![]() Although it lost the Tony Award for best musical to "1776," the cast album won a Grammy for best musical theater album, and several of its songs – "Hair," "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," "Good Morning, Starshine" and "Easy to Be Hard" – were Top 10 hits. The following year "Hair" transferred (with new songs and cast members, including Rado as a draftee) to Broadway, where it became the first show on the Great White Way to feature full nudity and a same-sex kiss. We thought we'd stumbled on a great idea, and something that potentially could be a hit on Broadway, never thinking of the distant future."Ī chance meeting on a train between Ragni and producer Joseph Papp led to the show, called "Hair," premiering at the Public Theater in New York City in 1967. … We did have the desire to make something wonderful and spectacular for the moment. "The quest was on to express theater in a new style. "It was the time of experimental theater," Rado told the Hoboken Reporter in 2009. Joined by composer Galt MacDermot, the show featured rock music instead of traditional Rodgers & Hammerstein or Cole Porter-style songs. Sharing an apartment in Hoboken, N.J., the two wrote the book and lyrics for a "tribal love-rock musical" that explored war, protest movements, drugs and youth culture. Rado would appear on stage in "Luther," "Marathon '33," "Hang Down Your Head and Die" and "The Lion in Winter," before he and Gerome Ragni decided, in the mid-1960s, to collaborate on a more untraditional show that would focus on the hippie scene. He worked on two musicals while in college, and after a stint in the Navy he moved to New York and studied acting with Lee Strasberg. ![]() "Since my early teens, my daydream was to create a Broadway musical," playwright James Rado (January 23, 1932-June 21, 2022) wrote earlier this year. The Associated Press contributed to this gallery. James Rado, co-creator of the musical "Hair." | Rainer Binder/ullstein bild via Getty ImagesĪ look back at the esteemed personalities who left us this year, who'd touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity.īy senior producer David Morgan.
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