Joe Papp had just signed this, and that building was under construction, but he was going to, you know, have his first musical. And so the legend was that James Rado timed it so that he could get on the train going to New Haven or from New Haven at the same time, knowing that Joe Papp would be there so that he could corner Joe Papp and like talk his ear off about his show.

And so I wasn't there, I don't know, but you know, whether or not Joe Papp was just saying, like, okay, fine, fine, I'll do your show, go away, or or look through what they had and agreed that it would be good. He essentially said, okay, this is good, but you're you've got a bunch of lyrics. Apparently, they had like tons and tons and tons of scribbled lyrics, but no real music, and they hadn't gotten a composer. And so he said, provided you get a good composer and you get somebody to write some some acceptable music to all these lyrics, we'll we'll do this. So then it showed up as the inaugural production at the public theater in 1967, the Ansbacher, I think, was the first theater of the many in that complex that was complete.

And it did well, but the the other kind of crazy story is that it's not that crazy, it just has to do, I think, a lot with connection, with wealth and connection. But um the so the show was there and it was scheduled for six weeks, and it was only supposed to be six weeks. And Joe Papp was very, very anti-Broadway, like a lot of people at the time. Joe Papp really was somebody that was committed to making theater that was very much beyond the confines of Broadway and that was different in terms of substance than what he was seeing on Broadway. And his, I mean, he really was very sort of like, no, we won't engage with Broadway. Screw Broadway, it's crap, it's commercial, we're not that. So the show, I think did very well, but he wasn't considering taking it further.

He was very, very new. He had just got this gigantic complex. I mean, he'd been producing for a while, but he was behind this huge building and he was overseeing all this stuff. And so he essentially let the contract lapse. Like he sort of not the he let the ownership, the rights to the production lapse. And um it happened that there was somebody who was, again, this is the money in the access part. He was the son of a paper of a of a paper magnet, um, Michael Butler was this young man who was in New York City, uh thinking that he was going to run for public office. And so he was in New York from Chicago visiting to shake hands and raise money and talk to other wealthy connected people. And he, one of his charities was Native American Native Americans, the plight of Native Americans.

And so the original poster for the public theater for hair had Ragni and Rado and uh and then a picture I think of in Native American, but they were also domed out and like they were wearing a headdress and all these kind of we would say today deeply culturally offensive, like sort of cultural appropriation in a in a big way. But he saw the poster and immediately just assumed it was about Native Americans. So while he was in town, he bought a ticket. Michael Butler did, and he went to the public and he very quickly learned that it had nothing to do really with Native Americans, but that but it really blew his mind. And again, because this is somebody with a great deal of access and money, he decided that he wanted to do an about face from running for office, and instead got really interested in producing this musical.

So he went to Joe Papp and he said, Can I have it? And Joe Papp said yes, because I have no interest in putting it on Broadway. I don't want to do that. And so Michael Butler did it. Um, and then his father knew the owner of the Biltmore Theater. So he was able to get access to a Broadway theater. And after, so he ran it, I think, at a discotheque. People always talk about how he tried it at this discotheque. It wasn't very successful, but he ran it there for a little while. And then he eventually was able to bring it up to the to the Broadway area without um having to go through a number of different official channels that one normally would because he had this connection and because his father knew a theater owner.

And then of course they say the rest is history, but it really was it was kind of a series of sort of you like to say happy accidents, but those accidents were sort of pretty nicely manufactured in the favor of the production. And what was the original critical reception to this show at the public off Broadway?

[24:09] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: It was, it was, I mean, people liked the show. I think that it was nicely received, it was certainly kind of seen as exciting and interesting, but it was also like, and then also here's this new great big structure that we're in that's going to be the new public and isn't that interesting? And so, you know, it did well. It was not, I don't think that anybody said, I mean, it's unlike Hamilton, which now, I mean, you'll notice Hamilton did that exact same model because Joe Papp was very upset. I mean, Joe, you know, they, the public theater entered major financial dire straits right at the time because it's this brand new enormous theater that they're trying to fill right at the time that Hair opens on Broadway and becomes this like, oh my God, it's the most, it's a revolution.

It's changed history. Everything has changed, right? We get that thing together. It's new, it's, but people went so crazy for it once it went up to Broadway, it made so much money that that Butler then, um, not Butler, um, uh, Papp, but sort of went back and said, okay, well, we got to rework this model, which is why I think A Chorus Line gets so much credit for being such a huge innovator in a way that, I mean, Hair did exactly what they did with A Chorus Line and what they did with Hamilton, which was, and what they did with a lot of other shows that were not quite as lightning in a bottle successful, right? But that model has allowed the public theater and a great many other off and off-off Broadway theaters and regional theaters to make money with riskier projects that it is now able to support because they're making all this Broadway money, right?

So it was not this binary that Papp was saying to himself was like absolutely no Broadway, we refuse Broadway, we refuse commercialism. Like there has to be a little bit of understanding of working the system. Um, I think I've deviated away from your original question, which is about, but yeah, so it was, I mean, it was well received. I think it was less well received at the Cheetah. There were major sound design problems, nobody could hear anything. It was a big sort of empty nightclub that was, I think, on the verge of closing. And so they took it over for the production. So that was not the, of the three productions, I think that was the least well received. Um, but by the time it got to Hair, also, the other thing to keep in mind is that by the time it got to the Biltmore, it had word of mouth already built in, because that also happens.

You know, there's an international population that is forever flocking to Broadway, or at least is in typical times, right? Um, it was not quite as international at the time, but there was a huge group of people in the tri-state area who had already heard of this production, and especially young people that were interested in then going to see it. But the Broadway production really did open that up. I think there were young people that were going to see the production at the public. And then when you got to Broadway, you had ever younger, you had not only people of the generation who wanted to see Hair, probably the dyed-in-the-wool hippies at the time, sort of thought that it was, you know, a little, it was, it was kind of hippie light, you know, it was that it was kind of like, oh yeah, no, this is ridiculous.

This is such a cartoonish version. But there were younger people, you know, younger people who were still at home with their families who were very keenly aware of what their teenage brothers and, you know, their older or their college teenage brothers and sisters were doing that were very interested in this production. And so then again, it ended up with a lot of, I think, generational clout, where you speak to people who are, you know, older than we are and from that generation who just loved it and thought it was just amazing and it changed their lives, right? So it really did. I mean, it had a huge impact, but I think the impact snowballed in ways that are not fully understood and, um, yeah, a little bit manufactured. Can you tell us a little bit about Tom O'Horgan's involvement and how um his artistry changed the shape of the show?

[28:31] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Yeah. So the public theater production was directed not by Tom O'Horgan. It was directed by Gerald Freeman, who was somebody that had worked with Joe Papp very often and who was in sort of Papp's circle of theater makers and creative staff. Um, and I taught O'Horgan was a lovely, lovely man. And I actually, he's one of the only people I've ever invented a reason to go back and talk to him again because I just found him so engaging and interesting. And also his, he had this loft space in Union Square when he was still living here. He's long dead, but he left the city well before he died. But he had this beautiful apartment space that was like a jungle, like he had live plants in the middle of the building and like glass enclosed, so they were all growing out of the floor.

It was jaw-dropping. Um, but he was also really lovely. But I remember him saying that Tom O'Horgan really was somebody that people didn't love him. I mean, people had a lot of difficulty with him. Uh, I think because he got hugely famous. So, you know, you'll hear people say, like, oh, yes, well, he was, he was not really, he was not, he was not quite the director. Like people will say things because they're jealous of his tremendous success, I think. But, um, he really was dedicated to collective experimental theater making. He really was, and he really believed in it. He believed in it strongly, and he was also somebody that was, despite his presence on Broadway, really interested in breaking through some of Broadway's conventions.

So he was not averse to actually being on Broadway, but on his terms, I think that he was somebody that sort of wanted to. I remember him telling me there was a show that he saw sometime in the 1960s on Broadway, because he was a director, he was a theater maker, he went to shows, but he went and he said there was a show, and they were trying to like set the mood, and it was something about a, you know, something in a boudoir or something. And so they were pumping perfume into the audience. So you went in and the whole room smelled like perfume. And he said that it was just so like he just all he wanted to do was somehow like shatter that, like break through that sort of facade of like perfume.

I don't know, it stuck with him. But it comes to mind because it really was something that I think he was very interested in doing, which was taking a production. So he went to see the Friedman production at the public and said that it struck him as too actorly, like it was really um, it was young people who were trained, seasoned, polished actors pretending to be hippies. And it was not to say that that didn't happen on Broadway, but that it felt a little bit more like a facade that he wanted to break through. So he recast the production and had Ragney and Rado rewrite and, um, uh, uh, um, my God, I'm who was the composer, um, the loveliest, but Galt MacDermot. Uh, so Ragney, Rado, and Galt MacDermot.

He had the three of them kind of revisit, rearrange some songs, they dropped some, they brought in some new ideas. But he spent a great deal of time. So he not only recast the production, not necessarily there were plenty of seasoned professionals who, young as they were, I mean, looked apart, but he was much more interested in sort of natural performances and not just people pretending with a wig on to be a hippie and acting like they were stoned, but you know, like sort of people that had some convincing a sense of kind of maybe authenticity, right? So he hired a couple of people with a lot less experience. He kind of went about trying to find, and then he spent a great deal of time doing collective work, like he had a lot of, you know, people now, it's almost a cliché, like the trust falls and the, you know, that sort of stuff.

But he really, really did devote a great deal of time to um having the entire cast and creative team bond and discuss things collectively. So again, much like Viet Rock, much like what was going on off Broadway, having people um be a little bit more active and involved than just okay, you stand over there, and then here's this dance. You know, the dances were worked out collectively. Hey, you do a really good, can you just throw this in right here? Let's keep that, let's do that. Okay, that doesn't work. So it was much more of a um living, breathing entity that did undergo a number of changes from off-off, I mean, sorry, from the public up to the Biltmore. It had to become more polished, I think, but it also um was able, I think at the time, I mean, again, this is not a Schubert or a Niederlander theater.

Jewish dances didn't exist yet, but like this was an independent theater at a time when New York City was very slowly um inching toward its financial crisis and thus starting to be, you know. So there were, I think that there were ways that they could, he actually, I mean, things that would never happen in a million years now, but like for example, the night before the show began. So I guess that would have been before the preview or maybe opening night, I can't quite remember. He encouraged the cast to just spend the night together in the theater, like just to camp out all night and sleep and stay up all night and like party and hang out in the theater together, right? Which you would never be able to do anymore.

But like in terms of bonding exercises, you know, like he really had a really strong cohesive cast. It was something that, you know. So that I think that that was one of the bigger things that he brought into the spirit of the production.

[34:35] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: And can you explain why this Broadway musical, which is something that a younger generation at this time, like you said, had left to their parents to go see, had somehow crossed over into their world? How did Hair become, you know, the album of that generation? Um, well, first of all, I would, I would back, I would, I would not say necessarily that it was the, I mean, certainly it was the Broadway original cast recording of that generation, right? It was, but what so you know, there were there were plenty of people that were looking at it as like sort of mainstream, you know, like oh this is just like again like like you know like I remember when I am of the generation of Rent and I knew people who were totally like you know I totally knew people that were in Rent and I went to see Rent and I was like yeah that's adorable but that's totally not the way that like you know your average the people living down in Alphabet City and squatting like great that's that's a lovely little romanticized version of what we're seeing here but that's not you know so of course there was that.

Um, I think that there are a number of things first of all, um, cross marketing we really um came into a great deal of play during the time in that um the the show had a really catchy score that they did not treat as if it were like some untouchable, you know, for all of the anti-commercialism it's kind of funny for all the anti like you know Michael Butler's going to change the world with his with by producing his Broadway show and um everybody that was involved they're hippies and they're not gonna and yet they're doing this huge commercial production but to their I don't know maybe not to their credit but to their to their benefit certainly they allowed a number of different groups to cover um a lot of the music from Hair and so you know um Fifth Dimension did that medley and there are a number of other I can't you know I can think of a number of different um I mean, pop hits, I wouldn't say like really heavy rock hits, like nobody picked up, but a lot of these um, a lot of the songs crossed over into the pop the into popular culture without people having seen the production, right?

[37:02] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Which is kind of the way that it continues to work. I mean, that really is also, uh, if you think about it, like if people are talking about how before Hair, what was it like My Fair Lady in the mid-1950s or something that was the last, um, album to chart, right? And then all of a sudden Hair starts charting. The reason that, um, a Broadway show crosses over is because it's so popular and it's so catchy that people want a little slice of it, even if they can't physically get themselves, you know. I haven't heard anything like, again, I keep making comparisons to Hamilton, but I think it's important that it seemed really surprising to so many people, like, oh my God, Hamilton is everybody singing Hamilton.

Like my grandmother is singing Hamilton, and these little kids on the block are singing Hamilton, and you know, these kids at the bus stop, and like everybody's singing songs from Hamilton. But the reason that it crossed over so incredibly well is not only that the production led it, the production encouraged that. They were released the album, they dropped all of that. I mean, Lynn Manuel Miranda's brilliant when it comes to social media, and he was really on top of that. But Hair kind of did the same thing. The recording, you know, Galt MacDermot was fine with like, yeah, sure, you want to cover, you want to sample me, give me some credit. But like he was he was fine with that. And I think that allowing things to cross over resulted in a bigger market for the production and allowed, I would say, allowed the theater industry to recognize, like, wait a minute, this is, you know, so this is the way to capture young people.

This is the way to encourage young people to come, is not to have Irving Berlin write a rock song, a rock and roll song for them. Like that's not going to do anybody any good. But you know, cross-marketing's gonna be, that's great. So yeah. And can you talk a little bit about Clive Barnes's, uh, prediction in his, I think original review of Hair, of, uh, that rock was now gonna be the future of musical theater composition?

[39:04] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: Yeah, um, he was wrong, at least initially, right? But I would say in some ways it just took a long, it took a long time. So essentially, you know, uh, a show like Hair, and this always happens, like this is always, I think that we're seeing an awful lot of imitations of Hamilton. Um now, uh, there is always going to be a big show that's an enormous hit, um, is gonna work on Broadway the way any movie, the way any television show is gonna also be an enormous hit and then imitate others. I mean, if you've ever turned on your television, you'd be like, it's got, you know, it's like Friends, but for a younger generation and people of color, yay! Like, so like that's so there's always, or like, you know, you see, like Six, it's a historical musical.

Okay, so maybe it's not directly, but it's building on something that was a hit before. It's caught lightning in a bottle, you want to try and catch it twice. Um, so I think with, um, the idea of rock music being brought up to Broadway or any popular music, on the one hand, what happened was, at least in the immediate, um, in the immediate following the immediate success of Hair, there was this mad scramble to imitate that, right? And so there were both on and off Broadway, a number of different musicals that were emulating contemporary sounds, and not all of them did well. I think that, and I will confess to my own, you know, my own research, um, blind blindness, which is that I would have been the first person to tell you in the book that, um, in The Theater Will Rock, that like, the rock musical was like nobody wanted to touch it, right?

Nobody won, and that's in a way sure, but in another way, um, that show, I mean, one of the things that was so successful about Hair, I think is that nobody really could have pinpointed it as like this is absolutely exactly the way all rock sounds like outside of the theater. Like it was definitely theaterized, it was a blend of theater and contemporary sounds, right? And that I don't think really stopped. I mean, if you listen to even, you know, Stephen Sondheim's 70s musicals, there are sounds, there are instruments that will now sound, I think to our ears, certainly in the original orchestrations, as a little bit dated or a little bit like, oh my god, that's so 70s. That's such a like, but if you're hearing something like that, what that's meaning is that the composers are reacting to what's going on around them.

They are absorbing the material that they're hearing. Now, uh, Sondheim is famous for kind of like he was initially famous for kind of scoffing at rock musicals and the idea of rock music on Broadway. So there are people that even though they're attuned to it, will maybe resist it. And so there will be sounds that sneak into their music that are not at all rock. I mean, you wouldn't call anything that Sondheim wrote as a rock musical, that's just not in his wheelhouse at all. But I do think that Hair made it possible for an entirely new generation of people to come along and say, okay, well, if I did want to throw in this little rhythm or this little, um, orchestration that is rare, you know, I mean, having a band up on stage, that is kind of like you go to see, there's a band on stage for like pretty much every musical, like jukebox musicals part of the joy is being able to see the musicians.

Now still, you know, many are in the pit, but sometimes you'll see like the band will be right there, they'll wave out at you. Like there are certain elements that I think Hair did cause to really happen a lot more often on Broadway, if maybe not super overtly, you know, if maybe not like, okay, this is a, you know, quote unquote, this is a rock musical, like maybe not, right? The term rock musical fell out of fashion. And I've always thought it was interesting that it was pointed out to me that when Rent came along, which is very obviously modeled on Hair in certain ways, with the one syllable title and the, you know, there are certain, but they very, very self-consciously went out of their way not to call it a rock musical.

There's nothing in the literature that calls it a rock musical. Subsequently, fans called it a rock musical, but Hair too. I mean, Hair was just really, so it did. I think that this, I think productions like Hair came along, and then it was all too easy to say, like, okay, these productions that are really trying to be like Hair with this rock band, and it's about young hippies and they're dancing up on stage, and oh, oh, oh, isn't that like that was considered to be the real imitation? But I do think that it's very hard to hear. I mean, maybe there are, you know, I don't know, Jason Robert Brown does not really work with, like, there are certain people that are still not really working in rock music, but they still have grown up with that sensibility and absorbing that kind of music. And it is no longer something that like you would sniff at or question on a Broadway or off-Broadway stage anymore.

[44:40] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: You know? Yeah. And my last question for you is from your perspective, what makes you as an author and a historian gravitate towards, uh, the codification of where rock and theater intersect?

[44:57] Elizabeth Lara Wollman: I, um, I think that I have a couple of responses to that. One is that since I can remember, um, and for whatever reason, I've always been more fascinated in other people's responses and reactions and, um, like the cultural responses to things. That that's not a right thing to say. I am equally as fascinated with something that is a cultural milestone, or really like I just am remembering the, uh, the I didn't know who John Lennon was when he was killed. I was 11, I think, or 10, I can't remember, but I was a kid. And what absolutely drew me in and fascinated me was the unbelievable cultural response to his death, which then led to, so I think that on some ways I just am really interested in cultural shifts.

And I've always been sort of like, I mean, the reactions to things have always really fascinated me. And watching the culture and trying to figure out where things, so that's very interesting to me. But also I grew up really, really loving all manner of popular music, like really loving, I mean, it I grew up in suburban Pittsburgh, which is a very like sort of like white suburban Pittsburgh was very like classic rock, heavy metal, right? But then when you were closer to downtown Pittsburgh, where I went to school, it was there was much more hip-hop and dance music and experimental, what used to be called college radio, and I used to love absorbing. So I was really fascinated again with audiences and all these different kinds of types of music, and then who was listening to those types of music.

So that was interesting. And then I was also a theater geek, like I was a theater kid, and I was in all the musicals and I loved them. And so I think that when I got really interested in writing a dissertation, um, in ethnomusicology, which is again this cultural study of music and cultural approaches to music and music making. So who is that audience? Like, who are these people who like this music? Why did what is their cultural purpose, right? So that's a long-winded answer.

[47:20] Robert W. Schneider: No, I love it. And like I said at, you know, the top of our, uh, time together today, uh, your books on these subjects are just so fascinating and anyone who reads them walks away with so much knowledge. So thank you for gathering it and codifying it in such an interesting manner. And thank you so much for joining us today. I cannot tell you how much we appreciate it. Uh, listeners, please make sure to purchase a copy of Fifty Key Stage Musicals by visiting routledge.com or by clicking in today's show description. If you want to learn more about Hair, please also review the links in the below description. I'm Robert W. Schneider, and thank you for listening to Fifty Key Stage Musicals: The Podcast.