GM

Galt MacDermot has died.  Actually, I didn't know he was still alive, but I certainly knew his music.

MacDermot took the world by storm with his tunes for Hair.  And when I say tunes I mean tunes.  The original Broadway production had 30 songs, and there were a number from the off-Broadway production that had been cut.

Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical--a countercultural show with book and lyrics by actors James Rado and Gerome Ragni--was the surprise hit of the 1968 Broadway season.  Truth is, it's a pretty ramshackle affair. The secret ingredient that holds it all together are the wonderful tunes by MacDermot, who, unlike Rado and Ragni, was a square who hardly knew anything about hippies. But they gave him the words and in about three weeks he gave them the music.

The original cast album became a bestseller, and a number of its titles became hits for other artists in the late 60s: "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" went to #1 for the Fifth Dimension, "Hair" went to #2 for The Cowsills, "Good Morning Starshine" went to #3 for Oliver and "Easy To Be Hard" went to #4 for Three Dog Night.

MacDermot would go on to write the music for the Tony winning Two Gentleman Of Verona, not to mention some major flops, like Dude and Via Galactica.  But it didn't matter. It's the songs from Hair that will live on.