He arrived in Greenwich Village before Dylan and helped him when he arrived with money and finding places to stay. He admired Dylan's style and growing popularity but even Dylan admitted that he could not keep up with Ochs prolific output and style of song writing. And for a long while Dylan, ever the plagiarist, copied much of his subject matter.
Ochs, like us all, had his faults and one of these was his honesty. Dylan, after he had achieved success once gave him a lift in his Cadillac and insisted that Ochs should listen to his latest album. Ochs told Dylan that he didn't much like it and, for his troubles, got kicked out of the car. There was later to be a reconciliation however when, after much haranguing, Ochs persuaded Dylan to appear in a concert in support of President Allende of Chile. As ever Ochs was supporting a lost cause and the American government saw to it that Allende was overthrown and killed by General Pinochet and his murdering henchmen.
He had enormous energy and was constantly rushing around and organising support for the many causes that he was sympathetic to. Despite his eventual downward spiral into suicide he was blessed with a sharp sense of humour. One of his albums was called Phil Ochs Greatest Hits but sub-titled Why 50 Phil Ochs Fans Can't Be Wrong. And after he had written The Flower Lady (covered in this country by Peter and Gordon), he joked that at the end of the day although she couldn't sell her flowers she would drive off in her Cadillac.
I have always felt an affinity for him. I too fought for and lost the same battles in the hope that we would make a better and nicer world. Sadly the bombs are still falling, children are still dying of hunger and the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider. At least here, due to Harold Wilson and the left wing of the Labour Party, we kept out of the Vietnam War and ended the death penalty but at the end of my life I too feel the disillusion and depression that unfortunately led to his early suicide.
His mother was Scottish and, at his request his ashes were secretly sprinkled from the top of Edinburgh Castle. He toured this country and I once knew someone, now dead who put him up and they drank and played Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley music until late into the night.
There have been a couple of radio programmes made about him in the UK by Mike Harding and Billy Bragg but these have tended to concentrate on his protest music rather than the more beautiful orchestrated songs that he produced in his later years. There has been the promise of a film for many years and this had now been released in the US. I have not seen it but include The Trailer and a couple of reviews below.
For those who wish to delve further a definitive version of his works (although not all) was produced a few years ago called Phil Ochs - Farewells & Fantasies which contains 3 CD's. As for myself I enjoy all of his music but particular favourites include I Ain't Marching Anymore, The Bells, The Highwayman, Power and the Glory, Love Me- I'M a Liberal, When I'm Gone, There But For Fortune, William Butler Yeates Visits Lincoln Park And Escapes Unscathed,Changes, When In Rome, Flower Lady, Pleasures of the Harbour, Jim Dean of Indiana, Rehearsals, For Retirement, Doesn't Lenny live Here Anymore, Boy in Ohio, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart And Me, and the last tune he recorded hours before he died, No More Songs. As ever more information can be found on Wiki.
Kenneth Bowser's terrific documentary is a poignant portrait of an uncompromising artist who, despite a struggle with depression that eventually led to his suicide at age 35, believed in the power of music as a tool for social and political change.
While the singer-songwriters most associated with the 1960s folk movement tend to be names such as Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Bowser presents a persuasive case thatPhil Ochs was a more hardcore political agitator than any of them.
He charts the subject's life and career via an expertly assembled wealth of archival news and performance footage. Further insight comes from interviews with contemporaries including Baez, Seeger and Tom Hayden, and admirers such as Sean Penn, Billy Bragg andChristopher Hitchens.
But despite its personal focus, one of the broader strengths of the documentary is its probing analysis of the protest movement, from civil rights through Vietnam. The film is more illuminating in this overview than in its intimate details of the unraveling of Ochs' life through manic depression, schizophrenic tendencies and alcoholism. But that arguably is less a shortcoming than an inevitable reflection of the unknowable path of bipolar disorder.
Without pushing the thesis too hard, Bowser suggests that Ochs' downward spiral was part of his crushing sense of general disillusionment. That descent began with the Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy assassinations and the 1968 DNC riots in Chicago, and continued through the Kent State shootings and political rise of Richard Nixon.
His brother and manager Michael Ochs (one of the film's producers) calls the Vietnam War "the last dragon to be slain," and Phil Ochs' dark mood during what should have been a celebratory "War is Over" concert in Central Park indicates his frustration with the movement's failings.
Whether or not it was the intention of Bowser's narrative, a parallel emerges between the '60s and present-day America in the painful transition during President Obama's term in office from hope and idealism to the current disenchantment and bitter divisiveness.
While Dylan, whose approval Ochs sought and seemingly never got, achieved fame with poetic anthems like "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They are a Changin'," Ochs' songs spoke forcefully and directly to racial injustice, political oppression and the horror of war, to the struggles of striking miners and beleaguered unions. He was equally vocal against right-wing rigidity and liberal complacency. The firebrand nature of much of his work perhaps explains its lack of mainstream recognition.
Ochs' songs provide a stirring soundtrack throughout the film, perhaps nowhere more so than in the closing section, as details of his final weeks are underscored by "Jim Dean of Indiana." It's fitting that such a haunting ode to one iconic American hero should serve to pay tribute to another.
Captures the Force of Historical Events on Individuals
10/10 | orrsisland | 26 Mar 2011
I went originally to see this documentary because I loved Ochs music - even played some of it badly at one time - but feared it might simply be a 'trip down memory lane'.
But the film is so much more than a bio of Ochs and his music or - thank god - just an exercise in nostalgia. It really captured the power and significance of the historically altering events of the 60's - both for the country and for individuals. I wish everyone - especially young people - could see it. Ochs comments in the film that Nixon used the stereotype of a drugged out-of-control protester to present the masses with the false choice of himself or 'those'. Of course that strategy of fear and false political choices is not unique to Nixon - always existed and still does. Nonetheless,it still saddens and angers me that conservatives have succeeded so well in shaping the historical lens that most people see the 60's through now. Most people today simply think of drugs, sex, rock-and-roll, and self-indulgence when they think of the 60's. Lost is any mass knowledge of what happened in Birmingham, or to martyrs like the Philadelphia Three, or the work of thousands of sincere people like Ochs who fought for fairness. The film captures this split - how the 60's was really two segments - and just as Ochs lost his way after Chicago - so did the nation. I don't have a problem with the fact that there wasn't more musical footage of Och's music in the documentary. There was enough to present his music and place in the folk scene of his time. Other sources can fill in more of his music - and hopefully people who aren't familiar with his music will do that. One documentary cannot be three films - i.e. personal bio, musical compilation, and historical analysis. It needs to have a focus and point of view. And,for me, this film captured the power and impact of his music, and how his personal life followed - sadly - the country's loss of trust and hope.
