Today, Dec. 19, would have been folk singer Phil Ochs‘ 68th birthday. You’ll have to pardon me for getting a little misty. His 1976 suicide remains a heartrending tragedy — all the more so because he’s so inexplicably underappreciated. My parents were both serious fans from the ’60s and ’70s, so I grew up with Phil’s music, and it’s never made sense to me that he isn’t as well known as colleagues and friends like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. His discography is up there with any of that era’s greats, from the raw protest music and acoustic poetry of early albums like 1965’s I Ain’t Marching Anymore and 1966’s In Concert to the more adventurous sounds of 1967’s Pleasures of the Harbor and 1969’s Rehearsals for Retirement. Through it all, he balanced his passion for social justice with subtle musicianship in a way that precious few artists before or since have been capable of.
I’d sure love to be able to hear what Phil — a devoted patriot who was never afraid to call out hypocrisy wherever he saw it — would have to say about the state of our union in 2008. Since we’ve been robbed of that chance, all we can do is listen to the music he made back then, like the performance of his signature "I Ain’t Marching Anymore" below. Sadly, that song is as relevant as ever today. Anyone else wishing we still had Phil Ochs on the scene going into 2009?
More on protest music:
EW gave a reissued Phil Ochs concert from 1968 a well-deserved A review
EW also gave a comprehensive Ochs box set an A review
Tom Morello told us his favorite protest songs
EW rated protest songs by Jill Scott, Prince, and more
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Phil Ochs was a brilliant lyricist. Crispian St. Peters, of “Pied Piper” fame, recorded Phils’ “Changes” which was an incredibly deep and emotional song. I strongly urge anyone who hasn’t heard it to try to listen. Perhaps You Tube has it. Phil was way too deep and sensitive for this earth plane.
I thought I was one of the few that remember him, I still play Draft Dodger Rag live whenever I can. He is a pivitol turning point in my appreciation of music today. I think that he was too fragile to be so honest in the way he shared, today’s media would have grilled him up years ago, what a waste of a great man.
But maybe that’s just me and my small circle of friends.
Oh yes. The Crucifixion remains a masterpiece of brilliant imagery and alliteration, and a message that is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it. As so many other Ochs songs are. I’d recommend a live performance on You Tube to really here the lyrics – like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8sirz99zo&feature=related. He would have been out there singing his heart out with Bruce for Barack (imagine that event!), and just as fervently he’d be speaking out when Obama takes a wrong step like the Rick Warren invocation. He’d be glad to know a new generation remembers him. Phil Ochs at 68 – what we’d give to see that. Thanks Simon.
Ochs’ “Small Circle of Friends” has always been one of my favourites. A local alternative radio station here in Toronto used to have it on rotation back in the early 1980s.
Remember “with God on our side” ?
Wow, I haven’t thought about Phil Ochs in a long time, but you’ve inspired to go dig out my albums! Simply brilliant and beautiful.
Thanks so much for remembering Phil. He deserves a much bigger place in music history–he’s been overshadowed by Dylan and always gets sandwiched in between other folkies, like Dave Von Ronk and Tom Paxton.
Though he wrote a lot of topical songs that some may think became dated, they are eerily relevant now, as others have said here. “Cops of The World” could have been written this year.
I have been a fan of Phil since I first heard “A Small Circle of Friends”. His songs always made you think. He never seemed to go mainstream like Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary and Dylan but he was every bit as talented. My husband and I saw him in a small coffee house in Davis, California in the early 70’s. I had wanted to go up to him and tell him how much I appreciated his music. I didn’t and regretted it expecially when I heard about his suicide. What a shame and what a waste. But his music will live on forever. For more on Phil, read “Death of a Rebel” by Marc Eliot
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