I Ain't Marching Anymore is Phil Ochs' second LP, released on Elektra Records in 1965.
History
Dispensing with second guitarist Danny Kalb, Ochs performs alone on twelve original songs, an interpretation of Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman" set to music and a cover of Ewan MacColl's "The Ballad of the Carpenter". Of the twelve originals, probably the most noted was the title track, with its distinctive trilling guitar part, that spoke of a soldier sick of fighting. Also of note was the album closer, "Here's to the State of Mississippi", a biting criticism of that state's lack of civil rights and general bigoted attitude. Other important songs include "Draft Dodger Rag", "That Was The President", "Talking Birmingham Jam" and "Links on the Chain". Ochs showed great thematic versatility on the album, including not just blatantly anti-war or protest songs but also poetry and songs less in lock-step with the contemporary American radical left. He noted, for instance, in the liner notes that his Marxist friends couldn't understand why he wrote "That Was the President," dryly adding that that was one of the reasons he wasn't a Marxist. However, Ochs backed away from the song's hero worship of John Kennedy by explaining that "after the assassination, Fidel Castro aptly pointed out that only fools could rejoice at such a tragedy, for systems, not men are the enemy." Ochs showed more socialist sympathies with the songs "The Men Behind the Guns" and "Ballad of the Carpenter," with its memorable lyric "Jesus was a working man." However, more doctrinaire socialists may have had mixed feelings about "That's What I Want to Hear," in which Ochs tells an out of work man to stop begging and fight for full employment. Among more traditional protest songs, the most pointed might be "Iron Lady," about the death penalty, with the memorable line "And a rich man never died upon the chair." Ochs wrote that "in the future, intelligent men will read in amazement about the murder of Caryl Chessman." But hard hitting songs like that and the title song were softened with sentimental and even romantic songs like "That Was the President" and Noyes' "The Highway Man." And while critical, songs like "Draft Dodger Rag" and "Talking Birmingham Jam" used humor rather than harsh rhetoric to make their points. Commenting on "Draft Dodger Rag," Ochs compared the Viet Cong soldier who screamed his hatred of Americans while being shot by a firing squad, to his American counterpart who stayed "up nights thinking of ways to" escape the army. On the 2001 CD reissue, an alternative electric version of "I Ain't Marching Anymore" follows "Here's to the State of Mississippi". Released as the A-side of a British 45, it had previously appeared in the United States on the 1976 compilation Chords of Fame and the 1997 box setFarewells & Fantasies, both out-of-print.
