Phil Ochs
Philip David Ochs was an American songwriter, protest singer, and political activist. Ochs was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, and political commentary. He wrote about 200 songs in the 1960s and 1970s and released eight albums.
Ochs performed at many political events, including the 1968 Democratic National Convention, mass demonstrations sponsored by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, civil rights rallies, student events, and organized labor events. He performed at some benefits for free. Ochs initially described himself as a "left social democrat" but grew more radical after the police riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
After years of prolific writing in the 1960s, Ochs' mental stability declined in the 1970s. His mental health problems included depression, bipolar disorder, and alcoholism. He died by suicide on April 9, 1976.
Ochs's influences included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Bob Gibson, Faron Young, and Merle Haggard. His best-known songs include "I Ain't Marching Anymore", "When I'm Gone", "Changes", "Crucifixion", "Draft Dodger Rag", "Love Me, I'm a Liberal", "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", "Power and the Glory", "There but for Fortune", and "The War Is Over".
Early life
Philip David Ochs was born on December 19, 1940, in El Paso, Texas, to Jacob "Jack" Ochs, a physician who was born in New York to Polish-Jewish parents, and Gertrude Ochs, who was born in Scotland to Jewish parents. His parents met and married in Edinburgh where Jack was attending medical school, and afterwards moved to the United States. Ochs grew up with an older sister, Sonia, and a younger brother, Michael.After being drafted into the army, Jack was sent overseas near the end of World War II and treated soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge. His war experiences, however, affected his mental health and he received an honorable medical discharge in November 1945. Upon arriving home, Jack was hospitalized for bipolar disorder and depression, and was distant from his wife and children. He was also unable to establish a successful medical practice and instead worked at a series of hospitals around the country. As a result, Ochs and his family moved frequently: first to Far Rockaway, New York, when Ochs was a teenager; then to Perrysburg in western New York, where he first studied music; and then to Columbus, Ohio.
As a teen, Phil Ochs was recognized as a talented clarinet player; in an evaluation, one music instructor wrote: "You have exceptional musical feeling and the ability to transfer it on your instrument is abundant." His musical skills allowed him to play clarinet with the orchestra at the Capital University Conservatory of Music in Ohio, where he rose to the status of principal soloist before he was 16. Although Ochs played classical music, he soon became interested in other music sounds he heard on the radio, such as early rock icons and country artists.
Ochs also spent a lot of time at the movies while living in Far Rockaway, as there were three theaters in town. Because his mother did not want to hire a babysitter, she instead gave her sons money and the brothers saw five to six films each week. He especially liked big screen heroes and later developed an interest in movie rebels.
Education and journalism: 1956–1961
From 1956 to 1958, Ochs was a student at the Staunton Military Academy in rural Virginia. After graduating, he returned to Columbus and enrolled at Ohio State University. Unhappy after his first quarter, 18-year-old Ochs took a leave of absence and traveled to Florida, where he was jailed for two weeks for sleeping on a park bench in Miami, an incident he would later recall:Somewhere during the course of those fifteen days I decided to become a writer. My primary thought was journalism... so in a flash, I decided—I'll be a writer and a major in journalism.
Ochs returned to Ohio State to study journalism and developed an interest in politics, with a particular interest in the Cuban Revolution of 1959. At Ohio State, he met Jim Glover, a fellow student who was a devotee of folk music and whose father was a socialist. Glover introduced Ochs to the music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and the Weavers. Glover taught Ochs how to play guitar, and they debated politics. Ochs began writing newspaper articles, often on radical themes. When the student paper refused to publish some of his more radical articles, he started his own underground newspaper called The Word, as well as writing for the satire magazine, The Sundial, with classmate R. L. Stine. His two main interests, politics and music, soon merged, and Ochs began writing topical political songs. Ochs and Glover formed a duet called "The Singing Socialists", later renamed "The Sundowners", but the duo broke up before their first professional performance and Glover went to New York City to become a folksinger.
Ochs's parents and younger brother had moved from Columbus to Cleveland, and Ochs started to spend more time there, performing professionally at a local folk club called Farragher's Back Room. He was the opening act for a number of musicians in the summer of 1961, including the Smothers Brothers. Ochs met folk singer Bob Gibson that summer as well, and according to Dave Van Ronk, Gibson became "the seminal influence" on Ochs' writing. Ochs continued at Ohio State into his senior year, but was bitterly disappointed at not being appointed editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, and dropped out in his last quarter without graduating. He left for New York, as Glover had, to become a folksinger.
Career
New York City: 1962–1966
Ochs arrived in New York City in 1962 and began performing in numerous small folk nightclubs, eventually becoming an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene. He emerged as an unpolished but passionate vocalist who wrote pointed songs about current events: war, civil rights, labor struggles and other topics. While others described his music as "protest songs", Ochs preferred the term "topical songs".However, in order to get by, in November 1962, Ochs accepted $50 to record a children's album, a collection of traditional popular campfire songs, titled Camp Favorites. In 1963, Cameo Records released this budget LP. Ochs requested his name not be used and it wasn't until well after his death that its existence became known. The Campers consists of Ochs, an unknown female vocalist and a group of children.
Ochs described himself as a "singing journalist", saying he built his songs from stories he read in Newsweek. By the summer of 1963, he was sufficiently well known in folk circles to be invited to sing at the Newport Folk Festival, where he performed "Too Many Martyrs", "Talking Birmingham Jam", and "Power and the Glory"—his patriotic Guthrie-esque anthem that brought the audience to its feet. Other performers at the 1963 folk festival included Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Tom Paxton. Ochs' return appearance at Newport in 1964, where he performed "Draft Dodger Rag", "Talking Vietnam Blues", and other songs, was widely praised. However, he was not invited to appear in 1965, the festival when Dylan famously performed "Maggie's Farm" with an electric guitar. Although many in the folk world decried Dylan's choice, Ochs admired Dylan's courage in defying the folk establishment, and publicly defended him.
In 1963, Ochs performed at New York's Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in hootenannies. He made his first solo appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1966. Throughout his career, Ochs would perform at a wide range of venues, including civil rights rallies, anti-war demonstrations, and concert halls.
Ochs contributed many songs and articles to the influential Broadside Magazine. He recorded his first three albums for Elektra Records: All the News That's Fit to Sing, I Ain't Marching Anymore, and Phil Ochs in Concert. Critics wrote that each album was better than its predecessors, and fans seemed to agree; record sales increased with each new release.
On these records, Ochs was accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. The albums contain many of Ochs's topical songs, such as "Too Many Martyrs", "I Ain't Marching Anymore", and "Draft Dodger Rag"; and some musical reinterpretation of older poetry, such as "The Highwayman" and "The Bells". Phil Ochs in Concert includes some more introspective songs, such as "Changes" and "When I'm Gone".
During the early period of his career, Ochs and Bob Dylan had a friendly rivalry. Dylan said of Ochs, "I just can't keep up with Phil—and he's gettin' better and better". On another occasion, when Ochs criticized either "One of Us Must Know " or "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?", Dylan threw him out of his limousine, saying, "You're not a folk singer. You're a journalist."
In 1962, Ochs married Alice Skinner, who was pregnant with their daughter Meegan, in a ceremony at City Hall with Jim Glover as best man and Jean Ray as bridesmaid, and witnessed by Dylan's girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo. Phil and Alice separated in 1965, but they never divorced.
Like many people of his generation, Ochs deeply admired President John F. Kennedy, even though he disagreed with him on issues such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the growing involvement of the United States in the Vietnamese civil war. When Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Ochs wept. He told his wife that he thought he was going to die that night. It was the only time she ever saw Ochs cry.
Ochs's managers during this part of his career were Albert Grossman followed by Arthur Gorson. Gorson had close ties with such groups as Americans For Democratic Action, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Students for a Democratic Society.
Ochs was writing songs at a fast pace. Some of the songs he wrote during this period were held back and recorded on his later albums.