By Tom Brennan

Fifty years ago tomorrow Phil Ochs committed suicide. He was the author and performer of many of the iconic folk songs of the social justice and peace struggles of the 1960s. Ochs was just 35, beaten down by drink, mental illness, a crushed larynx, and a not uncommon disoriented and disillusioned reaction to the post 1960s zeitgeist.

My oldest brother first introduced me to Ochs during his senior year in high school, when he brought home his album “Rehearsals for Retirement.”  In high school some of  my friends and I became devotes of  performers like Ochs, and Tom Paxton, whose lyrics spotlighted not just the familiar 1960s protest themes, but biting and incisive observations about the hypocrisy and classism that often attended armchair liberalism, and the unconscious humor of radical posturing.

The day I learned that Ochs had hung himself in his sister’s home, where he had been staying, I was awash in local media coverage of a mass “resignation in protest” by the officers of the student council I led. This was the result of sharp curtailment of student freedoms at our suburban Rochester, NY high school, accompanied by what we saw as  bad faith on the part of the school administration. The school district had experimented with an open high school campus, and even built a high school without walls. I recall thinking at the time, with typical teenage solipsism, that there was symmetry in our parting expression of defiance and Ochs’ nearly simultaneous final act of despair. This was a topic of mordant humor in our own small circle of friends then.

Ochs isbest known such protest songs as “I Aint Marching Anymore,” “Draft Dodger Rag,” “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.”  “Outside of a Small Circle of  Friends” mocked the indifference of neighbors as Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in plain view on a New York street, and nobody  intervened or called for help. This story shocked the public in 1964. It would not today.

Tom Wolfe’s  “Radical Chic” had echos of “The Party,” from Ochs’ 1967 album “Pleasures of the Harbor.” The song is an uncommercial eight minutes in length, and lampoons a high end cocktail party attended by radicals, and hosted by the well to do.  The lyrics to “Ringing of Revolution” underscore the folly of elites ignoring legitimate grievance until it is too late.  The haunting “Is There Anybody Here” asks aspiring soldiers if they really think  “that following the orders takes away the blame?” A timely question today. “Love me I’m a Liberal”  describes the smugness often found in this breed of cat.   “Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to The right of of center if it affects them personally,” was how Ochs once put it.

There was always more to Ochs than the stereotypical 1960s New York protest singer.  Like most people, he was more complex than that.  His  father also struggled with mental illness. Ochs attended Staunton Military Academy. Born in Texas in 1940, Ochs was more a member of the Silent Generation than the of the Boomers  he would be more associated with. He and his brother studied journalism at Ohio State. These influences might help explain  his enthusiasm for such a wide ranging cast of characters as Barry Goldwater, James Dean, John Wayne, Merle Haggard, William F. Buckley,  Elvis Presley — as well as Che Guevara. His late brother was an archivist and his sister is an avid curator and promoter  of the Phil Ochs legacy.

Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan became close amid the great ferment of the early 1960s New York folk music scene.  He would painfully fall out with Dylan after Ochs questioned Dylan’s move away from protest songs, in response to which  Dylan was said to have once ordered Ochs out of a limo they were riding in, sneering that Ochs wasn’t an artist, but a journalist. One Ochs album was titled “All the News that’s Fit to Sing,” but Ochs was not alone in this criticism of Dylan.

Dylan would become the bigger star, as it were. He was often cruel to Ochs. An account in People magazine of a memorial concert in honor of Ochs, seven weeks after his suicide, quotes Ochs’ sister as noting bitterly that Dylan had not reached out. More ruthless and more guarded than Ochs,  Dylan had a knack for reinvention, for showing just enough ankle to keep people’s tongues wagging, and enough agility to ride whatever wave came along. The summer after Ochs died Jimmy Carter was quoting Dylan at the Democratic Convention that nominated him for president. Ultimately Dykan would win a special Pulitzer. Journalist Ochs might have enjoyed the irony.

Ochs was hurt  when he was excluded from a concert tribute to Woody Guthrie, shortly after the folk music icon’s 1967 death. Performers who lacked his “folk cred,” but were bigger commercial successes, were included.

Ochs later followed Dylan’s lead in jumping the fences that were supposed to confine him.  He was prescient in identifying country music as being better at addressing issues of class and culture than did protest folk songs. Ochs preferred to call himself a “topical singer” rather than a folk singer.   His most gaudy effort to synthesize  the disparate influences on him has to be Ochs’ gold suited Elvis phase. One unkind wag referred to this as “the lame gold suit” phase.

There are three books of note  about Ochs.  “Death of a Rebel, Starring Phil Ochs and a Small Circle of Friends” was published in 1979.  The author,  film instructor Marc Eliot,  was actually close to Ochs. Sixteen years later Michael Schumacher penned  “There But for Fortune.”  More information was available by then, and  Schumacher had written about the 1968 presidential election, an event which loomed large in Ochs’ consciousness.

“The Man in the Gold Lame’  Suit,” was  published in 2023, and it warrants more examination.

I am well acquainted with the author, Dr. James Bowers. He directly preceded me on the Rochester, NY school board in the early 2000s. Of like mind about most issues related to that task, Jim and I worked closely for several years. He was colorful, affable, not particularly self aware, and preferred bad attention to no attention. This manifested in his frequent and erratic machinations, difficulty with boundaries, and preoccupation with the salacious. The pathos made long term animosity impossible, but  it was likewise impossible  to trust his judgment and discretion. This isolated Jim, which he was sensitive enough to notice. Unhappily this only fueled the problematic behavior.  This can’t help but color my reaction to his book, and would be a sin of omission to note this, but I would be skeptical of his stated approach in any case.

Jim is a retired political science professor, and a musician. This situated him to offer useful insights into the life and times of Phil Ochs. Parts of his book do this. But the effort is overwhelmed by what he describes as his “method of inquiry.” The method chosen was the “Heinz Kohut’s theory of Self Psychology,”  which we are assured “allows us to know and understand Phil in a psychologically intimate way that brings forth important aspects of his personality that define his self.” Come now.

The subtitle of the book is “Phil Ochs’ Search for Self.” This much would give you a headache even if you were unfamiliar with the author. Dr. Bowers is not a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, and really no more qualified to guide us on this journey than he is to practice dentistry.

This “method of inquiry” tends to salacious speculation, conclusions based on insufficient data, and a genius for missing the central point of the life being examined. Moreover, such works tend to tell us more about the enthusiasms of the author than about the subject.

Some examples:

Ochs’ reasonable objection to being excluded from the Guthrie concert is described as “narcissistic rage.”

Any lyricist, artist, novelist, or journalist will speak in voices not their own, or express ideas not their own. Jim has a field day disregarding this. Jim cites the lyrics to Ochs’ “Pretty Smart on My Part,”  an obvious send up of paranoid and inwardly frightened machismo.  The lyrics depict a redneck holding forth about a big breasted woman who is out to get him, and his plan to wed her, tie her up, and whip her.

Jim is certain this “spoke to Phil’s need to retaliate against women who reject him.” The book goes on like this.

An entire chapter, helpfully subtitled “the first time I did it was in a car,” is devoted to gossip about young Ochs’ love life. Such life passages are commonplace, of course. Not only is Ochs’ marriage examined, not unreasonably, but his prowess with women generally is impugned. Every crush (requited or not) and every assignation are subject to Jim’s exquisite discernment. Given Jim’s distance from these matters, his conclusions might be expressed more modestly. On page 60 we encounter a particularly gratuitous and cringe worthy description of the sex act known as “around the world.” The importance of this is never fully explained, but the act is.

Most people are familiar with the unfair stereotype of the shrink who is obsessed with sex. When Ned Flanders seeks psychiatric help, in one episode of the Simpsons, Homer is enlisted to read written statements to the easy going Ned which are calculated to elicit cathartic anger. “I had intercourse with your spouse or significant other,” Homer stiffly recites. He then adds enthusiastically “now that’s psychiatry!” For some reason this book made me think of that Simpsons episode.

Signund Freud has long been reputed to have observed that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” This line has never been proven to have been his, and you wouldn’t guess from his work that he believed this. He co-authored a “Psychological Biography” of Woodrow Wilson. Thirty years ago a similar book was written about Nixon. Many historians dismiss such works as psychobabble.

Jim began his book saying that he “strives to correct the portrayal of Phil Ochs that has been framed disproportionately in terms of his alcoholism, alleged manic-depressive disorder, and suicide. The chapters that follow resurrect as accurately as possible who Phil Ochs understood himself to be. They give back to Phil his own voice so that the story he would tell if he were still among us is conveyed.”  That is a tall order. This effort falls short.

Sometimes the earlier drafts of history are the more salient ones. As the 1960s wound down, an activist named Dotson Rader wrote a book whose title was borrowed from an Ochs song. The book “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” warned  that  marches might not suffice for much longer. In 1972 Rader wrote a piece for Esquire titled “The Day the Movement Died.” Rader fixed  the date as December 6, 1971. This was the date of a shambolic, star studded benefit concert  in New York for the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice, which ended in chaos, showcased the cynicism and balkanization of the Movement, and ended with most of the proceeds being ripped off by security.

Ochs had been in Chicago in 1968, and famously took his guitar to the Chicago 7 trial.  In 1972 his larynx was crushed in a brutal robbery while abroad. That same year the cast of “Hair”captured the Democratic Party, was massively defeated in November, and Watergate, not Vietnam, defined the new era.

In 1973, Phil Ochs’ friend Victor Jara, the Dylan /Ochs of Chile, was tortured and murdered after a U.S. encouraged military coup  toppled the democratically elected Socialist Allende government. He and Dylan had a fleeting reunion at a benefit concert for Chilean refugees in 1974.

Ochs gained weight. He drank. He tried to innovate with his music. He tried to adapt. His mental health declined. He was homeless for a time. His family intervened best they could, to the extent he let them.

His personal difficulties do not discredit his contributions. Phil Ochs requires no defense, no rehabilitation, and no speculative and presumptuous exhumation of his inner life.  His work and talent speak for themselves. So does the courage with which he lent his voice to peace and social Justice. Those who knew him and observed him at the time remember. Those who are inspired by learning about him later will keep him alive.