Second-Guessing the Creative Mind

Over the years, as many fans of Hair can attest, James Rado, the surviving co-author, and Galt MacDermot, the composer, have made many changes to the show. So many changes have been made in fact that the script released by Tams-Witmark Music Library for amateur licensing, with a copyright date of 1995, has been excoriated by Mr. Rado for its "confusing textual material." He considers it a "big mistake" that the "superior revised version" is not being licensed. The question is, how much revision is too much?


Anyone who looks at the 1995 script will see that it's basically the Broadway script in all its glory, a collection of lyrics, notes, some dialogue, and scanty stage directions, all of which (when pieced together) tell the story of Hair. For most directors who take on the show and grow to love it, it's merely a scenario on which to base their own unique vision. Though some occasionally take it too far (Mr. Rado complained to this writer seven years ago about one director's "unabashed chutzpah" in taking liberties with the material), as long as you are honest in your mission, and have a fierce love of the material, you will be guided to your own version of Hair which will stand by itself as a one-of-a-kind staging of what is already a one-of-a-kind musical.

The only difference is the new material, which is as follows:

(NOTE: Anything marked with an asterisk is actually in the script. The rest are changes that were made in recent revivals, or in the London 1993 recording, which seemed to be an early gestation for some of the bigger changes.)


ACT ONE

• Two new verses to "Aquarius" (started with London 1993 recording, refined over time; latest version can be heard as "Aquarius 2008" on James Rado's website at www.hairthemusical.com)
• New lyrics in "Donna" (can be heard on the 2004 Actor's Fund benefit recording, and apparently featured in a 2000 production on the West Coast directed by Randy Bowser which incorporated more of Rado's changes)
• An almost totally new set of lyrics to "Hashish" (London 1993 recording; one minor change appears in the 1995 script)
• The script describes an ad lib moment towards the end for the soloist singing "Dead End" that has some very definite lyrics on the London 1993 recording that were used in at least one other production to my knowledge.
• The abbreviated version of "Sheila Franklin" in the licensed script has been shifted in two recent major productions (Actor's Fund benefit, 2004, and Broadway revival, 2008/09) to just before "I Believe in Love" as a way of introducing Sheila's character.
• One production moved "Initials" to just after "I Got Life" as a way to mark the passage of time between Claude receiving his letter from the draft board and Berger getting kicked out of school and becoming Vietnam bait (sorry if I'm spoiling the play for casual Hair fans who are only used to the film).
• Minor lyric change in "Hair." *
• New second verse in "Easy to Be Hard." *
• A new stanza in "Where Do I Go?" that replaces the first iteration of "Follow the children..." (James Rado posted the stanza on his website and apparently included it when he sang "Where Do I Go?" at the 2005 La Mama reunion.)

ACT TWO

• Minor lyric changes in "Oh Great God of Power." *
• New verse and new lines in "Black Boys." *
• Claude's trip has been almost completely musicalized in the 1995 script, a change that was underway in the early Nineties before Gerry Ragni's untimely death. The "Buddhist monk / Catholic nun" scene that kicks off the killing spree has been turned into a song known variously as "All You Have to Do" and "Give Up All Desires." There is now underscoring throughout the scene. It's almost like a mini-rock opera; Claude has a bad head trip via shades of The Wall (say, there's an idea! -- post coming up soon).
• "The Bed" is frequently cut (see the 2008/09 Broadway revival for a quick professional reference).
• Two words: "Hippie Life." It was originally conceived as an attempt at Best New Song Oscar for the film of Hair, but it was never used after the authors found themselves ousted from their own project. It was used in a 1980 production Off-Broadway directed by my friend and colleague Richard Haase, but aside from that, it seemed to die a death as an addition to the show proper until the early Nineties, when Galt MacDermot wrote a new melody for it ("much to the song's advantage," as Mr. Rado puts it; I happen to agree). During the Nineties, Mr. Rado directed several touring productions of Hair overseas in Europe that incorporated the song into the body of the show, and it apparently was "dynamic and a real crowd pleaser," and really, really caught on, because when the production didn't include the song in the show proper, audiences chanted the title over and over after the show ended with "Let the Sun Shine In" until the cast did it as an encore. It was perhaps with this in mind that Mr. Rado appended the song to the 1995 script as an ending. As any director will tell you, dramaturgically speaking, it's not an ending to the show; indeed, it ruins the mood established by the original ending rather than "sustaining the joyous mood that has been created," as Tams-Witmark alleges in its errata sheet that it sends along with perusal copies of the script. Most directors (following Mr. Rado's initial example in the European tour, and [unintentionally] Mr. Haase's original placement of the song in its live premiere in 1980) have moved it to somewhere in Act One, or simply cut the song completely. The show works well with and without it.

In addition, many productions still incorporate ideas from the "Pocket Books edition," a script to Hair that is an odd pre-production blend of unseen material, Broadway material, and Off-Broadway material that was printed in the wake of Hair's success, as well, mainly in the venue of stage directions, because in terms of those, there is much more to be found there than in the insubstantial-by-comparison licensed script.

The question is, do we use this new input from James Rado in the definitive film of Hair? From what I understand, he's written his own screenplay of his ideal revised text called HAIR Uncensored (or at least he claims to; he also claimed that he'd finally finished revising the script in 2003, only for people to see other variants in professional productions since then, such as the CanStage revival in 2006 that he offered input on). From what I understand, there are also still two other film scripts that could offer new ideas to the table; the Hair Archives (a portion of their collection can be found online) have an early screenplay penned by the show's authors, and another written by Colin Higgins for a proposed film version to have been directed by Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude) for Paramount in the Seventies that never got off the ground.

New lyrics, new scenes, old stories...I guess what I'm saying is there's no way of really paring down every single scrap of material into one script. Will I use as many influences as I can in assembling the film? Totally. But to paraphrase good old Honest Abe, "You can't please all of the people all of the time." A thoughtful friend gave me some great advice when it comes to adapting Hair for the screen: "Trim the fat that's grown around the original piece, and then tighten it even more."

Throwing everything into a blender means parts of it will fly out while I'm mixing the drink. As long as all the important stuff is there, that's what matters.