Who is Phil Ochs

Phil Ochs - Who is Phil Ochs

by Cassandra Fleisher

When, in general polite conversation (with I must add a group of non musicians), you mention the name Phil Ochs, nine times out ten the reaction is 'Phil Ochs - who is Phil Ochs?'. Not even a who was or oh - that name seems to ring a bell. Now that I think of it, I must qualify the musician statement as well. Make that, musicians of a certain age or for that matter a certain way of thinking. And there by lies the first tragedy of Phil Ochs - his words, his music, his message all fading into obscurity. For that matter the tragedy is not simply his but ours as a community, as a civilization losing what we could truly use at a time when it could most matter.
This does however bring us back to the question -		photo © copyright Michael Ochs Archives
Who was Phil Ochs (pronounced Oaks) what was he all about and why should we care. The baisc facts are that Phil Ochs was a singer/songwriter during the 1960's . He fell into the category of folk or protest and his music was a reflection of his time. Ochs was a contemporary (and friend) of Bob Dylan. (who said: ``I just can't keep up with Phil. And he's getting better and better and better.'') He was a prolific writer of protest songs such as:
*Draft Dodger Rag*
	I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town I believe in God and Senator Dodd and keeping old Castro down And when it came my time to serve I knew better dead than red But when I got to my old draft board, buddy, this is what I said: Sarge, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen And I always carry a purse I got eyes like a bat, my feet are flat, and my asthma's getting worse O think of my career, my sweetheart dear, and my poor old invalid aunt Besides, I ain't no fool, I'm a goin' to school, and I'm working in a defense plant I Ain't Marchin' Anymore Oh I marched to the battle of New Orleans At the end of the early British war The young land started growing The young blood started flowing But I ain't marchin' anymore For I've killed my share of Indians In a thousand different fights I was there at the Little Big Horn I heard many men lying I saw many more dying But I ain't marchin' anymore
*Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends*
	Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed They've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
After putting out 7 albums in the 1960s he produced little in the 70's and, sadly, took his own life in 1976. Which of course brings us to the personal tragedy of Phil Ochs.
The tragedy is that of a man who cared too much, who gave all that he could and found that it still wasn't enough. His demon was his own conscious and sense of patriotism for a country whose ideals he loved and practices he could not understand.
There are of course more details on the life of Phil Ochs. Words have been written and his memory and spirit has been carried forward by a likeminded few. He was born on December 19, 1940. Thirty six years later, intensely disappointed by his lack of commercial success and haunted by other personal demons -- namely alcoholism, writer's block and depression -- Phil Ochs hung himself on April 9, 1976.
Phil Ochs was a protest singer of the early 1960s, perhaps best known for his songs "Power and Glory", "There But for Fortune", "Changes", "When I'm Gone", and "I Ain't Marching Anymore". He studied journalism at Ohio State University dropping out in his last year when he moved to New York City and became an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene. In his later studio albums (Pleasures of the Harbor (1967), Tape From California (1968), Rehearsals for Retirement (1968), and Phil Ochs' Greatest Hits (1970)) he moved away from topical songs and experimented with ensemble and even orchestral instrumentation.." The most popular tunes from these albums were "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends," "Chords of Fame," "Pleasures of the Harbor," "Crucifixion," and "Jim Dean of Indiana".
He was profoundly concerned with the escalation of the Vietnam War and sang with Chile's President Allende before his election and subsequent assassination in 1973. Ochs organized concerts to protest these Nixon-era developments, and re-recorded his old song "Here's To The State Of Mississippi" as "Here's To The State Of Richard Nixon".
Even though his name seems to have disappered into obsucrity his music and his words have left their mark. His songs have been covered by Jim and Jean, Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Ani DiFranco, Dick Gaughan, Eugene Chadbourne, John Wesley Harding and They Might Be Giants among many others
QUOTATIONS of PHIL OCHS
[The demonstrations were] merely an attack of mental disobedience on an obediently insane society...and if you feel you have been living in an unreal world for the last couple of years, it is particularly because this power structure has refused to listen to reason...Step outside the guidelines of the official umpires and make your own rules and your own reality.
From Phil's intro to The Marines Have Landed on the Shores of Santo Domingo on Phil Ochs in Concert and There But For Fortune
"Before the days of television and mass media, the folksinger was often a traveling newspaper spreading tales through music. There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song."
From Broadside
"Leave the old and dying America and use your creative energies to help form a new America, which would be de-militarized, more humanistic, where the police are less hostile and closer to the community, where the wealthy are not given unleashed power for the exploitation of the people. "And, mostly because it's now a matter of life and death, reassert an ecological balance with the environment, which means the people in the oil companies and the car companies and the space industry and all the other industries will have to be brought into account, so that there will be a new definition of government which has to be closer to the people and less close to special interests which are far more harmful than any revolutionaries."
Thinking of Phil Ochs, his message and his demons, it is somehow hard not to feel that if he were somehow brought back to the political atmosphere of the early 21st century that he would simply throw up his hands in despair and find a more permanent way of checking out.