I can’t stop thinking about the 60s. Today’s world events seem like a strange, disjointed sequel to the events of that time – of protest movements and backlash, of crimes against humanity and their sponsors, of political repression and blacklisting. One voice from that time keeps coming back to me: Phil Ochs, a largely forgotten protest singer whose slicing lyrics, sardonic criticisms, and haunting melodies offer unique insight into our current political moment.
Ochs, a Jewish kid from Ohio born in 1940, was part of the Greenwich Village folk revival of the early 1960s alongside artists like Bob Dylan. I consider Phil to be part of a broader wave of post-Holocaust Jewish human rights activism (see: Bob Dylan, Noam Chomsky, etc.). Ochs drew from old union songs – tunes born of workers’ struggles in Europe and the US, as well as from Woody Guthrie and other depression-era balladeers, taking inspiration from their songs about labour, migrant rights, and anti-fascism. Ochs covered an astonishing number of topics, writing over 238 songs. He was outspoken against the war in Vietnam from the outset, and sang about the civil rights movement, US interference in Latin America, poverty, labour, migrant rights, colonialism, police brutality, American masculinity, and homophobia. Where others in the folk revival wrote more widely-applicable lyrics, Ochs stood out for his direct critiques and sharp satire.
In “Talking Vietnam,” he mocks the US military’s description of their activities as “training” and highlights their hypocritical messaging: “//Friends the very next day we trained some more / We burned some villages down to the floor … Threw all the people in relocation camps / Under lock and key, made damn sure they’re free.//” The US military at this time was carrying out systematic human rights abuses and war crimes in Vietnam, with around three million Vietnamese being killed. Ochs is particularly cutting in his civil rights song “Here’s to the State of Mississippi,” written after the KKK murdered three Black civil rights activists.
While covering major issues, Ochs often wrote about specific events. He would get inspiration from the daily newspaper, and his early work garnered criticism from the folk scene; for example, Bob Dylan called him nothing more than a “journalist.” Yet, by giving small stories a depth of empathy and attention, and transforming them into songs, Ochs brings out the poetry in everyday reality. His song “Lou Marsh,” about a New York social worker killed trying to stop a gang fight, is unique in its empathy for both the victim and his assailants. Similarly, his song “Celia” appears to be a simple love song, but covers the case of Celia and William Pomeroy, an American-Filipino couple separated by the US government. In our world, with its never-ending barrage of massive-scale crises, its fractured attentions and hurricanes of content, we could benefit from Ochs’ empathetic attention to individual stories.
Where other artists stuck to simply commenting on the world, Ochs was actively involved in organizing and building movements with his songs. He sang at countless demonstrations, including the influential March on the Pentagon. He organized benefit concerts with the Black Panther Party and civil rights groups, sometimes forgoing paid gigs to show up to benefits. Phil was close friends with the Chilean singer Victor Jara, who was brutally tortured and executed in front of a crowd by the forces of US-installed dictator Pinochet. After Jara’s assassination, Ochs organized the first vigil in the US that was in solidarity with the Chilean people.
Phil’s story takes a dark turn in the late 60s and early 70s. His politics and his direct, cutting lyrics meant that commercial success evaded him. In the US at the time, blacklisting was common, and radios would not play his work for fear of repression. Having struggled with depression and untreated bipolar disorder his whole life, his mental health struggles grew worse after experiencing the police violence towards anti-war protestors at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Ochs soon descended into depression and alcoholism. This was reflected in the heartbroken songs of Phil’s 1968 album, /Rehearsals for Retirement/. He died by suicide in 1976, at the age of 36. His death coincided with an overall decline in the protest folk genre and, to some extent, in working-class artistic culture as a whole, especially after the Thatcher/Reagan era, which crushed much union power.
So what do we make of Ochs today? As war crimes continue and inequality deepens, Ochs reminds us that we are active participants in all current events and must choose how we engage with our world. I’ll end with the final lines of one of my favourite songs, Ochs’s “Song of My Returning”: //“With every strength remaining I will suffer one more scene / I’ll gather all my dreams / And with my final breath I’ll lay them at your feet.”//