It may be coincidence that the late-sixties “tribal rock” musical *Hair* reopens on Broadway the same week that Albany repeals New York State’s draconian “Rockefeller drug laws,” but there is poetic justice in the syncronicity. Glorifying the sex- and drug-positive lifestyles of New York’s hippie kids at the cusp of the 1970s, the still brilliant music and lyrics of “Hair” expose all the brave hopes and naive hypocrisies of that transitional period–from anti-war activism and gender privilege, to interracial dating and gay rights.
Few actual hippies were as self-aware as the characters of *Hair,* but in retrospect I’d say that McDermot, Ragni and Rado were gently satirizing as well as celebrating their subject matter. They understood, as too few of today’s holier-than-thou activists do, that wanting and working towards peace and love is still miles away from actually having it. The struggle continues. And it must necessarily continue with compassion for human fallibilities.
The triumph of over 30 years of grass-roots political lobbying and organizing, the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug law offenders (especially first timers), will allow some 1500 current inmates to apply for re-sentencing or early release, and give judges more power to send offenders to rehab programs rather than prison. So-called “soft” drugs, like marijuana, sent many young, non-white people to jail in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, decades in which controversial street drugs like angel dust, black-market pills, crack, and crystal meth flooded urban America.
When vocal celebrities like Russell Simmons put their time, money, and influence behind the reform campaign in the ’90s, public attention was focused on how three decades of harsh drug laws had impacted children whose mothers and fathers had been jailed and missing for most of their formative years. Many rap stars grew up personally scarred by the social conditions created not only by a criminalized drug culture, but also by indiscriminately punitive and practically ineffective state drug laws. One hopes the landmark shift in Albany this spring will give recording artists something new to sing about.
I went to see the new production of *Hair* last night. The cast of attractive, multi-racial kids were somehow able to resurrect the original magic despite not having been even a gleam in anyone’s eye when the original version hit Broadway. I saw that version the week the show closed. It truly seemed the end of an era. Then as now there was no longer any relatively harmless urban counter culture to run away to if you were 16 with a non-capitalistic dream. I remember leaving the theater determined tomake a living doing what I loved, since I couldn’t change the world. I wonder if the teens and twenty-somethings who came out of *Hair* last night into a world where Obama is president and the worst of the Rockefeller drug laws are newly dismantled went home with better ideas?
3 Responses to Roll Over, Rockefeller!
Phew! Fantastic how folks link stuff together. We’re all products of our life choices and experiences and family backgrounds i guess.
I didn’t even realise back then that Galt McDermot was the same guy whose records my jazz-loving sister had been playing for years. Heat, Light & Small Sandflies was a very cool track, as i recall.
I perceived Hair as the commercialation of Hippy dream. Not that I was ever more than a weekend hippy at best, but my sympathies lay very much with the hippies as I grew up and, in principle, still do.
Drugs, on the other hand, I never had much truck with. I got bored very quickly with dope which just seemed to reduce people to grinning buffoons and take away their will to do anything. A bit like tv is now.
Never liked pills – not even asprin – so i was never going to go down that route.
I had one formerly very bright friend who I saw reduced to a gibbering idiot and hospitalised by acid, so I didn’t want to get involved with that. I don’t have vast reserves of brain so I want to preserve what I’ve got.
Once we get on to coke, heroin, crack and the rest, I can see no good in them at all.
Oddly though, my response to the problem, should the public ever put me in charge, would be to legalise everything in the drug line.
Only that way can we do away with the criminal aspects of drug abuse which, at a stroke, would make it easier to help the people held in thrall by drugs and dealers. If commercial companies sold drugs under government scrutiny, at least quality could be controlled and the users wouldn’t be ingesting rat poison, chalk or whatever other dubious ingredients get passed on a drugs these days. (I wish I didn’t even know this much about it).
Stuff could be sold like cigarettes with dire warnings on the packs about what the various substances do to you. At least that would be an honest transaction.
Also people with serious habits/problems could freely admit them to trained medical/social staff and be admitted to programs to get them free of the drugs. (Shame, of course, would still keep some people from owning up and doing something about it).
I’d also like to say that I’m ashamed of the music press, of which I am part, for glamourising drug use as it has done for several decades now. Every time a headline screams out about a pop star using drugs, it’s a free advert for gangsters. It can only ever be glamourous. And when pop stars die of drug abuse, that too is glamourous, because we the media make it so.
I have no problem with rock stars taking drugs. That’s up to them. It’s dumb, but it’s their free choice. I just don’t like them becoming pister boys and girls for addictions of various sorts.
In fact, i don’t even like the way drug talk has been incorporated into the language. “Oh, man I’m, like, addicted to marshmallows.” No, you’re not. You haven’t got clue no 1 about what addiction is.
So, in essence, I’m a hippy but I’m not a druggy. I’m 100% for decriminalisation of all drugs, but I think drugs are vile.
If decriminalisation didn’t work, we’d have to think again, but I can’t imagine how things could get much worse than they are right now.
Which f*&%wit was it who first said, “Real life is for people who can’t cope with drugs”?
It’s a very funny line, I admit, but it’s the kind of funny line that whoever dreamed it up should have had enough sense to keep to himself. Except, of course, he was almost certainly on drugs when he said it.
I agree that television is quite a dangerous drug!! It’s been sapping my will to work as hard as I need to work. I’m trying even now to go cold turkey.
My theory on legalized drugs is probably along the lines of what they do in Sweden.
You mean I don’t have to pay for expert advice like this anoyrme?!