Advocate Correspondent

Twenty-five years ago, on April 9, 1976, after Phil Ochs took his life at the age of 35, New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug called for a commemorative week.

"Phil Ochs’ poetic pronouncements," she read into the Congressional Record, "were part of a larger effort to galvanize his generation into taking action to prevent war, racism, and poverty. He left us a legacy of important songs that continue to be relevant."

A preeminent voice of protest and self-titled "singing journalist" during the Vietnam era, Philip David Ochs was born December 19, 1940 in El Paso, Texas to Jacob and Gertrude Ochs, the second of three children.

Ochs senior was the son of traditionally religious Polish refugees, who met his also-Jewish wife in her native Scotland while he was attending medical school with her brother. The family lived in Jacob’s mother Fanny Ochs’ Kosher home in the Lower East Side while Jacob served in the Army. He was discharged for manic depression, and was relegated to the field of institutional TB care in Far Rockaway, Perrysburgh NY, and, eventually, Columbus, Ohio. Moody and withdrawn, Phil became, under his mother’s encouragement, a superb clarinetist at local conservatories. When he was assaulted for being a "Jew-boy" he fought back, and his attacker became his sole friend.

In 1959 while at Ohio State, Ochs, whose then-heroes were John Wayne, James Dean and Elvis, was introduced to union politics through his roommate Jim Glover’s father. He and Jim formed the group The Sundowners. In a slight that would set the stage, so to speak, for future performance as well as professional discrimination, he was passed over for editor of the student paper because of his political preoccupation. Disgusted, he moved on to Greenwich Village and its folk scene of the early 1960’s, which included rising luminaries such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk and Eric Andersen.

Where Dylan branched off into electronica, Phil continued to hone the craft of topical songwriting. "Before the days of television and mass media," he told Broadside Magazine in 1962, "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."

Phil met and married Alice Skinner, with whom he had his only child, Meegan, that year.

Following a performance in the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, he released his first LP, "All the News That’s Fit to Sing", the first of 13 major label releases. Emulating Dylan’s move toward rock and roll and personal songwriting, his efforts never quite took off as well, though then-and-now fans attest to their comparative superiority.

"I Ain’t Marching Anymore," "(Outside of a) Small Circle of Friends," "Changes" and "Crucifixion", among many other Ochs masterpieces, certainly support this claim as they profoundly and exquisitely reflect both the inner and outer times of his life.

Phil was not actively Jewish. However, Jewish themes, in the Ochsian sociopolitical vein, are in his work. In "The Harder They Fall," from Tape From California (1968), he sang:

"Mother Goose is on the loose

Stealing lines from Lenny Bruce

Drinking booze and killing Jews

Gimme my Jews, gimme my booze, gimme my Jews

Six million jingles can't be wrong

From the dragon to the Viet Cong

Fairy tales have come along"

In "Love Me, I’m a Liberal," (Chords of Fame, 1976), he satirized these pseudo-revolutionaries:

"I read New Republic and Nation

I've learned to take every view

You know I've memorized Lerner and Golden

I feel like I'm almost a Jew

But when it comes to times like Korea

There's no one more red, white and blue

So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal"

Though supported by major 60’s icons such as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg and John Lennon, his adherence to an activist agenda, brusque, mercurial personality and penchant for wild political and career moves (such as a dismal gold-lame suit phase) tended to alienate rather than coalesce.

Following a less-than-expected turnout in Chicago in 1968, he felt that the movement had died, and he himself spiraled similarly downward into an abyss of drinking and street life. His father’s disease affected him as well, and a mysterious, controversial mugging on a remote beach in Kenya which left his vocal chords permanently damaged spelled further doom (his FBI record was, after all, 600+ pages long, and he was constantly trailed).

Posthumous Ochs appreciation has emerged in the form of recent CDs, including a Rhino Records boxed set, and biographies (Marc Eliot’s and Michael Schumacher’s are standouts), and Sean Penn is rumored to be interested in playing Phil in a film. Billy Bragg, Harry Chapin, They Might Be Giants, Arlo Guthrie, Dar Williams, Tom Paxton and others have eulogized him in song.

Why the enduring Ochs reverence? Phil was prescient, eerily so. Political and social change is a long, slow awakening; his themes and concerns seem to stick around, even today. In a 1969 interview with music writer Michael Ross, Phil could have been a critic of the Dubya administration when he stated:

"…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."

Celebrity worship and media excess, always a stumbling block to fostering public activism, stymied Phil then as it does now: "And if there's any hope for America," he told Ross, "it lies in a revolution, and if there's any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara."

Today’s Democrats might appreciate his liner notes from 1967’s "Have you Heard? The War is Over!", where he asks, "does defending liberalism leave you friendless and perhaps wondering about your breath?"

Would that Phil’s sense of humor had overcome his darker side. But that was not to be. Dismayed, homeless and destitute, he hung himself in early 1976 at his sister Sonny’s house, cutting short a brilliant, enigmatically tangled musical calling.

"When the Fascists started marching many millions had to pay;

We saw them rise to power but we looked the other way.

It happened once before and it can happen once again--

Will you show me that I didn't die in vain."

From "Remember Me", The Best of Broadside, 1989

Phil Ochs will be commemorated Monday, April 9 on WBUR’s Here and Now, and in a tribute concert in New Haven (203-624-3559, jvp@CTFolk.com) on that evening. Ongoing national Phil Ochs Song Nights produced by his sister Sonny continue, featuring major, topically oriented musical talent.