title: Mallard

text: Also, the paucity of morphological differences between the Old World mallards and the New World mallard demonstrates the extent to which the genome is shared among them such that birds like the Chinese spot-billed duck are highly similar to the Old World mallard, and birds such as the Hawaiian duck are highly similar to the New World mallard.


title: Mallard

text: The size of the mallard varies clinally; for example, birds from Greenland, though larger, have smaller bills, paler plumage, and stockier bodies than birds further south and are sometimes classified as a separate subspecies, the Greenland mallard ("A.p.conboschas").


title: Mallard

text: The mallard is a medium-sized waterfowl species that is often slightly heavier than most other dabbling ducks. It is longof which the body makes up around two-thirdshas a wingspan of , and weighs . Among standard measurements, the wing chord is , the bill is , and the tarsus is .


title: Mallard

text: The breeding male mallard is unmistakable, with a glossy bottle-green head and a white collar that demarcates the head from the purple-tinged brown breast, grey-brown wings, and a pale grey belly. The rear of the male is black, with white-bordered dark tail feathers. The bill of the male is a yellowish-orange tipped with black, with that of the female generally darker and ranging from black to mottled orange and brown. The female mallard is predominantly mottled, with each individual feather showing sharp contrast from buff to very dark brown, a coloration shared by most female dabbling ducks, and has buff cheeks, eyebrow, throat, and neck, with a darker crown and eye-stripe.


title: Mallard

text: Both male and female mallards have distinct iridescent purple-blue speculum feathers edged with white, which are prominent in flight or at rest but temporarily shed during the annual summer moult. Upon hatching, the plumage of the duckling is yellow on the underside and face (with streaks by the eyes) and black on the back (with some yellow spots) all the way to the top and back of the head. Its legs and bill are also black. As it nears a month in age, the duckling's plumage starts becoming drab, looking more like the female, though more streaked, and its legs lose their dark grey colouring. Two months after hatching, the fledgling period has ended, and the duckling is now a juvenile. The duckling is able to fly 50–60 days after hatching. Its bill soon loses its dark grey colouring, and its sex can finally be distinguished visually by three factors: 1)the bill is yellow in males, but black and orange in females; 2)the breast feathers are reddish-brown in males, but brown in females; and 3)in males, the centre tail feather (drake feather) is curled, but in females, the centre tail feather is straight. During the final period of maturity leading up to adulthood (6–10 months of age), the plumage of female juveniles remains the same while the plumage of male juveniles gradually changes to its characteristic colours. This change in plumage also applies to adult mallard males when they transition in and out of their non-breeding eclipse plumage at the beginning and the end of the summer moulting period. The adulthood age for mallards is fourteen months, and the average life expectancy is three years, but they can live to twenty.


title: Mallard

text: Several species of duck have brown-plumaged females that can be confused with the female mallard. The female gadwall ("Mareca strepera") has an orange-lined bill, white belly, black and white speculum that is seen as a white square on the wings in flight, and is a smaller bird. More similar to the female mallard in North America are the American black duck ("A.rubripes"), which is notably darker-hued in both sexes than the mallard, and the mottled duck ("A.fulvigula"), which is somewhat darker than the female mallard, and with slightly different bare-part colouration and no white edge on the speculum.


title: Mallard

text: In captivity, domestic ducks come in wild-type plumages, white, and other colours. Most of these colour variants are also known in domestic mallards not bred as livestock, but kept as pets, aviary birds, etc., where they are rare but increasing in availability.


title: Mallard

text: A noisy species, the female has the deep "quack" stereotypically associated with ducks. Male mallards make a sound phonetically similar to that of the female, a typical "quack", but it is deeper and quieter compared to that of the female. Research conducted by Middlesex University found that the vocalisations of mallards vary depending on their environment, with urban mallards being much louder and more vociferous compared to populations of the species found in suburban and rural areas, with this being an adaptation to persistent levels of anthropogenic noise.


title: Mallard

text: When incubating a nest, or when offspring are present, females vocalise differently, making a call that sounds like a truncated version of the usual quack. This maternal vocalisation is highly attractive to their young. The repetition and frequency modulation of these "quacks" form the auditory basis for species identification in offspring, a process known as acoustic conspecific identification. In addition, females hiss if the nest or offspring are threatened or interfered with. When taking off, the wings of a mallard produce a characteristic faint whistling noise.


title: Mallard

text: The mallard is a rare example of both Allen's Rule and Bergmann's Rule in birds. Bergmann's Rule, which states that polar forms tend to be larger than related ones from warmer climates, has numerous examples in birds, as in case of the Greenland mallard which is larger than the mallards further south. Allen's Rule says that appendages like ears tend to be smaller in polar forms to minimise heat loss, and larger in tropical and desert equivalents to facilitate heat diffusion, and that the polar taxa are stockier overall. Examples of this rule in birds are rare as they lack external ears, but the bill of ducks is supplied with a few blood vessels to prevent heat loss, and, as in the Greenland mallard, the bill is smaller than that of birds farther south, illustrating the rule.


title: Mallard

text: Due to the variability of the mallard's genetic code, which gives it its vast interbreeding capability, mutations in the genes that decide plumage colour are very common and have resulted in a wide variety of hybrids, such as Brewer's duck (mallard × gadwall, "Mareca strepera").


title: Mallard

text: The mallard is widely distributed across the Northern and Southern Hemispheres; in North America its range extends from southern and central Alaska to Mexico, the Hawaiian Islands, across the Palearctic, from Iceland and southern Greenland and parts of Morocco (North Africa) in the west, Scandinavia and Britain to the north, and to Siberia, Japan, and South Korea. Also in the east, it ranges to south-eastern and south-western Australia and New Zealand in the Southern hemisphere. It is strongly migratory in the northern parts of its breeding range, and winters farther south. For example, in North America, it winters south to the southern United States and northern Mexico, but also regularly strays into Central America and the Caribbean between September and May. A drake later named "Trevor" attracted media attention in 2018 when it turned up on the island of Niue, an atypical location for mallards.


title: Mallard

text: The mallard inhabits a wide range of habitats and climates, from the Arctic tundra to subtropical regions. It is found in both fresh- and salt-water wetlands, including parks, small ponds, rivers, lakes and estuaries, as well as shallow inlets and open sea within sight of the coastline. Water depths of less than are preferred, with birds avoiding areas more than a few metres deep. They are attracted to bodies of water with aquatic vegetation.


title: Mallard

text: The mallard is omnivorous and very flexible in its choice of food. Its diet may vary based on several factors, including the stage of the breeding cycle, short-term variations in available food, nutrient availability, and interspecific and intraspecific competition. The majority of the mallard's diet seems to be made up of gastropods, insects (including beetles, flies, lepidopterans, dragonflies, and caddisflies), crustaceans, other arthropods, worms, many varieties of seeds and plant matter, and roots and tubers. During the breeding season, male birds were recorded to have eaten 37.6% animal matter and 62.4% plant matter, most notably the grass "Echinochloa crus-galli", and nonlaying females ate 37.0% animal matter and 63.0% plant matter, while laying females ate 71.9% animal matter and only 28.1% plant matter. Plants generally make up the larger part of a bird's diet, especially during autumn migration and in the winter.


title: Mallard

text: The mallard usually feeds by dabbling for plant food or grazing; there are reports of it eating frogs. However, in 2017 a flock of mallards in Romania were observed hunting small migratory birds, including grey wagtails and black redstarts, the first documented occasion they had been seen attacking and consuming large vertebrates. It usually nests on a river bank, but not always near water. It is highly gregarious outside of the breeding season and forms large flocks, which are known as "sordes".


title: Mallard

text: Mallards usually form pairs (in October and November in the Northern Hemisphere) until the female lays eggs at the start of the nesting season, which is around the beginning of spring. At this time she is left by the male who joins up with other males to await the moulting period, which begins in June (in the Northern Hemisphere). During the brief time before this, however, the males are still sexually potent and some of them either remain on standby to sire replacement clutches (for female mallards that have lost or abandoned their previous clutch) or forcibly mate with females that appear to be isolated or unattached regardless of their species and whether or not they have a brood of ducklings.


title: Mallard

text: Nesting sites are typically on the ground, hidden in vegetation where the female's speckled plumage serves as effective camouflage, but female mallards have also been known to nest in hollows in trees, boathouses, roof gardens and on balconies, sometimes resulting in hatched offspring having difficulty following their parent to water.


title: Mallard

text: Egg clutches number 8–13 creamy white to greenish-buff eggs free of speckles. They measure about in length and in width. The eggs are laid on alternate days, and incubation begins when the clutch is almost complete. Incubation takes 27–28days and fledging takes 50–60days. The ducklings are precocial and fully capable of swimming as soon as they hatch. However, filial imprinting compels them to instinctively stay near the mother, not only for warmth and protection but also to learn about and remember their habitat as well as how and where to forage for food. Though adoptions are known to occur, female mallards typically do not tolerate stray ducklings near their broods, and will violently attack and drive away any unfamiliar young, sometimes going as far as to kill them.


title: Mallard

text: When ducklings mature into flight-capable juveniles, they learn about and remember their traditional migratory routes (unless they are born and raised in captivity). In New Zealand, where mallards are naturalised, the nesting season has been found to be longer, eggs and clutches are larger and nest survival is generally greater compared with mallards in their native range.


title: Mallard

text: In cases where a nest or brood fails, some mallards may mate for a second time in an attempt to raise a second clutch, typically around early-to-mid summer. In addition, mallards may occasionally breed during the autumn in cases of unseasonably warm weather; one such instance of a ‘late’ clutch occurred in November 2011, in which a female successfully hatched and raised a clutch of eleven ducklings at the London Wetland Centre.


title: Mallard

text: During the breeding season, both male and female mallards can become aggressive, driving off competitors to themselves or their mate by charging at them. Males tend to fight more than females, and attack each other by repeatedly pecking at their rival's chest, ripping out feathers and even skin on rare occasions. Female mallards are also known to carry out 'inciting displays', which encourage other ducks in the flock to begin fighting. It is possible that this behaviour allows the female to evaluate the strength of potential partners.


title: Mallard

text: The drakes that end up being left out after the others have paired off with mating partners sometimes target an isolated female duck, even one of a different species, and proceed to chase and peck at her until she weakens, at which point the males take turns copulating with the female. Lebret (1961) calls this behaviour "Attempted Rape Flight", and Stanley Cramp and K.E.L. Simmons (1977) speak of "rape-intent flights". Male mallards also occasionally chase other male ducks of a different species, and even each other, in the same way. In one documented case of "homosexual necrophilia", a male mallard copulated with another male he was chasing after the chased male died upon flying into a glass window. This paper was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize in 2003.


title: Mallard

text: Mallards are opportunistically targeted by brood parasites, occasionally having eggs laid in their nests by redheads, ruddy ducks, lesser scaup, gadwalls, northern shovelers, northern pintails, cinnamon teal, common goldeneyes, and other mallards. These eggs are generally accepted when they resemble the eggs of the host mallard, but the hen may attempt to eject them or even abandon the nest if parasitism occurs during egg laying.


title: Mallard

text: In addition to human hunting, mallards of all ages (but especially young ones) and in all locations must contend with a wide diversity of predators including raptors and owls, mustelids, corvids, snakes, raccoons, opossums, skunks, turtles, large fish, felids, and canids, the last two including domestic ones. The most prolific natural predators of adult mallards are red foxes (which most often pick off brooding females) and the faster or larger birds of prey, e.g. peregrine falcons, "Aquila" or "Haliaeetus" eagles. In North America, adult mallards face no fewer than 15 species of birds of prey, from northern harriers ("Circus hudsonius") and short-eared owls ("Asio flammeus") (both smaller than a mallard) to huge bald ("Haliaeetus leucocephalus") and golden eagles ("Aquila chrysaetos"), and about a dozen species of mammalian predators, not counting several more avian and mammalian predators who threaten eggs and nestlings.


title: Mallard

text: Mallards are also preyed upon by other waterside apex predators, such as grey herons ("Ardea cinerea"), great blue herons ("Ardea herodias") and black-crowned night herons ("Nycticorax nycticorax"), the European herring gull ("Larus argentatus"), the wels catfish ("Silurus glanis"), and the northern pike ("Esox lucius"). Crows ("Corvus") are also known to kill ducklings and adults on occasion. Also, mallards may be attacked by larger anseriformes such as swans ("Cygnus") and geese during the breeding season, and are frequently driven off by these birds over territorial disputes. Mute swans ("Cygnus olor") have been known to attack or even kill mallards if they feel that the ducks pose a threat to their offspring. Common loons ("Gavia inmer") are similarly territorial and aggressive towards other birds in such disputes, and will frequently drive mallards away from their territory. However, in 2019, a pair of common loons in Wisconsin were observed raising a mallard duckling for several weeks, having seemingly adopted the bird after it had been abandoned by its parents.


title: Mallard

text: The predation-avoidance behaviour of sleeping with one eye open, allowing one brain hemisphere to remain aware while the other half sleeps, was first demonstrated in mallards, although it is believed to be widespread among birds in general.


title: Mallard

text: Since 1998, the mallard has been rated as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List of Endangered Species. This is because it has a large range–more than 20,000,000 km (7,700,000 mi) and because its population is increasing, rather than declining by 30% over ten years or three generations and thus is not warranted a vulnerable rating. Also, the population size of the mallard is very large.


title: Mallard

text: Unlike many waterfowl, mallards have benefited from human alterations to the worldso much so that they are now considered an invasive species in some regions. They are a common sight in urban parks, lakes, ponds, and other human-made water features in the regions they inhabit, and are often tolerated or encouraged in human habitat due to their placid nature towards humans and their beautiful and iridescent colours. While most are not domesticated, mallards are so successful at coexisting in human regions that the main conservation risk they pose comes from the loss of genetic diversity among a region's traditional ducks once humans and mallards colonise an area. Mallards are very adaptable, being able to live and even thrive in urban areas which may have supported more localised, sensitive species of waterfowl before development. The release of feral mallards in areas where they are not native sometimes creates problems through interbreeding with indigenous waterfowl. These non-migratory mallards interbreed with indigenous wild ducks from local populations of closely related species through genetic pollution by producing fertile offspring. Complete hybridisation of various species of wild duck gene pools could result in the extinction of many indigenous waterfowl. The mallard itself is the ancestor of most domestic ducks, and its naturally evolved wild gene pool gets genetically polluted in turn by the domestic and feral populations.


title: Mallard

text: Over time, a continuum of hybrids ranging between almost typical examples of either species develop; the speciation process is beginning to reverse itself. This has created conservation concerns for relatives of the mallard, such as the Hawaiian duck, the New Zealand grey duck ("A.s. superciliosa)" subspecies of the Pacific black duck, the American black duck, the mottled duck, Meller's duck, the yellow-billed duck, and the Mexican duck, in the latter case even leading to a dispute as to whether these birds should be considered a species (and thus entitled to more conservation research and funding) or included in the mallard species. Ecological changes and hunting have also led to a decline of local species; for example, the New Zealand grey duck population declined drastically due to overhunting in the mid-20th century. Hybrid offspring of Hawaiian ducks seem to be less well adapted to native habitat, and using them in re-introduction projects apparently reduces success. In summary, the problems of mallards "hybridising away" relatives is more a consequence of local ducks declining than of mallards spreading; allopatric speciation and isolating behaviour have produced today's diversity of mallard-like ducks despite the fact that, in most, if not all, of these populations, hybridisation must have occurred to some extent.


title: Mallard

text: Mallards are causing severe "genetic pollution" to South Africa's biodiversity by breeding with endemic ducks even though the "Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds – "an agreement to protect the local waterfowl populations – applies to the mallard as well as other ducks. The hybrids of mallards and the yellow-billed duck are fertile, capable of producing hybrid offspring. If this continues, only hybrids occur and in the long term result in the extinction of various indigenous waterfowl. The mallard can crossbreed with 63 other species, posing a severe threat to indigenous waterfowl's genetic integrity. Mallards and their hybrids compete with indigenous birds for resources, including nest sites, roosting sites, and food.


title: Mallard

text: Availability of mallards, mallard ducklings, and fertilised mallard eggs for public sale and private ownership, either as poultry or as pets, is currently legal in the United States, except for the state of Florida, which has currently banned domestic ownership of mallards. This is to prevent hybridisation with the native mottled duck.


title: Mallard

text: The mallard is considered an invasive species in Australia and New Zealand, where it competes with the Pacific black duck (known as the grey duck locally in New Zealand) which was over-hunted in the past. There, and elsewhere, mallards are spreading with increasing urbanisation and hybridising with local relatives.


title: Mallard

text: The eastern or Chinese spot-billed duck is currently introgressing into the mallard populations of the Primorsky Krai, possibly due to habitat changes from global warming. The Mariana mallard was a resident allopatric population – in most respects a good species – apparently initially derived from mallard-Pacific black duck hybrids; unfortunately, it became extinct in the late 20th century.


title: Mallard

text: The Laysan duck is an insular relative of the mallard, with a very small and fluctuating population. Mallards sometimes arrive on its island home during migration, and can be expected to occasionally have remained and hybridised with Laysan ducks as long as these species have existed. However, these hybrids are less well adapted to the peculiar ecological conditions of Laysan Island than the local ducks, and thus have lower fitness. Laysan ducks were found throughout the Hawaiian archipelago before 400AD, after which they suffered a rapid decline during the Polynesian colonisation. Now, their range includes only Laysan Island. It is one of the successfully translocated birds, after having become nearly extinct in the early 20th century.


title: Mallard

text: Mallards have often been ubiquitous in their regions among the ponds, rivers, and streams of human parks, farms, and other human-made waterwayseven to the point of visiting water features in human courtyards.


title: Mallard

text: Mallards have had a long relationship with humans. Almost all domestic duck breeds derive from the mallard, with the exception of a few Muscovy breeds, and are listed under the trinomial name "A. p. domesticus". Mallards are generally monogamous while domestic ducks are mostly polygamous. Domestic ducks have no territorial behaviour and are less aggressive than mallards. Domestic ducks are mostly kept for meat; their eggs are also eaten, and have a strong flavour. They were first domesticated in Southeast Asia at least 4,000 years ago, during the Neolithic Age, and were also farmed by the Romans in Europe, and the Malays in Asia. As the domestic duck and the mallard are the same species as each other, it is common for mallards to mate with domestic ducks and produce hybrid offspring that are fully fertile. Because of this, mallards have been found to be contaminated with the genes of the domestic duck.


title: Mallard

text: While the keeping of domestic breeds is more popular, pure-bred mallards are sometimes kept for eggs and meat, although they may require wing clipping to restrict flying, or training to navigate and fly home.


title: Mallard

text: Mallards are one of the most common varieties of ducks hunted as a sport due to the large population size. The ideal location for hunting mallards is considered to be where the water level is somewhat shallow where the birds can be found foraging for food. Hunting mallards might cause the population to decline in some places, at some times, and with some populations. In certain countries, the mallard may be legally shot but is protected under national acts and policies. For example, in the United Kingdom, the mallard is protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which restricts certain hunting methods or taking or killing mallards.


title: Mallard

text: Since ancient times, the mallard has been eaten as food. The wild mallard was eaten in Neolithic Greece. Usually, only the breast and thigh meat is eaten. It does not need to be hung before preparation, and is often braised or roasted, sometimes flavoured with bitter orange or with port.


title: The Waste Land

text: The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's "The Criterion" and in the United States in the November issue of "The Dial". It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and the Sanskrit mantra "Shantih shantih shantih".


title: The Waste Land

text: Eliot's poem combines the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Dante's "Divine Comedy", as well as Shakespeare, Buddhism, and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.


title: The Waste Land

text: The poem is divided into five sections. The first, "The Burial of the Dead", introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, "A Game of Chess", employs alternating narrations, in which vignettes of several characters address those themes experientially. "The Fire Sermon", the third section, offers a philosophical meditation in relation to the imagery of death and views of self-denial in juxtaposition, influenced by Augustine of Hippo and Eastern religions. After a fourth section, "Death by Water", which includes a brief lyrical petition, the culminating fifth section, "What the Thunder Said", concludes with an image of judgment.


title: The Waste Land

text: Eliot probably worked on the text that became for several years preceding its first publication in 1922. In a May 1921 letter to New York lawyer and patron of modernism John Quinn, Eliot wrote that he had "a long poem in mind and partly on paper which I am wishful to finish".


title: The Waste Land

text: Richard Aldington, in his memoirs, relates that "a year or so" before Eliot read him the manuscript draft of "The Waste Land" in London, Eliot visited him in the country. While walking through a graveyard, they discussed Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". Aldington writes: "I was surprised to find that Eliot admired something so popular, and then went on to say that if a contemporary poet, conscious of his limitations as Gray evidently was, would concentrate all his gifts on one such poem he might achieve a similar success."


title: The Waste Land

text: Eliot, having been diagnosed with some form of nervous disorder, had been recommended rest, and applied for three months' leave from the bank where he was employed; the reason stated on his staff card was "nervous breakdown". He and his first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot, travelled to the coastal resort of Margate, Kent, for a period of convalescence. While there, Eliot worked on the poem, and possibly showed an early version to Ezra Pound when the Eliots travelled to Paris in November 1921 and stayed with him. Eliot was en route to Lausanne, Switzerland, for treatment by Doctor Roger Vittoz, who had been recommended to him by Ottoline Morrell; Vivienne was to stay at a sanatorium just outside Paris. In Hotel Ste. Luce (where Hotel Elite has stood since 1938) in Lausanne, Eliot produced a 19-page version of the poem. He returned from Lausanne in early January 1922. Pound then made detailed editorial comments and significant cuts to the manuscript. Eliot later dedicated the poem to Pound. Letters written by both Vivienne and Eliot give some insight into the creation of the poem.


title: The Waste Land

text: Eliot sent the manuscript drafts of the poem to John Quinn in October 1922; they reached Quinn in New York in January 1923. Upon Quinn's death in 1924 they were inherited by his sister Julia Anderson. Years later, in the early 1950s, Mrs Anderson's daughter Mary Conroy found the documents in storage. In 1958 she sold them privately to the New York Public Library.


title: The Waste Land

text: It was not until April 1968, three years after Eliot's death, that the existence and whereabouts of the manuscript drafts were made known to Valerie Eliot, the poet's second wife and widow. In 1971, Faber and Faber published a "facsimile and transcript" of the original drafts, edited and annotated by Valerie Eliot. The full poem prior to the Pound editorial changes is contained in the facsimile.


title: The Waste Land

text: The drafts of the poem reveal that it originally contained almost twice as much material as the final published version. The significant cuts are in part due to Ezra Pound's suggested changes, although Eliot himself also removed large sections.


title: The Waste Land

text: The opening lines of the poem—"April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land"—did not originally appear until the top of the second page of the typescript. The first page of the typescript contained 54 lines in the sort of street voice that we hear again at the end of the second section, "A Game of Chess". This page appears to have been lightly crossed out in pencil by Eliot himself.


title: The Waste Land

text: Although there are several signs of similar adjustments made by Eliot, and a number of significant comments by Vivienne, the most significant editorial input is clearly that of Pound, who recommended many cuts to the poem.


title: The Waste Land

text: 'The typist home at teatime' section was originally in entirely regular stanzas of iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme of "abab"—the same form as Gray's "Elegy", which was in Eliot's thoughts around this time. Pound's note against this section of the draft is "verse not interesting enough as verse to warrant so much of it". In the end, the regularity of the four-line stanzas was abandoned.


title: The Waste Land

text: At the beginning of 'The Fire Sermon' in one version, there was a lengthy section in heroic couplets, in imitation of Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock". It described one lady Fresca (who appeared in the earlier poem "Gerontion"). Richard Ellmann said "Instead of making her toilet like Pope's Belinda, Fresca is going to it, like Joyce's Bloom." The lines read:


title: The Waste Land

text: Ellmann notes: "Pound warned Eliot that since Pope had done the couplets better, and Joyce the defecation, there was no point in another round."


title: The Waste Land

text: Pound also excised some shorter poems that Eliot wanted to insert between the five sections. One of these, that Eliot had entitled 'Dirge', begins


title: The Waste Land

text: At the request of Eliot's wife Vivienne, three lines in the "A Game of Chess" section were removed from the poem: "And we shall play a game of chess / The ivory men make company between us / Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door". This section is apparently based on their marital life, and she may have felt these lines too revealing. However, the "ivory men" line may have meant something to Eliot: in 1960, thirteen years after Vivienne's death, he inserted the line in a copy made for sale to aid the London Library, of which he was president at the time; it fetched £2,800. Rupert Hart-Davis had requested the original manuscript for the auction, but Eliot had lost it long ago (though it was found in America years later).


title: The Waste Land

text: In a late December 1921 letter to Eliot to celebrate the "birth" of the poem, Pound wrote a bawdy poem of 48 lines entitled "Sage Homme" in which he identified Eliot as the mother of the poem but compared himself to the midwife. The first lines are:


title: The Waste Land

text: Before the editing had even begun, Eliot found a publisher. Horace Liveright of the New York publishing firm of Boni & Liveright was in Paris for a number of meetings with Ezra Pound. At a dinner on 3 January 1922 (see 1922 in poetry), he made offers for works by Pound, James Joyce ("Ulysses") and Eliot. Eliot was to get a royalty of 15% for a book version of the poem planned for autumn publication.


title: The Waste Land

text: To maximise his income and reach a broader audience, Eliot also sought a deal with magazines. Being the London correspondent for "The Dial" magazine and a college friend of its co-owner and co-editor, Scofield Thayer, "The Dial" was an ideal choice. Even though "The Dial" offered $150 (£34) for the poem (25% more than its standard rate) Eliot was offended that a year's work would be valued so low, especially since another contributor was found to have been given exceptional compensation for a short story. The deal with "The Dial" almost fell through (other magazines considered were the "Little Review" and "Vanity Fair"), but with Pound's efforts eventually a deal was worked out where, in addition to the $150, Eliot would be awarded "The Dial"s second annual prize for outstanding service to letters. The prize carried an award of $2,000 (£450).


title: The Waste Land

text: In New York in the late summer (with John Quinn, a lawyer and literary patron, representing Eliot's interests) Boni & Liveright made an agreement with "The Dial" allowing the magazine to be the first to publish the poem in the US if they agreed to purchase 350 copies of the book at discount from Boni & Liveright. Boni & Liveright would use the publicity of the award of "The Dial"'s prize to Eliot to increase their initial sales.


title: The Waste Land

text: The poem was first published in the UK, without the author's notes, in the first issue (October 1922) of "The Criterion", a literary magazine started and edited by Eliot. The first appearance of the poem in the US was in the November 1922 issue of "The Dial" magazine (actually published in late October). In December 1922, the poem was published in the US in book form by Boni & Liveright, the first publication to print the notes. In September 1923, the Hogarth Press, a private press run by Eliot's friends Leonard and Virginia Woolf, published the first UK book edition of "The Waste Land" in an edition of about 450 copies, the type handset by Virginia Woolf.


title: The Waste Land

text: The publication history of "The Waste Land" (as well as other pieces of Eliot's poetry and prose) has been documented by Donald Gallup.


title: The Waste Land

text: Eliot, whose 1922 annual salary at Lloyds Bank was £500 ($2,215), made approximately £630 ($2,800) with "The Dial", Boni & Liveright, and Hogarth Press publications.


title: The Waste Land

text: Eliot originally considered entitling the poem "He do the Police in Different Voices". In the version of the poem Eliot brought back from Switzerland, the first two sections of the poem—'The Burial of the Dead' and 'A Game of Chess'—appeared under this title. This strange phrase is taken from Charles Dickens' novel "Our Mutual Friend", in which the widow Betty Higden says of her adopted foundling son Sloppy, "You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices." Some critics use this working title to support the theory that, while there are many different voices (speakers) in the poem, there is only one central consciousness. What was lost by the rejection of this title Eliot might have felt compelled to restore by commenting on the commonalities of his characters in his note about Tiresias, stating that 'What Tiresias sees, in fact, is the substance of the poem.'


title: The Waste Land

text: In the end, the title Eliot chose was "The Waste Land". In his first note to the poem he attributes the title to Jessie Weston's book on the Grail legend, "From Ritual to Romance". The allusion is to the wounding of the Fisher King and the subsequent sterility of his lands; to restore the King and make his lands fertile again, the Grail questor must ask, "What ails you?" In 1913, Madison Cawein published a poem called "Waste Land"; scholars have identified the poem as an inspiration to Eliot.


title: The Waste Land

text: The poem's title is often mistakenly given as "Waste Land" (as used by Weston) or "Wasteland", omitting the definite article. However, in a letter to Ezra Pound, Eliot politely insisted that the title was three words beginning with "The".


title: The Waste Land

text: The poem is preceded by a Latin and Ancient Greek epigraph from chapter 48 of "The Satyricon" of Petronius:


title: The Waste Land

text: Following the epigraph is a dedication (added in a 1925 republication) that reads "For Ezra Pound: "il miglior fabbro"". Here Eliot is both quoting line 117 of Canto XXVI of Dante's "Purgatorio", the second cantica of the "Divine Comedy", where Dante defines the troubadour Arnaut Daniel as "the best smith of the mother tongue", and also Pound's title of chapter 2 of his "The Spirit of Romance" (1910) where he translated the phrase as "the better craftsman". This dedication was originally written in ink by Eliot in the 1922 Boni & Liveright edition of the poem presented to Pound; it was subsequently included in future editions.


title: The Waste Land

text: The text of the poem is followed by several pages of notes, purporting to explain his metaphors, references, and allusions. Some of these notes are helpful in interpreting the poem, but some are arguably even more puzzling, and many of the most opaque passages are left unannotated. The notes were added after Eliot's publisher requested something longer to justify printing "The Waste Land" in a separate book. Thirty years after publishing the poem with these notes, Eliot expressed his regret at "having sent so many enquirers off on a wild goose chase after Tarot cards and the Holy Grail".


title: The Waste Land

text: There is some question as to whether Eliot originally intended "The Waste Land" to be a collection of individual poems (additional poems were supplied to Pound for his comments on including them) or to be considered one poem with five sections.


title: The Waste Land

text: The structure of the poem is also meant to loosely follow the vegetation myth and Holy Grail folklore surrounding the Fisher King story as outlined by Jessie Weston in her book "From Ritual to Romance" (1920). Weston's book was so central to the structure of the poem that it was the first text that Eliot cited in his "Notes on the Waste Land".


title: The Waste Land

text: The style of the poem is marked by the many allusions and quotations from other texts (classic and obscure; "highbrow" and "lowbrow") that Eliot peppered throughout the poem. In addition to the many "highbrow" references and quotes from poets like Baudelaire, Dante Alighieri, Shakespeare, Ovid, and Homer, as well as Wagner's libretti, Eliot also included several references to "lowbrow" genres. A good example of this is Eliot's quote from the 1912 popular song "The Shakespearian Rag" by lyricists Herman Ruby and Gene Buck. There were also a number of lowbrow references in the opening section of Eliot's original manuscript (when the poem was entitled "He Do The Police in Different Voices"), but they were removed from the final draft after Eliot cut this original opening section.


title: The Waste Land

text: The style of the work in part grows out of Eliot's interest in exploring the possibilities of dramatic monologue. This interest dates back at least as far as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". "The Waste Land" is not a single monologue like "Prufrock". Instead, it is made up of a wide variety of voices (sometimes in monologue, dialogue, or with more than two characters speaking).


title: The Waste Land

text: "The Waste Land" is notable for its seemingly disjointed structure, indicative of the Modernist style of James Joyce's "Ulysses" (which Eliot cited as an influence and which he read the same year that he was writing "The Waste Land"). In the Modernist style, Eliot jumps from one voice or image to another without clearly delineating these shifts for the reader. He also includes phrases from multiple foreign languages (Latin, Greek, Italian, German, French and Sanskrit), indicative of Pound's influence.


title: The Waste Land

text: Sources from which Eliot quotes, or to which he alludes, include the works of Homer, Sophocles, Petronius, Virgil, Ovid, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Gérard de Nerval, Thomas Kyd, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Joseph Conrad, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Charles Baudelaire, Richard Wagner, Oliver Goldsmith, Hermann Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Paul Verlaine, Walt Whitman and Bram Stoker.


title: The Waste Land

text: Eliot also makes extensive use of Scriptural writings including the Bible, the "Book of Common Prayer", the Hindu "Brihadaranyaka Upanishad", and the Buddha's "Fire Sermon", and of cultural and anthropological studies such as Sir James Frazer's "The Golden Bough" and Jessie Weston's "From Ritual to Romance" (particularly its study of the Wasteland motif in Celtic mythology).


title: The Waste Land

text: Eliot wrote in the original head note that "Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the incidental symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L Weston". The symbols Eliot employs, in addition to the Waste Land, include the Fisher King, the Tarot Deck, the Chapel perilous, and the Grail Quest.


title: The Waste Land

text: According to Valerie Eliot, the character Marie in "The Burial of the Dead" is based on Marie Larisch, whom Eliot met at an indeterminate time and place.


title: The Waste Land

text: Parodies of this poem have also sprung up, including one by Eliot's contemporary H. P. Lovecraft, a poem provocatively titled "Waste Paper: A Poem of Profound Insignificance". Written in 1923, it is regarded by scholars like S. T. Joshi as one of his best satires. Wendy Cope published a parody of "The Waste Land", condensing the poem into five limericks, "Waste Land Limericks", in her 1986 collection "Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis".


title: Dee Snider

text: Daniel "Dee" Snider (born March 15, 1955) is an American singer, songwriter, radio personality, and actor. He was the lead singer and songwriter of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister. He was ranked 83 in the "Hit Parader"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Top 100 Metal Vocalists of All Time.


title: Dee Snider

text: Born in Astoria, Queens, New York City, Snider was raised in nearby Freeport, New York and Baldwin, New York, both on Long Island. His father, Bob, is a retired New York State Trooper and Nassau County court clerk, and his mother, Marguerite, is a retired art teacher. His father is Jewish, whereas his mother is from a Catholic family of Swiss descent. He is also of Ukrainian descent from his grandfather. Snider and his siblings were raised as Episcopalians after his mother joined the church.


title: Dee Snider

text: As a child, he sang in a church choir, several school choruses, and concert choir in high school. Snider was also selected for the All-State Chorus for singing.


title: Dee Snider

text: In early 1976, Snider joined Twisted Sister and became the band's sole songwriter. The group released their first studio album, "Under the Blade", in September 1982 and developed a following in the UK. Less than a year later, Twisted Sister released their second album, "You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll". Their third album, "Stay Hungry", hit shelves on May 10, 1984. This became the band's most successful record with the hits "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock". To emphasize the "twisted sister" image, Snider adopted a trademark persona of metal-inspired drag with long blond curly hair, an excessive amount of eye shadow and rouge, a beauty mark, and bright red lipstick.


title: Dee Snider

text: During the mid-1980s, before the premiere of "Headbangers Ball", the first MTV program to consist entirely of heavy metal videos was "Heavy Metal Mania". The first episode aired in June 1985 and was hosted by Snider. It featured metal news, interviews with metal artists, and in-studio co-hosts. That same year, in November, Twisted Sister released "Come Out and Play", which sold over 500,000 copies in the US, but was marred by a poor concert tour.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 1985, Snider was involved in a Senate hearing instigated by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), which sought to introduce a parental warning system that would label all albums containing offensive material. Prior to the PMRC's appearance in Congress, they had singled out a list of songs titled the "Filthy Fifteen" to demonstrate the dangers of such material to youth, with "We're Not Gonna Take It" featuring on the list alongside Prince's "Darling Nikki", Madonna's "Dress You Up", and Venom's "Possessed", among other titles. The PMRC proposed a system involving letters which identified the types of objectionable content to be found in each album (e.g., "O" for occult themes, "X" for sex and profanity, "D/A" for drugs and alcohol, "V" for violence, etc.). Snider, John Denver, and Frank Zappa all testified against censorship and the proposed warning system. Though the system was never implemented, the hearing led to the music industry adopting what is now the generic "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" label.


title: Dee Snider

text: The PMRC involved prominent public figures such as Tipper Gore, the wife of Senator Al Gore (D-TN), and Susan Baker, the wife of then-Secretary of State James Baker. Tipper Gore and Snider had a publicly antagonistic relationship as a consequence, with Snider accusing her of having a "dirty mind" for alleging that the lyrics of "Under the Blade" contained sadomasochistic undertones, when they were in fact about medical surgery. Snider also alleged during the Senate hearing that Tipper Gore had fabricated evidence concerning merchandise sold by the band when she stated that "the t-shirts that kids wear" featured "Twisted Sister and a woman in handcuffs sort of spread-eagled". Snider challenged her to produce such a shirt, to which Al Gore clarified that "the word 't-shirts' was in plural, and one of them referred to Twisted Sister and the other referred to a woman in handcuffs".


title: Dee Snider

text: The fifth Twisted Sister album was "Love Is for Suckers" (1987). The record was originally planned to have been a Snider solo effort, but Atlantic Records encouraged a release under the Twisted Sister name. Touring lasted only into October 1987, and on October 12, 1987, Snider announced his departure from the band. It was during this time that Snider formed Desperado, a band featuring ex-Iron Maiden drummer Clive Burr, ex-Gillan guitarist Bernie Torme, and bassist Marc Russel. The group's only album, "Ace", has never been officially released, but was heavily bootlegged on CD under the title "Bloodied But Unbowed".


title: Dee Snider

text: In the 1990s, Snider formed Widowmaker with Joe Franco, a good friend to Twisted Sister and drummer on the album "Love Is for Suckers", as well as Al Pitrelli and Marc Russel. The quartet recorded two albums with limited underground success, titled "Blood and Bullets" and "Stand By for Pain". In the late 1990s, Snider toured with a "self-tribute" band called Dee Snider's SMFs (Sick Mother Fuckers), sometimes featuring ex-Twisted Sister drummer A.J. Pero. The usual lineup included Snider, Derek Tailer, Charlie Mills, Keith Alexander, and Spike.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 1993, Snider composed the theme song for "The Terrible Thunderlizards". By 1994, Snider had, by his own admission: "...lost every penny I made. I was riding a bicycle to a desk job for $200 a week answering phones in an office." ()


title: Dee Snider

text: In 1997, Snider began hosting "The House of Hair", a syndicated 1980s hard rock/heavy metal radio show on over 200 radio stations across North America. It is syndicated by the United Stations Radio Networks. The show's format runs two or three hours depending on which version of the show a radio station carries and features Snider's closing catchphrase: "If it ain't metal, it's crap!"


title: Dee Snider

text: In 1998, Snider penned a song entitled "The Magic of Christmas Day (God Bless Us Everyone)", which Celine Dion recorded for her album "These Are Special Times". According to Snider, Dion at the time was not aware of who wrote the song. Later that year, he also wrote and starred in the horror film "Strangeland". Snider also penned the script to a sequel with the working title of "Strangeland: Disciple".


title: Dee Snider

text: As of January 2008, however, Snider was less than optimistic that "Disciple" would ever see the light of day, saying in an interview with Bullz-Eye.com that he had reached a point where he should: "...put a sign on my website that says, 'Y'got ten million dollars? Give me a call. I've got the script ready to go. Robert Englund's attached, I'm attached. If somebody's serious and wants to make it, call me. But don't call me 'til you're ready to hand the check over.


title: Dee Snider

text: In May 2009, Snider revealed on his radio show "The House of Hair" that "Strangeland: Rising Sons" would go ahead and was set to begin shooting in the fall of 2009 and would be slated for a 2010 release.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider indicated in a fall of 2016 interview that "Strangeland: Disciple" was still not being actively developed.


title: Dee Snider

text: From June 1999 to August 2003, Snider hosted a morning radio show on a Hartford, Connecticut Clear Channel station, Radio 104 (104.1 FM WMRQ), called "Dee Snider Radio". His show returned to the air at night in August 2004 on 93.3 WMMR in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania until June 2005. He fondly referred to his listeners as his "Peeps", and "DEE" euro stickers, printed by the station, could be seen on the bumpers of his fans' cars throughout Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Other members of the morning show included Nick Lentino, Beth Lockwood, "Psycho Dan" Williams, Sean Robbins, and "Darkside Dave" Wallace. He frequently featured high-profile guests, including Ozzy Osbourne, pro wrestler Mick Foley, and Kiss singer/bassist Gene Simmons.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 2001, Snider was the voice of Gol Acheron, the main villain for the PlayStation 2 video game "". The following year, he rejoined with the reunited Twisted Sister. Snider also played himself in the 2002 TV-movie "". In 2003, he appeared with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger at campaign events during his drive to recall incumbent California Governor Gray Davis. Snider sang the Twisted Sister hit "We're Not Gonna Take It", which was adopted by the Schwarzenegger campaign.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider voiced Angry Jack in the episode "Shell Shocked" for the Nickelodeon cartoon "SpongeBob SquarePants". He admitted to being a massive fan of the show during an hour-long 10th anniversary documentary of the show in 2009, stating that to be asked to voice a character on the show was an absolute honor. He changed the lyrics of his famous "I Wanna Rock" to "Goofy Goober Rock" for "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie".


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider has narrated and hosted many shows and specials on VH1, film trailers, behind-the-scenes segments, and DVD special features. He was featured as the "voice" in the bumpers for MSNBC's 2001/2002 "Fiercely Independent" branding campaign.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 2003, Snider collaborated on a Halloween-themed project called Van Helsing's Curse. The project's first album, "Oculus Infernum", was released by Koch Records and featured a blend of heavy metal and orchestral elements in the style of Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The band began touring in 2004 and later released a DVD of the concert entitled "Live in Philly '05".


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider returned to radio in June 2006 with Fangoria Radio on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 102 from 9–12 Eastern.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider hosted VH1's 2008 "Aftermath" concert in remembrance of the victims and survivors of the 2003 Station nightclub fire. During the winter of 2008, Snider was featured as a contestant on CMT's "Gone Country". The show invited musical celebrities to compete against each other to win the chance to release a country song. In 2008 Snider also appeared on the first episode of "Kitchen Nightmares" (Season 2), chosen by Gordon Ramsay as part of the marketing for the re-launch of the Handlebar restaurant. On the show, Snider donated a motorcycle on which Handlebar clientele could bid via the restaurant's website.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider has also hosted "House of Hair", a radio show that plays heavy metal music. Snider has made appearances on the IFC Channel's original series "Z Rock" as himself playing the character of a "rock guru".


title: Dee Snider

text: On July 27, 2010, Snider and his family began appearing in the reality television show "Growing Up Twisted," airing on the Arts and Entertainment Network.


title: Dee Snider

text: On October 8, 2010, Snider started an 11-week run in the cast of "Rock of Ages" as Dennis, the owner of The Bourbon Room, with his official start date being October 11.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 2011, Snider performed with Ohio-based metalcore band Attack Attack! on stage at the Bamboozle Festival playing their song "Turbo Swag". On the May 15, 2011 episode of "The Apprentice", Snider appeared to assist John Rich with his final challenge. He starred in a commercial featuring a mock audition where he came on as himself, and after drinking a soda turns into the lead singer from Twisted Sister (himself). Snider agreed to come because he is personal friends with Rich and wanted to support the charity effort for St. Jude Medical Center.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider guest starred in the video for "Immaculate Misconception" by the metalcore band Motionless in White. Snider's son, Cody Blue Snider, directed the video.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider and his family appeared on "Celebrity Wife Swap" January 10, 2012. His wife Suzette traded places with Flavor Flav's long-time fiancée Liz.


title: Dee Snider

text: On the Valentine's Day 2012 taping of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon", Snider partnered with Donald Trump in a skit based upon the format of the TV game show, "Password". On February 19, 2012, Snider began appearing as one of 18 contestants vying to become Trump's next "Celebrity Apprentice" and was fired after the eighth task during the seventh episode.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 2012, Snider appeared as the main character of a commercial airing for the company Unibet. The video has been broadcast on commercial Norwegian television from March 5, 2012, through the whole summer. In the spot Snider sings, in his distinctive look as leader of Twisted Sister, a rock song called "Bet", written by Snider himself and composed by the Norwegian heavy metal artist Ronni Le Tekrø.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider asked Republican vice presidential running mate Paul Ryan's camp not to play his hit song in their campaign.


title: Dee Snider

text: On September 6, 2012, Snider performed "We're Not Gonna Take It" on "America's Got Talent". Also in 2012, Snider played Larry, the owner of a dive bar in the mockumentary "Future Folk" about an alien bluegrass band.


title: Dee Snider

text: On January 24, 2013, at the City National Grove of Anaheim, Snider was honored as roastee at the "Revolver Magazine"/"Guitar World" Rock and Roll Roast of Dee Snider.


title: Dee Snider

text: On November 4, 2014, Snider debuted his original Christmas musical, "Dee Snider's Rock and Roll Christmas Tale", at the Broadway Playhouse in Chicago. During the 2015 Christmas season, he took the musical to Toronto.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider provided the narration for "", which is a documentary film directed by Drew Fortier about the 1980s hard rock band Bang Tango.


title: Dee Snider

text: On May 27, 2021, Snider announced his new upcoming solo album "Leave A Scar". He also released the single "I Gotta Rock (Again)" which he described as the "driving motivation" and "starting gun for this album". "Leave A Scar" will be produced by Jamey Jasta, the lead singer of the band Hatebreed, with mixing and mastering done by Nick Bellmore. The album features guest appearances by Cannibal Corpse's singer Corpsegrinder on the track "Time To Choose". Music videos were released for the songs "I Gotta Rock (Again)", "Down But Never Out", and "Time To Choose". The album was released on July 30, 2021.


title: Dee Snider

text: On July 11, 2013, after abortion rights activists sang "We're Not Gonna Take It" to protest abortion restrictions in Texas, Snider tweeted that he is "pro-choice", and that he did not believe that being Christian and "pro-choice" were mutually exclusive.


title: Dee Snider

text: In the wake of teachers' strikes in West Virginia and Oklahoma, Snider dedicated "We're Not Gonna Take It" to teachers during his "Rocktopia" performance at the Broadway Theatre in New York on April 9, 2018. The song had become an anthem for protesting teachers in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma and elsewhere, and Snider had tweeted his "support [of the] underpaid teacher's cause" after seeing a video of music teachers in Oklahoma performing the song.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 2021, Snider objected to the use of the song by demonstrators in Fort Lauderdale protesting face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Snider approved the use of "We're Not Gonna Take It" by the Ukrainians.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider has been married to his wife Suzette, a costume designer, since 1981. They have four children, Jesse Blaze Snider (born September 19, 1982), Shane Royal Snider (born February 29, 1988), Cody Blue Snider (born December 7, 1989), and Cheyenne Jean Snider (born October 31, 1996) who was in the band They All Float. He also has four grandchildren.


title: Dee Snider

text: In the 1985 Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) Senate hearings, Snider stated: "I was born and raised a Christian, and I still adhere to those principles."


title: Dee Snider

text: In 2003, Snider's brother-in-law, Vincent Gargiulo, was murdered. The killer was apprehended in 2009.


title: Dee Snider

text: Snider lived part-time in East Setauket, New York. He appeared on "MTV Cribs" in 2005 to show his Long Island home, along with two of his four children, Shane and Cheyenne.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 2008, he stated in a TMZ interview that he would be voting for Barack Obama because John McCain (whom he liked and supported for many years) would not acknowledge George W. Bush's mistakes that he made while in office.


title: Dee Snider

text: In 1987, Snider and co-author Philip Bashe published "Dee Snider's Teenage Survival Guide", a self-help manual for adolescence. His autobiography, "Shut up and give me the mic", was published in 2012. He wrote "We're Not Gonna Take It", a children's book illustrated by Margaret McCartney, which was published in 2020. In 2022, a graphic novel collaboration between Snider, writer Frank Marraffino, and artist Steve Kurth, was announced by Z2 Comics, scheduled for publication in 2023.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado and music by Galt MacDermot. The work reflects the creators' observations of the hippie counterculture and sexual revolution of the late 1960s, and several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. The musical's profanity, its depiction of the use of illegal drugs, its treatment of sexuality, its irreverence for the American flag, and its nude scene caused much comment and controversy. The work broke new ground in musical theatre by defining the genre of "rock musical", using a racially integrated cast, and inviting the audience onstage for a "Be-In" finale.


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" tells the story of the "tribe", a group of politically active, long-haired hippies of the "Age of Aquarius" living a bohemian life in New York City and fighting against conscription into the Vietnam War. Claude, his good friend Berger, their roommate Sheila and their friends struggle to balance their young lives, loves, and the sexual revolution with their rebellion against the war and their conservative parents and society. Ultimately, Claude must decide whether to resist the draft as his friends have done, or to serve in Vietnam, compromising his pacifist principles and risking his life.


title: Hair (musical)

text: After an off-Broadway debut on October 17, 1967, at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and a run at the Cheetah nightclub from December 1967 through January 1968, the show opened on Broadway in April 1968 and ran for 1,750 performances. Simultaneous productions in cities across the United States and Europe followed shortly thereafter, including a successful London production that ran for 1,997 performances. Since then, numerous productions have been staged around the world, spawning dozens of recordings of the musical, including the 3 million-selling original Broadway cast recording. Some of the songs from its score became Top 10 hits, and a feature film adaptation was released in 1979. A Broadway revival opened in 2009, earning strong reviews and winning the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Revival of a Musical. In 2008, "Time" wrote, "Today "Hair" seems, if anything, more daring than ever."


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" was conceived by actors James Rado and Gerome Ragni. The two met in 1964 when they performed together in the Off-Broadway flop "Hang Down Your Head and Die", and they began writing "Hair" together in late 1964. The main characters were autobiographical, with Rado's Claude being a pensive romantic and Ragni's Berger an extrovert. Their close relationship, including its volatility, was reflected in the musical. Rado explained, "We were great friends. It was a passionate kind of relationship that we directed into creativity, into writing, into creating this piece. We put the drama between us on stage."


title: Hair (musical)

text: Rado described the inspiration for "Hair" as "a combination of some characters we met in the streets, people we knew and our own imaginations. We knew this group of kids in the East Village who were dropping out and dodging the draft, and there were also lots of articles in the press about how kids were being kicked out of school for growing their hair long". He recalled, "There was so much excitement in the streets and the parks and the hippie areas, and we thought if we could transmit this excitement to the stage it would be wonderful. ... We hung out with them and went to their Be-Ins [and] let our hair grow." Many cast members (Shelley Plimpton in particular) were recruited right off the street. Rado said, "It was very important historically, and if we hadn't written it, there'd not be any examples. You could read about it and see film clips, but you'd never "experience" it. We thought, 'This is happening in the streets', and we wanted to bring it to the stage." According to Rado's obituary in "The New York Times", the title was inspired by "a museum stroll in mid-1965, [when he and Ragni saw] a painting of a tuft of hair by the Pop artist Jim Dine. Its title was 'Hair'."


title: Hair (musical)

text: Rado and Ragni came from different artistic backgrounds. In college, Rado wrote musical revues and aspired to be a Broadway composer in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition. He went on to study acting with Lee Strasberg. Ragni, on the other hand, was an active member of The Open Theater, one of several groups, mostly Off-off Broadway, that were developing experimental theatre techniques. He introduced Rado to the modern theatre styles and methods being developed at The Open Theater. In 1966, while the two were developing "Hair", Ragni performed in The Open Theater's production of Megan Terry's play, "Viet Rock", a story about young men being deployed to the Vietnam War. In addition to the war theme, "Viet Rock" employed the improvisational exercises being used in the experimental theatre scene and later used in the development of "Hair".


title: Hair (musical)

text: Rado and Ragni brought their drafts of the show to producer Eric Blau who, through common friend Nat Shapiro, connected the two with Canadian composer Galt MacDermot. MacDermot had won a Grammy Award in 1961 for his composition "African Waltz" (recorded by Cannonball Adderley). The composer's lifestyle was in marked contrast to his co-creators: "I had short hair, a wife, and, at that point, four children, and I lived on Staten Island." "I never even heard of a hippie when I met Rado and Ragni." But he shared their enthusiasm to do a rock and roll show. "We work independently", explained MacDermot in May 1968. "I prefer it that way. They hand me the material. I set it to music." MacDermot wrote the first score in three weeks, starting with the songs "I Got Life", "Ain't Got No", "Where Do I Go" and the title song. He first wrote "Aquarius" as an unconventional art piece, but later rewrote it into an uplifting anthem.


title: Hair (musical)

text: The creators pitched the show to Broadway producers and received many rejections. Eventually Joe Papp, who ran the New York Shakespeare Festival, decided he wanted "Hair" to open the new Public Theater (still under construction) in New York City's East Village. The musical was the first work by living authors that Papp produced. The director, Gerald Freedman, the theater's associate artistic director, decided that Rado, at 35, was too old to play Claude, although he agreed to cast the 32-year-old Ragni as Berger. The production did not go smoothly: "The rehearsal and casting process was confused, the material itself incomprehensible to many of the theater's staff. [Freedman] withdrew in frustration during the final week of rehearsals and offered his resignation. Papp accepted it, and the choreographer Anna Sokolow took over the show. ... After a disastrous final dress rehearsal, Papp wired Mr. Freedman in Washington, where he'd fled: 'Please come back.' Mr. Freedman did."


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" premiered off-Broadway at the Public on October 17, 1967, and ran for a limited engagement of six weeks. The lead roles were played by Walker Daniels as Claude, Ragni as Berger, Jill O'Hara as Sheila, Steve Dean as Woof, Arnold Wilkerson as Hud, Sally Eaton as Jeanie and Shelley Plimpton as Crissy. Set design was by Ming Cho Lee, costume design by Theoni Aldredge, and, although Anna Sokolow began rehearsals as choreographer, Freedman received choreographer credit. Although the production had a "tepid critical reception", it was popular with audiences. A cast album was released in 1967.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Chicago businessman Michael Butler was planning to run for the U.S. Senate on an anti-war platform. After seeing an ad for "Hair" in "The New York Times" that led him to believe the show was about Native Americans, he watched the Public's production several times and joined forces with Joe Papp to reproduce the show at another New York venue after the close of its run at the Public. Papp and Butler first moved the show to The Cheetah, a discothèque at 53rd Street and Broadway. It opened there on December 22, 1967, and ran for 45 performances. There was no nudity in either the Public Theater or Cheetah production.


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" underwent a thorough overhaul between its closing at the Cheetah in January 1968 and its Broadway opening three months later. The off-Broadway book, already light on plot, was loosened even further and made more realistic. were added, including "Let the Sun Shine In", to make the ending more uplifting.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Before the move to Broadway, the creative team hired director Tom O'Horgan, who had built a reputation directing experimental theater at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. He had been the authors' first choice to direct the Public Theater production, but he was in Europe at the time. "Newsweek" described O'Horgan's directing style as "sensual, savage, and thoroughly musical ... [he] disintegrates verbal structure and often breaks up and distributes narrative and even character among different actors. ... He enjoys sensory bombardment." In rehearsals, O'Horgan used techniques passed down by Viola Spolin and Paul Sills involving role playing and improvisational "games". Many of the improvisations tried during this process were incorporated into the Broadway script. O'Horgan and new choreographer Julie Arenal encouraged freedom and spontaneity in their actors, introducing "an organic, expansive style of staging" that had never been seen before on Broadway. The inspiration to include nudity came when the authors saw an anti-war demonstration in Central Park where two men stripped naked as an expression of defiance and freedom, and they decided to incorporate the idea into the show. O'Horgan had used nudity in many of the plays he directed, and he helped integrate the idea into the fabric of the show.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Papp declined to pursue a Broadway production, and so Butler produced the show himself. For a time it seemed that Butler would be unable to secure a Broadway theater, as the Shuberts, Nederlanders and other theater owners deemed the material too controversial. However, Butler had family connections and knew important people; he persuaded Biltmore Theatre owner David Cogan to make his venue available.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Claude sits center stage as the "tribe" mingles with the audience. Tribe members Sheila, a New York University student who is a determined political activist, and Berger, an irreverent free spirit, cut a lock of Claude's hair and burn it in a receptacle. After the tribe converges in slow-motion toward the stage, through the audience, they begin their celebration as children of the Age of Aquarius ("Aquarius"). Berger removes his trousers to reveal a loincloth. Interacting with the audience, he introduces himself as a "psychedelic teddy bear" and reveals that he is "looking for my Donna" ("Donna").


title: Hair (musical)

text: The tribe recites a list of pharmaceuticals, legal and illegal ("Hashish"). Woof, a gentle soul, extols several sexual practices ("Sodomy") and says, "I grow things." He loves plants, his family and the audience, telling the audience, "We are all one." Hud, a militant African-American, is carried in upside down on a pole. He declares himself "president of the United States of Love" ("Colored Spade"). In a fake English accent, Claude says that he is "the most beautiful beast in the forest" from "Manchester, England". A tribe member reminds him that he's really from Flushing, New York ("Manchester England"). Hud, Woof and Berger declare what color they are ("I'm Black"), while Claude says that he's "invisible". The tribe recites a list of things they lack ("Ain't Got No"). Four African-American tribe members recite street signs in symbolic sequence ("Dead End").


title: Hair (musical)

text: Sheila is carried onstage ("I Believe in Love") and leads the tribe in a protest chant. Jeanie, an eccentric young woman, appears wearing a gas mask, satirizing pollution ("Air"). She is pregnant and in love with Claude. Although she wishes it was Claude's baby, she was "knocked up by some crazy speed freak". The tribe link together LBJ (President Lyndon B. Johnson), FBI (the Federal Bureau of Investigation), CIA (the Central Intelligence Agency) and LSD ("Initials"). Six members of the tribe appear dressed as Claude's parents, berating him for his various transgressions – he does not have a job, and he collects "mountains of paper" clippings and notes. They say that they will not give him any more money, and "the army'll make a man out of you", presenting him with his draft notice. In defiance, Claude leads the tribe in celebrating their vitality ("I Got Life").


title: Hair (musical)

text: After handing out imaginary pills to the tribe members, saying the pills are for high-profile people such as Richard Nixon, the Pope, and "Alabama Wallace", Berger relates how he was expelled from high school. Three tribe members dress up as principals in Hitler mustaches and swastika arm bands, mocking the American education system. Berger and the tribe defy them, singing "Going Down". Claude returns from his draft board physical, which he passed. He pretends to burn his Vietnam War draft card, which Berger reveals as a library card. Claude agonizes about what to do about being drafted.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Two tribe members dressed as tourists come down the aisle to ask the tribe why they have such long hair. In answer, Claude and Berger lead the tribe in explaining the significance of their locks ("Hair"). The woman states that kids should "be free, no guilt" and should "do whatever you want, just so long as you don't hurt anyone." She observes that long hair is natural, like the "elegant plumage" of male birds ("My Conviction"). She opens her coat to reveal that she's a man in drag. As the couple leaves, the tribe calls her Margaret Mead.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Sheila gives Berger a yellow shirt. He goofs around and ends up tearing it in two. Sheila voices her distress that Berger seems to care more about the "bleeding crowd" than about her ("Easy to Be Hard"). Jeanie summarizes everyone's romantic entanglements: "I'm hung up on Claude, Sheila's hung up on Berger, Berger is hung up everywhere. Claude is hung up on a cross over Sheila and Berger." Berger, Woof and another tribe member pay satiric tribute to the American flag as they fold it ("Don't Put it Down"). The tribe runs out to the audience, inviting them to a Be-In. After young and innocent Crissy describes "Frank Mills", a boy she's looking for, the tribe participates in the "Be-In". The men of the tribe burn their draft cards. Claude puts his card in the fire, then changes his mind and pulls it out. He asks, "where is the something, where is the someone, that tells me why I live and die?" ("Where Do I Go"). The tribe emerges naked, intoning "beads, flowers, freedom, happiness."


title: Hair (musical)

text: Four tribe members have the "Electric Blues". After a black-out, the tribe enters worshiping in an attempt to summon Claude ("Oh Great God of Power"). Claude returns from the induction center, and tribe members act out an imagined conversation from Claude's draft interview, with Hud saying "the draft is white people sending black people to make war on the yellow people to defend the land they stole from the red people". Claude gives Woof a Mick Jagger poster, and Woof is excited about the gift, as he has said he's hung up on Jagger. Three white women of the tribe tell why they like "Black Boys" ("black boys are delicious ..."), and three black women of the tribe, dressed like The Supremes, explain why they like "White Boys" ("white boys are so pretty ...").


title: Hair (musical)

text: Berger gives a joint to Claude that is laced with a hallucinogen. Claude starts to trip as the tribe acts out his visions ("Walking in Space"). He hallucinates that he is skydiving from a plane into the jungles of Vietnam. Berger appears as General George Washington and is told to retreat because of an Indian attack. The Indians shoot all of Washington's men. General Ulysses S. Grant appears and begins a roll call: Abraham Lincoln (played by a black female tribe member), John Wilkes Booth, Calvin Coolidge, Clark Gable, Scarlett O'Hara, Aretha Franklin, Colonel George Custer. Claude Bukowski is called in the roll call, but Clark Gable says "he couldn't make it". They all dance a minuet until three African witch doctors kill them – all except for Abraham Lincoln who says, "I'm one of you". Lincoln, after the three Africans sing his praises, recites an alternate version of the Gettysburg Address ("Abie Baby"). Booth shoots Lincoln, but Lincoln says to him, "Shit! I'm not dyin' for no white man".


title: Hair (musical)

text: As the visions continue, four Buddhist monks enter. One monk pours a can of gasoline over another monk, who is set afire (reminiscent of the self-immolation of Thích Quảng Đức) and runs off screaming. Three Catholic nuns strangle the three remaining Buddhist monks. Three astronauts shoot the nuns with ray guns. Three Chinese people stab the astronauts with knives. Three Native Americans kill the Chinese with bows and tomahawks. Three green berets kill the Native Americans with machine guns and then kill each other. A Sergeant and two parents appear holding up a suit on a hanger. The parents talk to the suit as if it is their son and they are very proud of him. The bodies rise and play like children. The play escalates to violence until they are all dead again. They rise again and comment about the casualties in Vietnam: "It's a dirty little war" ("Three-Five-Zero-Zero"). At the end of the trip sequence, two tribe members sing, over the dead bodies, a Shakespeare speech about the nobility of Man ("What A Piece of Work Is Man"), set to music.


title: Hair (musical)

text: After the trip, Claude says "I can't take this moment to moment living on the streets. ... I know what I want to be ... invisible". As they "look at the moon," Sheila and the others enjoy a light moment ("Good Morning Starshine"). The tribe pays tribute to an old mattress ("The Bed"). Claude is left alone with his doubts. He leaves as the tribe enters wrapped in blankets in the midst of a snow storm. They start a protest chant and then wonder where Claude has gone. Berger calls out "Claude! Claude!" Claude enters dressed in a military uniform, his hair short, but they do not see him because he is an invisible spirit. Claude says, "like it or not, they got me."


title: Hair (musical)

text: Claude and everyone sing "Flesh Failures". The tribe moves in front of Claude as Sheila and Dionne take up the lyric. The whole tribe launches into "Let the Sun Shine In", and as they exit, they reveal Claude lying down center stage on a black cloth. During the curtain call, the tribe reprises "Let the Sun Shine In" and brings audience members up on stage to dance.


title: Hair (musical)

text: The original Broadway production also included Melba Moore as Dionne, Ronnie Dyson, Paul Jabara and Diane Keaton.


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on April 29, 1968. The production was directed by Tom O'Horgan and choreographed by Julie Arenal, with set design by Robin Wagner, costume design by Nancy Potts, and lighting design by Jules Fisher. The original Broadway "tribe" (i.e., cast) included authors Rado and Ragni, who played the lead roles of Claude and Berger, respectively, Kellogg as Sheila, Washington as Hud, Eaton and Plimpton reprising their off-Broadway roles as Jeanie and Crissy, Moore as Dionne, Curry as Woof, Dyson (who sang "Aquarius" and "What a Piece of Work is Man"), Jabara and Keaton (both Moore and Keaton later played Sheila). Among the performers who appeared in "Hair" during its original Broadway run were Ben Vereen, Keith Carradine, Barry McGuire, Ted Lange, Meat Loaf, La La Brooks, Mary Seymour (of Musique), Joe Butler, Peppy Castro (of the Blues Magoos), Robin McNamara, Heather MacRae (daughter of Gordon MacRae and Sheila MacRae), Eddie Rambeau, Vicki Sue Robinson, Beverly Bremers, Dale Soules and Kim Milford. It was the first Broadway show to have a regular ticket price of $50, with 12 of the seats at this price for sale to large corporations from July 1968. The top price when it opened was $11.


title: Hair (musical)

text: The "Hair" team soon became embroiled in a lawsuit with the organizers of the Tony Awards. After assuring producer Michael Butler that commencing previews by April 3, 1968, would assure eligibility for consideration for the 1968 Tonys, the New York Theatre League ruled "Hair" ineligible, moving the cutoff date to March 19. The producers brought suit but were unable to force the League to reconsider. At the 1969 Tonys, "Hair" was nominated for Best Musical and Best Director but lost out to "1776" in both categories. The production ran for four years and 1,750 performances, closing on July 1, 1972.


title: Hair (musical)

text: The West Coast version played at the Aquarius Theater in Los Angeles beginning about six months after the Broadway opening and running for an unprecedented two years. The Los Angeles tribe included Rado, Ragni, Ben Vereen (who replaced Ragni), Willie Weatherly (who played Berger and Claude), Ted Neeley (who replaced Rado), Meat Loaf, Gloria Jones, Táta Vega, Jobriath, Jennifer Warnes and Dobie Gray.


title: Hair (musical)

text: There were soon nine simultaneous productions in U.S. cities, followed by national tours. Among the performers in these were Joe Mantegna, André DeShields, and Alaina Reed (Chicago), David Lasley, David Patrick Kelly, Meat Loaf, and Shaun Murphy (Detroit) Arnold McCuller (tour), Bob Bingham (Seattle) and Philip Michael Thomas (San Francisco). The creative team from Broadway worked on "Hair" in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, as the Broadway staging served as a rough template for these and other early regional productions. A notable addition to the team in Los Angeles was Tom Smothers, who served as co-producer. Regional casts consisted mostly of local actors, although a few Broadway cast members reprised their roles in other cities. O'Horgan or the authors sometimes took new ideas and improvisations from a regional show and brought them back to New York, such as when live chickens were tossed onto the stage in Los Angeles.


title: Hair (musical)

text: It was rare for so many productions to run simultaneously during an initial Broadway run. Producer Michael Butler, who had declared that "Hair" is "the strongest anti-war statement ever written", said the reason that he opened so many productions was to influence public opinion against the Vietnam War and end it as soon as possible.


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London on September 27, 1968, led by the same creative team as the Broadway production. The opening night was delayed until the abolition of theatre censorship in England under the Theatres Act 1968 so that the show could include nudity and profanity. As with other early productions, the London show added a sprinkling of local allusions and other minor departures from the Broadway version.


title: Hair (musical)

text: The original London tribe included Sonja Kristina, Peter Straker, Paul Nicholas, Melba Moore, Annabel Leventon, Elaine Paige, Paul Korda, Marsha Hunt, Floella Benjamin, Alex Harvey, Oliver Tobias, Richard O'Brien and Tim Curry. This was Curry's first full-time theatrical acting role, where he met future "Rocky Horror Show" collaborator O'Brien. "Hair"s engagement in London surpassed the Broadway production, running for 1,997 performances until its closure was forced by the roof of the theatre collapsing in July 1973.


title: Hair (musical)

text: The job of leading the foreign language productions of "Hair" was given to Bertrand Castelli, Butler's partner and executive producer of the Broadway show. Castelli was a writer/producer who traveled in Paris art circles and rubbed elbows with Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. Butler described him as a "crazy showman ... the guy with the business suit and beads". Castelli decided to do the show in the local language of each country at a time when Broadway shows were always done in English. The translations followed the original script closely, and the Broadway stagings were used. Each script contained local references, such as street names and the names or depictions of local politicians and celebrities. Castelli produced companies in France, Germany, Mexico and other countries, sometimes also directing the productions. The first European production opened in Stockholm, Sweden, on September 20, 1968, with a cast including Ulf Brunnberg and Bill Öhrström, produced and directed by Pierre Fränckel and choreographed by Julie Arenal, and ran for 134 performances until March 1969.


title: Hair (musical)

text: A German production, directed by Castelli, opened a month later in Munich; the tribe included Donna Summer, Liz Mitchell and Donna Wyant. A successful Parisian production of "Hair" opened on June 1, 1969. The original Australian production premiered in Sydney on June 6, 1969, produced by Harry M. Miller and directed by Jim Sharman, who also designed the production. The tribe included Keith Glass and then Reg Livermore as Berger, John Waters as Claude and Sharon Redd as The Magician. Redd was one of six African-Americans brought to Australia to provide a racially integrated tribe. The production broke local box-office records and ran for two years, but because of some of the language in the show, the cast album was banned in Queensland and New Zealand. The production transferred to Melbourne in 1971 and then had a national tour. It marked the stage debut of Boston-born Australian vocalist Marcia Hines. In Mexico the production was banned by the government after one night in Acapulco. An 18-year-old Sônia Braga appeared in the 1969 Brazilian production.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Another notable production was in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, in 1969. It was the first "Hair" to be produced in a communist country. The show, translated into Serbian, was directed by female producer-director Mira Trailović at the Atelje 212 theatre. It featured Dragan Nikolić, Branko Milićević, Seka Sablić and Dušan Prelević. Over four years, the production received 250 performances and was attended by president Tito. Local references in the script included barbs aimed at Mao Zedong as well as Albania, Yugoslavia's traditional rival.


title: Hair (musical)

text: By 1970, "Hair" was a huge financial success, and nineteen productions had been staged outside of North America. In addition to those named above, these included productions in Scandinavia, South America, Italy, Israel, Japan, Canada, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. According to "Billboard", the various productions of the show were raking in almost $1 million every ten days, and royalties were being collected for 300 different recordings of the show's songs, making it "the most successful score in history as well as the most performed score ever written for the Broadway stage."


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" explores many of the themes of the hippie movement of the 1960s. Theatre writer Scott Miller described these as follows:


title: Hair (musical)

text: [T]he youth of America, especially those on college campuses, started protesting all the things that they saw wrong with America: racism, environmental destruction, poverty, sexism and sexual repression, violence at home and the war in Vietnam, depersonalization from new technologies, and corruption in politics. ... Contrary to popular opinion, the hippies had great respect for America and believed that they were the true patriots, the only ones who genuinely wanted to save our country and make it the best it could be once again. ... [Long] hair was the hippies' flag – their ... symbol not only of rebellion but also of new possibilities, a symbol of the rejection of discrimination and restrictive gender roles (a philosophy celebrated in the song "My Conviction"). It symbolized equality between men and women. ... [T]he hippies' chosen clothing also made statements. Drab work clothes (jeans, work shirts, pea coats) were a rejection of materialism. Clothing from other cultures, particularly the Third World and native Americans, represented their awareness of the global community and their rejection of U.S. imperialism and selfishness. Simple cotton dresses and other natural fabrics were a rejection of synthetics, a return to natural things and simpler times. Some hippies wore old World War II or Civil War jackets as way of co-opting the symbols of war into their newfound philosophy of nonviolence.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Extending the precedents set by "Show Boat" (1927) and "Porgy and Bess" (1935), "Hair" opened the Broadway musical to racial integration; fully one-third of the cast was African American. Except for satirically in skits, the roles for the black members of the tribe portrayed them as equals, breaking away from the traditional roles for black people in entertainment as slaves or servants. An "Ebony" magazine article declared that the show was the biggest outlet for black actors in the history of the U.S. stage.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Several songs and scenes from the show address racial issues. "Colored Spade", which introduces the character Hud, a militant black male, is a long list of racial slurs ("jungle bunny ... little black sambo") topped off with the declaration that Hud is the "president of the United States of love". At the end of his song, he tells the tribe that the "boogie man" will get them, as the tribe pretends to be frightened. "Dead End", sung by black tribe members, is a list of street signs that symbolize black frustration and alienation. One of the tribe's protest chants is "What do we think is really great? To bomb, lynch and segregate!" "Black Boys/White Boys" is an exuberant acknowledgement of interracial sexual attraction; the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down laws banning interracial marriage in 1967. Another of the tribe's protest chants is "Black, white, yellow, red. Copulate in a king-sized bed."


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Abie Baby" is part of the Act 2 "trip" sequence: four African witch doctors, who have just killed various American historical, cultural and fictional characters, sing the praises of Abraham Lincoln, portrayed by a black female tribe member, whom they decide not to kill. The first part of the song contains stereotypical language that black characters used in old movies, like "I's finished ... pluckin' y'all's chickens" and "I's free now thanks to y'all, Master Lincoln". The Lincoln character then recites a modernized version of the Gettysburg Address, while a white female tribe member polishes Lincoln's shoes with her blond hair.


title: Hair (musical)

text: The many references to Native Americans throughout the script are part of the anti-consumerism, naturalism focus of the hippie movement and of "Hair". The characters in the show are referred to as the "tribe", borrowing the term for Native American communities. The cast of each production chooses a tribal name: "The practice is not just cosmetic ... the entire cast must work together, must like each other, and often within the show, must work as a single organism. All the sense of family, of belonging, of responsibility and loyalty inherent in the word 'tribe' has to be felt by the cast." To enhance this feeling, O'Horgan put the cast through sensitivity exercises based on trust, touching, listening and intensive examination that broke down barriers between the cast and crew and encouraged bonding. These exercises were based on techniques developed at the Esalen Institute and Polish Lab Theater. The idea of Claude, Berger and Sheila living together is another facet of the 1960s concept of "tribe".


title: Hair (musical)

text: The brief nude scene at the end of Act I was a subject of controversy and notoriety. Miller writes that "nudity was a big part of the hippie culture, both as a rejection of the sexual repression of their parents and also as a statement about naturalism, spirituality, honesty, openness, and freedom. The naked body was beautiful, something to be celebrated and appreciated, not scorned and hidden. They saw their bodies and their sexuality as gifts, not as 'dirty' things."


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" glorifies sexual freedom in a variety of ways. In addition to acceptance of interracial attraction, the characters' lifestyle acts as a sexually and politically charged updating of "La bohème"; as Rado explained, "The love element of the peace movement was palpable." In the song "Sodomy", Woof exhorts everyone to "join the holy orgy Kama Sutra". Toward the end of Act 2, the tribe members reveal their free love tendencies when they banter back and forth about who will sleep with whom that night. Woof has a crush on Mick Jagger, and a three-way embrace between Claude, Berger and Sheila turns into a Claude–Berger kiss.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Various illegal drugs are taken by the characters during the course of the show, most notably a hallucinogen during the trip sequence. The song "Walking in Space" begins the sequence, and the lyrics celebrate the experience declaring "how dare they try to end this beauty ... in this dive we rediscover sensation ... our eyes are open, wide, wide, wide". Similarly, in the song "Donna", Berger sings that "I'm evolving through the drugs that you put down." At another point, Jeanie smokes marijuana and dismisses the critics of "pot". Generally, the tribe favors hallucinogenic or "mind expanding" drugs, such as LSD and marijuana, while disapproving of other drugs such as speed and depressants. For example, Jeanie, after revealing that she is pregnant by a "speed freak", says that "methedrine is a bad scene". The song "Hashish" provides a list of pharmaceuticals, both illegal and legal, including cocaine, alcohol, LSD, opium and Thorazine, which is used as an antipsychotic.


title: Hair (musical)

text: The theme of opposition to the war that pervades the show is unified by the plot thread that progresses through the book – Claude's moral dilemma over whether to burn his draft card. Pacifism is explored throughout the extended trip sequence in Act 2. The lyrics to "Three-Five-Zero-Zero", which is sung during that sequence, evoke the horrors of war ("ripped open by metal explosion"). The song is based on Allen Ginsberg's 1966 poem, "Wichita Vortex Sutra". In the poem, General Maxwell Taylor proudly reports to the press the number of enemy soldiers killed in one month, repeating it digit by digit, for effect: "Three-Five-Zero-Zero." The song begins with images of death and dying and turns into a manic dance number, echoing Maxwell's glee at reporting the enemy casualties, as the tribe chants "Take weapons up and begin to kill". The song also includes the repeated phrase "Prisoners in niggertown/ It's a dirty little war".


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Don't Put It Down" satirizes the unexamined patriotism of people who are "crazy for the American flag". "Be In (Hare Krishna)" praises the peace movement and events like the San Francisco and Central Park Be-Ins. Throughout the show, the tribe chants popular protest slogans like "What do we want? Peace!  – When do we want it? Now!" and "Do not enter the induction center". The upbeat song, "Let the Sun Shine In", is a call to action, to reject the darkness of war and change the world for the better.


title: Hair (musical)

text: "Hair" also aims its satire at the pollution caused by civilization. Jeanie appears from a trap door in the stage wearing a gas mask and then sings the song "Air": "Welcome, sulfur dioxide. Hello carbon monoxide. The air ... is everywhere". She suggests that pollution will eventually kill her, "vapor and fume at the stone of my tomb, breathing like a sullen perfume". In a comic, pro-green vein, when Woof introduces himself, he explains that he "grows things" like "beets, and corn ... and sweet peas" and that he "loves the flowers and the fuzz and the trees".


title: Hair (musical)

text: Religion, particularly Catholicism, appears both overtly and symbolically throughout the piece, and it is often made the brunt of a joke. Berger sings of looking for "my Donna", giving it the double meaning of the woman he's searching for and the Madonna. During "Sodomy", a hymn-like paean to all that is "dirty" about sex, the cast strikes evocative religious positions: the Pietà and Christ on the cross. Before the song, Woof recites a modified rosary. In Act II, when Berger gives imaginary pills to various famous figures, he offers "a pill for the Pope". In "Going Down", after being kicked out of school, Berger compares himself to Lucifer: "Just like the angel that fell / Banished forever to hell / Today have I been expelled / From high school heaven." Claude becomes a classic Christ figure at various points in the script. In Act I, Claude enters, saying, "I am the Son of God. I shall vanish and be forgotten," then gives benediction to the tribe and the audience. Claude suffers from indecision, and, in his Gethsemane at the end of Act I, he asks "Where Do I Go?". There are textual allusions to Claude being on a cross, and, in the end, he is chosen to give his life for the others. Berger has been seen as a John the Baptist figure, preparing the way for Claude.


title: Hair (musical)

text: Songs like "Good Morning, Starshine" and "Aquarius" reflect the 1960s cultural interest in astrological and cosmic concepts. "Aquarius" was the result of Rado's research into his own astrological sign. The company's astrologer, Maria Crummere, was consulted about casting: Sheila was usually played by a Libra or Capricorn and Berger by a Leo, although Ragni, the original Berger, was a Virgo. Crummere was also consulted when deciding when the show would open on Broadway and in other cities. The 1971 Broadway "Playbill" reported that she chose April 29, 1968 for the Broadway premiere. "The 29th was auspicious ... because the moon was high, indicating that people would attend in masses. The position of the 'history makers' (Pluto, Uranus, Jupiter) in the 10th house made the show unique, powerful and a money-maker. And the fact that Neptune was on the ascendancy foretold that "Hair" would develop a reputation involving sex."


title: Hair (musical)

text: In Mexico, where Crummere did not pick the opening date, the show was closed down by the government after one night. She was not pleased with the date of the Boston opening (where the producers were sued over the show's content) saying, "Jupiter will be in opposition to naughty Saturn, and the show opens the very day of the sun's eclipse. Terrible." But there was no astrologically safe time in the near future.