Everywhere, Hair

Youngsters begin lining up at the box office of Manhattan's Biltmore Theatre before dawn. Sidewalk scalpers hustle tickets for as much as $50 a pair. A year after its Broadway debut, the rock musical Hair is not only a nightly sellout in New York and Los Angeles but an international hit as well. It has been playing regularly to packed houses in London, Scandinavia and West Germany, and new productions are opening in Paris and Sydney.

By any measure, this electronically amplified paean to peace, pot and permissiveness has become the My Fair Lady of the Now Generation, and its success is even more striking on records. Hair is the first Broadway musical since Man of La Mancha to win a gold platter --the record industry's reward for selling $1,000,000 worth of disks. RCA Victor's original-cast recording has been the No. 1 album bestseller for seven weeks. Even Atlantic's recording of the London production has sold 60,000 copies in the U.S.

So far, 16 of the show's 26 songs have been released as singles. Last week, the 5th Dimension's double-bill Aquarius/ Let the Sunshine In, which has sold more than a million copies, was No. 3 on Billboard's top 100 records; the Cowsills' Hair is just a notch or so behind. Rising fast on the charts is a new disk of Good Morning Starshine by a singer named Oliver. Another performer who has successfully dipped into the Hair repertory is Nina Simone, whose soulful Ain't Got No/ I Got Life for a time was the top pop hit in Britain. Last month, the gospel-oriented Staple Singers came out with a lively version of Aquarius in "soul-folk." Peter Duchin, Barbra Streisand, Lester Lanin and Nelson Riddle have all taken Hair to heart. Next, Lawrence Welk?

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