Galt
My journey with my late friend, the legendary Staten Islander from Montreal, wrote "HAIR"
On the overcast morning of Monday, April 29th 1968, Galt MacDermot, 39, drove his car up Forest Avenue past Silver Lake Reservoir, then down the steep grade of Victory Boulevard onto Bay Street in Tompkinsville, and over to Saint George, where he paid 75 cents and drove onto the Staten Island Ferry, “Mary Murray.” Galt, a ruggedly handsome man with warm, hazel-brown eyes, a short haircut, white shirt and tie, got out of his car and walked to the scissor-gate railing as the ferry pulled out of the slip, the cityscape of Manhattan emerging slowly in the misty horizon of New York Harbor. Turning up the collar on his trench coat, feeling the saltwater spray on his cheeks, Galt’s mind raced across the musical landscape of his life…
Barely four years earlier, he and his young family, drove from Montreal to Staten Island where he settled in and found a job playing church organ while continuing his passion for playing piano and composing music. The rhythmic hum of the ferry’s motor brought him back to the African rhythms that pulsated through his core being as much as Duke Ellington’s compositions, or the thunderous cadence of Rock n’ Roll. As the ferry turned in the harbor, its horn blasting a low “C,” Galt heard strains of his early composition, the African Waltz, famously recorded in 1961 by the legendary Cannonball Adderly. Hearing the vibrantly-tormented yet both electric and mournful themes in this singular piece, a sadness overcame the Canadian who shuddered at the tragic assassination, only weeks before, of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Galt shook his head, taking a deep breath of the sea air, staring at the gulls dipping and climbing in the wake as the ferry reached the pilings at Whitehall Street.
“The government should have protected someone like him.” Galt lowered his eyes, feeling the ferry cut its engine, slowing down. He returned to his car and when the gate lifted, steered onto the ramp and turned onto Whitehall Street. At a red light, he clicked open his attache case, penciling in a correction on some sheet music paper-clipped to a folder. He continued driving up through the Lower East Side, finally, reaching Lafayette Street, where he pulled up in front of the Public Theatre. A moment later he was greeted with unbridled enthusiasm by Joe Papp, the Artistic Director and Founder of the Public Theater and the creator of Shakespeare in the Park.
“Good morning, Galt! Feeling good? Let’s grab coffee at Odessa. The boys are meeting us there-”
The boys Papp was referring to were Galt’s collaborators, Gerome Ragni and James Rado, and their collaboration, nurtured by Joe Papp, was a little musical called “HAIR, the American Tribal-Love Rock Musical,” which that evening would open on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre where it would run for 1750 performances. “HAIR” would be, for the multitudes, the embodiment of what was going on at that exact moment in our country; its music synthesized feelings, emotions, and ideas that had roots into the very heart of America, the War in Vietnam, soldiers in pine boxes returning to a grieving Nation, the explosive Civil Rights Movement, the abuse of authority, and the constant threats to our Democracy. It was a musical that would never grow old, like a modern day Rosetta Stone, it would be discovered and rediscovered forever.
***
When word got out that Galt MacDermot, the composer of this revolutionary show, lived on Staten Island, my father, Jerry, and I would follow leads to see if we could find Galt’s house. My dad thought Galt and I should meet, but he had no idea how to find him (though I can’t imagine the MacDermots weren’t listed in the Staten Island White Pages.) My father drove his ‘66 Pontiac Tempest past a big house on Henderson Avenue that he pointed to and thought it might very well be where Galt lived, even though Galt lived nowhere near there.
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