Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there, hair, shoulder length or longer
Here baby, there, momma, everywhere, daddy, daddy

Hair, flow it, show it
Long as God can grow, my hair

I want to wish a very happy birthday to one of the most special humans I have been lucky to call my friend for sixty years. Hope your birthday is spectacular and that you Let the Sunshine In!

Sixty. Shit. Being sixty is completely unfathomable when you are fifteen. And twenty five. And forty. And even fifty. Turning fifty was no big deal for me, but turning sixty was something else. A reckoning with the fact that time is short and you better see who you want to see, do what you want to do and go where you want to go because life is finally catching up.

When I turned sixty recently I received an unexpected surprise in the mail a few days after my birthday from my teenage best friend, the one person I have been friends with probably longer than anyone else. The friend who was there for all the teenage angsty things that happen to girls. She sent me the absolute perfect gift to celebrate sixty years of life on planet Earth. She knows me so well. I opened the box to discover a copy of the original broadway recording of the musical Hair. I started to cry immediately. It brought on a wave of memories and emotions. Damn.

The film version of Hair was such a pivotal, central, core component of our teen years growing up here on the edge of Lake Erie. Watching this film confirmed my belief that everything from the 60s was magnificent.

We were sixties babies, my friend and I. Born into the second year of Gen X. LBJ. Big ass cars. Women still in their “places” but starting to gain traction outside of the house. They still wore hats and gloves to church on Sunday. My mother was forced to quit, not take a leave of absence, but quit her teaching job when she was expecting me. She was threatened with loss of her teaching certification by an asshole superintendent because she taught beyond the third trimester. W. T. F.

Despite the lack of women’s equality in that era, I have always been intrigued with the nineteen sixties. I wanted to be a mod. I wanted to be a hippie. I wanted to protest the war in Vietnam. I wanted to be Marlo Thomas in That Girl with her glorious dark long hair and fabulous outfits. I wanted to go to Woodstock and see The Beatles at Shea Stadium. I wanted Mary Quant mini-skirts. I adored Edie Sedgwick and everyone who frequented Andy Warhol’s Factory. And I especially loved the music. I suspect my fascination began when I saw Hair and it hasn’t faded one bit since that day in 1979.

My friend and I first saw the film version of Hair at the old scary movie theater, with bats in the balcony and old wads of gum stuck under the ancient seats and on the floor. Cinema 1, a former vaudeville theater, was inside the village hall in the little college town where I grew up.

I. Was. Enthralled. I. Was. Hooked. This was in the early spring of 1979. We were in seventh grade and were highly, highly impressionable. If I recall correctly we saw it on a Sunday afternoon. Back in the 70s there was not a lot going on on Sunday afternoons. There was literally nothing on TV except the Movie for a Sunday Afternoon– cue Love’s Theme by the Love Unlimited Orchestra. We went to mass, she at the more traditional St. Joe’s and I at the Newman Center, the hippie church associated with the University here in town, and then probably CCD. And then we had nothing to do except wait for school on Monday. We had probably watched Saturday Night Live the night before and were eager to stand with our fiends in a circle in the hallway to discuss Mr. Bill or whatever we were too young to have understood from the show. Sundays were weird. It was like liminal space, you had nothing fun to do and were just waiting around. Maybe you had homework or in my case I had to practice playing my oboe for my band lesson on Monday. Another WTF. Why the hell did I choose to play such a difficult instrument? Because I was a recalcitrant, stubborn, bull-headed pain in the ass, that’s why. Because there wasn’t much to do on Sundays, and particularly Sundays in March when the weather would have been gray and cold, we often went to the movies. Going to the movies was a major part of growing up in the 70s and 80s. We had one very nice movie theater and then two older, as previously mentioned, scarier ones. Plus the Van Buren Drive-In in the summer. Stories about the Drive-In deserve a separate post, lol.

But Hair. Berger. Manchester, England, England. Give me a head with hair. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Black boys are delicious. Good Morning Starshine. We memorized all the lyrics to all the songs and sang them loudly, everywhere, always. There was a small amphitheater at the college and in the summer in the early 80s, when the kids from the Summer School of the Arts program were in town, FSA or Spectrum or whatever entity was in charge of entertainment would show films. And every summer Hair was on the schedule. We loved hanging out at the college because we thought it made us cool. And you know what? It did! Lol! Of course the bad boys who were into music and wore black whom I crushed hard on were there so an extra incentive to show up!

This film was transformative, profound, pivotal in the life of small town kiddos, especially seeing it for the first time as 12 year olds. Even though we were really too young to understand all of the themes and the messages, we understood that the film was about something significant, something life altering. For one thing the Vietnam War was still in everyone’s collective consciousness when the movie was released in 1979. It had only been four years since the end of the war and the emotional wounds were still raw. As a rabid lover of history, even at that age, I was very curious about the who, what, where and when of the war.

One scene that was indelibly imprinted on my brain was the formal dinner. The juxtaposition of the hippies and the rich folk in their formal dress, so proper and uptight, was stunning. Treat Williams as Berger was a force to be reckoned with, he was so beautiful. I will forever love him,may he be resting peacefully. And Beverly D’Angelo was absolutely radiant.

Another was the scene in Central Park when the hippies all came out of nowhere like woodland creatures, dancing and gloriously alive, while Renn Woods sang The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. We were stunned into silence witnessing the scene when Berger, in Army fatigues, was shipped off to meet his fate. The cast singing Let The Sunshine In moved me so deeply. I still cry when I watch those scenes shot at Arlington and in front of the White House. Simply powerful.

Being young in the 70s was such a gift. We were exposed at young ages to adult themes, ideas, literature, movies and music that we did not fully understand until we were a few years older. But thank goodness no adult in my life thought to limit what ideas I had access to. We were afforded certain freedoms that helped us to grow, learn, mature in ways that are unimaginable to kids today. I know this because I have two and their experiences were so very different from mine.

So happy, happy birthday my dear, precious friend. Thank you for the gift of you, and for the memories and for the album. I’m going to spin it tonight and relive those happy memories. What a time we had. Cheers to turning 60! I hope you can celebrate by singing your heart out and dancing your ass off like we did in that wonderful life so long ago. I will be dancing here to the soundtrack and channeling you!

K and A circa 1985