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Acknowledgments

This book has been a long and, at times, difficult journey, beginning in the late seventies, when I began to collect clippings with the hope of writing a Phil Ochs biography, and ending nearly twenty years after Ochs' death, when I was finally able to finish the task.

However, for as much as I wanted to write this book, it never would have happened had it not been for a strange conversation that I had with two very dear friends.

I will always remember it vividly.

It was early in 1992, and I was sitting in the All-State Cafe on New York's Upper West Side with Carol Edwards and Amelie Littell, two people who had worked closely with me on my Allen Ginsberg biography. I had brought along photographs for the Ginsberg book to show them, and, as the hours stretched on and I had far too many cigarettes and glasses of beer, I began to bemoan the state of publishing. There were so many books crying out to be written, I complained, sounding every bit the misunderstood author. I started rattling off examples, some of which were actually discussed for more than a sentence or two.

"The book that I really want to write," I informed them, "is a biography of Phil Ochs. Unfortunately, it's the kind of book that will never get published."

Both women reacted instantly. They knew someone who would want the book, they said. Carol grabbed my manila envelope of Ginsberg pictures and jotted down the name of a publisher and editor. I knew nothing about either, but I promised I'd call. I did, and that's where this book landed.

All this, of course, is a lengthy but very necessary way of thanking two people who are very important to me. Amelie and Carol: Thanks for this and much more. I love you both.

I am extremely grateful to the members of the Ochs family for their cooperation and encouragement. It couldn't have been easy for them to backtrack over some of the painful memories, or to deal with my persistent demands for more time and information. Each family member honors Phil's memory in his or her individual way, and all saw that this came through, clearly and immediately, whenever we talked or met.

Sonny Ochs, Phil's sister, sat through countless interviews and telephone conversations, going over point by point, detail by detail. with unflinching honesty and patience. In addition, she helped me line up interviews, blessed me with photos, and even let me use her guest house as a base of operations when I was conducting interviews in upstate New York.

Michael Ochs, Phil's brother and archivist extraordinaire, also sat for numerous interviews and helped me connect with other sources, as well as providing me with valuable photographs. Michael's considerable knowledge of the music business proved to be invaluable, as were his many tapes of Phil's interviews, concerts, and previously unreleased songs.

Meegan Ochs, Phil's daughter, generously permitted me the use of her father's journals and notebooks, as well as many of the previously unpublished photographs included in this book. One of my fondest memories in the writing of this book will always be the day I spent at her home, going through Phil's scrapbooks and clippings collections, seeing some of his possessions (such as his trademark cap and gold lamé suit), and hearing Meegan's thoughts about her father.

Alice Ochs, Phil's former wife, was generous with her time, even though she was initially reluctant to go back over the years that she was hoping to keep behind her. A religious woman who has come to peace with herself and her life, Alice overcame her reluctance and was obliging in providing me with valuable information.

Thank you, all. I hope that you will find this book worth your time and efforts, as I hope that your disagreements with me-and there are bound to be some-are minor.

In piecing together Phil's life, I traveled all over the country and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. Some of the interviews were actually cathartic in nature, allowing people to express emotions that had been bottled up for nearly two decades. There was a lot of laughing and crying and, in some cases, vocal asides to Phil as if he were actually sitting in the room with us, listening in on the conversations. Never, in all my experiences as a journalist and biographer, have I seen so many people react with such passion when discussing a person's life. This, I take it, is the ultimate measure of Phil's own passion, and the effect it had on others.

My gratitude, then, to: Stew Albert, Peter Asher, Guy Carawan, Len Chandler, Ramsey Clark, Ron Cobb, Lola Cohen, Paul Colby, Sis Cunningham, Henry Diltz, Peggy Duncan, Josh Dunson, Deni Frand, Erik Frandsen, Ian Freebairn-Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Glover, Bernie Grundman, Arlo Guthrie, Sam Hood, Lee Housekeeper, David Ifshin, Erik Jacobsen, Danny Kalb, Paul Krassner, Jack Landron, Harold Leventhal, Jay Levin, Robin Love, Larry Marks, Lincoln Mayorga, Jack Newfield, Robin Ochs, Odetta, Van Dyke Parks, Tom Paxton, Carol Realini, Jerry Rubin, Pete Seeger, Patrick Sky, Larry Sloman, Steven Soles, Studs Terkel, Dave Van Ronk, Mayer Vishner, Cora Weiss, Doug Weston, Andy Wickham, and Jerry Yester.

Special thanks to poet/musician Ed Sanders, whose award-winning liner notes to Chords of Fame initially prodded me into exploring Phil's life, and who generously supplied me with clippings and notes he might have used for a biography of his own. Ed's love for Phil lives in his generosity and free spirit.

Thank you, Sammy Walker, for the interview, tapes, and the photograph. When Phil took you under his wing, he saw not only a talent at work, but a kindred spirit who would protect him during difficult times and in the decades following his death.

Arthur Gorson: Beneath your soft-spoken voice lies a toughness that has allowed your survival in a very trying business. I honor your modesty and gentility, which somehow seem to keep you on the level.

When traveling. I was put up (and put up with) by a number of people, many of whom are listed elsewhere in these acknowledgments. I would like to thank Allan Gumbinger, Mike Lovely, and Chris Tunney for their help in California, and Mark Gumbinger for helping to arrange it. My good friends Peter Spielmann and Judy Hansen provided me with a place to stay in New York.

A tip of the hat to other important people, who helped me in large and small ways: Dona Chernoff, Ken Bowser, Dawn Eden, Al and Diane Schumacher, Ken and Karen Ade, Jim Sieger, Glen Puterbaugh, and Simma Holt. Thanks to agents Kim Witherspoon and Maria Massie for all their patience and understanding, and to the staff at Hyperion, for helping see this book into print.

Last, but certainly most important, my love and gratitude to my wife, Susan, and to my children, Adam, Emily (the big Phil Ochs fan in the family), and Jack Henry, for enduring the usual hardships associated with the writing of a biography. You are the people who make all this worthwhile.

Michael Schumacher

March 13, 1996

Prologue

During the Civil War, a company of singers and entertainers known as the Hutchinson Family moved from Union camp to Union camp. entertaining the troops.

The group had started out as a quartet nearly two decades earlier, and over the ensuing years had expanded to include other family members, their offspring, and various hangers-on. Highly regarded for their musical excellence, the group was even better known for its commitment to the abolition of slavery, as well as to other human rights issues considered radical at the time, including equal rights for women. Much of this material managed to make its way into their performances. To the Hutchinsons, the message was as important as the music.

This approach drew harsh response from some critics, who felt that the Hutchinsons would better serve their audiences by concentrating on music and leaving the editorializing to others. Wrote a reviewer for the Philadelphia Courier in 1846: "It is really time that someone should tell these people, in a spirit of friendly candor, that they are not apostles and martyrs, entrusted with a 'mission' to reform the world, but only a company of common song-singers, whose performances sound very pleasant to the great mass of people ignorant of real music."

Such criticism had no effect whatsoever on the Hutchinsons, who openly acknowledged the controversial nature of their performances, and who made no effort to tone down the political content of their material. If anything, they used the controversy to help sell tickets to their shows.

The group continued to play their topical songs when they per-formed for the Union troops, enraging soldiers and officers alike with songs that protested warfare in general or, more specifically, President Lincoln for not being a more effective leader in the fight against slavery. After one particularly powerful appearance, the Hutchinsons were summoned before a Union general, who informed them that they could no longer play in front of his troops. The decision was upheld by General George McClellan, who opposed the abolition of slavery to begin with.

The flap was eventually brought to the attention of Lincoln himself. The president was given copies of the songs deemed too incendiary to be sung before the troops. Lincoln read through the material and issued his own proclamation on the Hutchinsons' music.

"It is just the character of song," he declared, "that I desire the soldiers to hear."

Prologue

They came together to honor a life.

Five thousand people-friends, family members, fellow musicians, fans, hangers-on, the media, and the curious-all filing into Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum for what promised to be at least some type of closure to a life that had been so promising yet which had ended so abruptly. Although the event was taking place only a few weeks after the young man's death, there was more of a festive air to the occasion than a sense of mourning. This was a grand reunion.

Phil Ochs, the folksinger, activist, and, sadly, reason for the gathering, would have loved it, had it occurred under different circumstances. He had always been a catalyst-much more so than a leader-and he loved nothing more than the knowledge that his passion and energy had driven others to action.

And here were the people in his life, greeting each other like longlost friends-which, in fact, they were. The Movement had sunk several years earlier, its rudder crippled in the bloody streets of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, its structure sustaining irreparable damage from the cynicism of the Nixon years. wherein government officials grasped frantically for justification for the murder of four students at Kent State, a CIA-backed overthrow of the government in Chile, and the comic nightmare of Watergate. The Movement had listed heavily for several years-an awkward, unsalvageable vessel-and then it had disappeared unceremoniously beneath the waters of apathy, its few survivors manning lifeboats. but seeing no rescue ships on the horizon.

The sight had broken Phil Ochs' heart, and from such despair came the loss of his sense of purpose and creativity, his voice, and, perhaps worst of all, the combination of romanticism and determination that had pushed him forward even when things seemed bleak and out of control. Unlike the others, he had been incapable of adapting and moving on.

He had been only thirty-five when he took his life.

People hugged and kissed, exchanged pleasantries, caught up on the recent events in each other's lives; some spoke quietly about what, if anything, could have been done to save Phil's life. Abbie Hoffman, still on the lam from police, had somehow managed to slip unnoticed into the hall and sat quietly, sporting the world's worst disguise, hoping to be recognized by everyone except the Law. Allen Ginsberg. wearing Phil's ludicrously tacky gold lamé suit, sat backstage and went over the speakers' carefully prepared texts, tightening grammar and phraseology, making certain that the historic occasion would not be marred by improper prose. Melanie, the folksinger who had made a good first name for herself at Woodstock, tried to amuse her two-year-old daughter with a pet ferret. People wondered aloud, more often than was appropriate, about the whereabouts of Bob Dylan, Phil's friend and Greenwich Village contemporary, and Joan Baez, who had taken home her fair share of loot from her cover of Phil's "There But for Fortune." Jim Glover, Phil's old Ohio State roommate, hooked up with his former wife, Jean Ray, for one final performance as Jim and Jean.

The scene brought back memories of Phil's greatest moment as an organizer, achieved less than two years earlier in this very same hall. Angered over the overthrow of Chile and the murders of President Salvador Allende and folksinger-poet Victor Jara, Phil had put together his ultimate protest, an evening of song and rhetoric condemning the United States' involvement in the coup. The evening's music, bogged down by heavy backstage drinking, had been barely passable, and the speeches, like so many political speeches, tended to be a bit winded, but the fact that Phil had been able to pull it off had been a miracle in itself. Ironically, the success of the event had also hastened his downfall, since he could come up with no way to follow it, either on a personal, creative level or in another large-scale show.

Unfortunately, as his friend Jerry Rubin insisted, it had taken his death to bring everyone together one last time.

For most of his life, Phil Ochs had succeeded through sheer willpower-that, and a forceful personality that could, in turns, be charming or infuriating.

Critics never could understand his success. If you applied the strictest musical standards to his talents, his guitar playing was marginal, and his voice, although pleasing enough-especially in comparison to the fashionably rough-hewn sounds of his contemporaries-sounded far from professionally trained. Yet he had recorded seven albums and performed before SRO audiences at some of the country's finest venues, including Carnegie Hall.

The songs had carried him through. The sincerity of his lyrics, along with the passion of their delivery, more than compensated for Phil's musical shortcomings, and for a while, when topical songs were the rage of the folk scene, Phil Ochs had ranked at the top of the list. He was a classic troubadour, singing the news of the day and applying an editorial spin that urged his audience to get off their hands and move. He hated pretension and hypocrisy, and no political party or philosophy was exempt from his commentary. He could ridicule liberals for paying lip service to their causes as easily as he could rail against the conservatives for dragging their feet when society demanded change.

Politically, he had been anything but a weekend warrior. He had gone to the Kentucky coal mines in support of the underpaid and overworked laborers; he'd risked his personal safety when he had traveled to the Deep South during the voter registration drives. He had spoken out early against the war in Vietnam, and as the conflict dragged on, he had organized or attended countless rallies, sacrificing paying gigs in exchange for gratis appearances at demonstrations. He had been present at the official birthing of the Youth International Party, and he had sung "I Ain't Marching Anymore," his best-known protest anthem, in Chicago's Lincoln Park during the Democratic National Convention.

To no one's surprise, Phil's hard-nosed politics, coupled with his popularity as a performer, caught the FBI's attention, and throughout a career that spanned nearly a quarter-century, the Bureau kept close tabs on Phil's whereabouts, thickening his file with regular updates on his activities, informing other government agencies of the threat that he posed to the common good, and tapping his phone. For those more inclined to live in the real world, Phil was a menace only to the paranoid. In fact, a good portion of his charm, especially in his younger days, could be attributed to his tendency to listen as much as he spoke, to laugh as often as he erupted in anger. He tempered his reality with the political instincts and humor that his adversaries lacked.

One by one, the speakers at the memorial took the podium and sang Phil's praises. Ramsey Clark, the former attorney general who had known him and defended him in his dark final days, spoke of Phil's commitment to political and social causes, calling him "a driven man" and wondering aloud about what inspired him to live the difficult life of the activist. Stew Albert, one of the founders of the Yippies, spoke directly to Phil, noting "the world's a little more hypocritical without you"-a sentiment underscored when William Kunstler read Phil's poignant and often very funny testimony from the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. Sonny Ochs and Michael Ochs, Phil's sister and brother, offered biographical sketches tracing his footsteps from his boyhood in Ohio to his rise to the top as a topical singer-songwriter. Emotions ran high, and the music-from Dave Van Ronk's moving rendition of the standard "He Was a Friend of Mine" to Jim and Jean's haunting interpretation of Phil's "Crucifixion"-upped the ante. The evening honoring Phil's life and music was inevitably shaded by a touch of sadness. No one had been afforded the chance to say goodbye, and as a result, people were making their final declarations.

Phil's final year or so had been so horrific, so lacking in grace and dignity that people could only wonder what on earth had happened. What had reduced him to a pathetic street creature wandering around New York, occasionally barefoot and covered in his own filth. often threatening the people he came across? Was it mental illness. alcoholism, a combination of both? It was common knowledge that he was manic depressive and a heavy drinker, but others had suffered similar conditions and walked away alive. Why had he self-destructed?

Perhaps he took his life because, as one of the country's most enthusiastic movie buffs, and as one who often viewed his own life as if it were taking place onscreen, he had the misguided romantic notion that suicide was the only noble ending to a script he had been given to work with. Perhaps he took his life because he had wandered into a darkened corridor from which there was no exit or return to light. Perhaps...

Reasons were unimportant.

Phil Ochs ceased to exist, first in his own mind, and then in reality. In the end, there were too many blank calendar pages in his datebook, in the past and in the future.

"So many people have tried to analyze the reasons behind his death," his sister wrote in the memorial concert's program notes. "There's nothing to analyze. He literally could not bear living anymore so he chose to go to sleep. At least he left us a legacy-all the meaningful songs he managed to create while he was with us."

The best of his songs were played at the memorial, but, appropriately enough, it was Phil who managed to steal the show when, with the stage darkened, he was heard singing "Changes," one of his most beautiful ballads, over the hall's sound system. During those few minutes, when his softly lilting voice filled the arena, people were reminded of what was lost and what would be missed.

After the memorial, people partied at The Bitter End in Greenwich Village. The get-together lasted until the evening's darkness had passed and the sun was beginning to hit the New York streets again. People got pleasantly drunk, and stories of better days were freely traded.

Phil would have loved that, too.

Book One: I'm Going to Say It Now

There but for fortune: the life of Phil Ochs
There but for fortune: the life of Phil Ochs
Author	Michael Schumacher
First published	1996
Type	Book

"Ah, but in such an ugly time, the true protest is beauty."

-Phil Ochs

Chapter One-Boy in Ohio

GERTRUDE OCHS yearned for her native Scotland and the privileged life of her youth, yet for some horrible reason, as if she were being punished by a batallion of angry gods, she had been sentenced to endure her second pregnancy in Columbus, New Mexico.

As far as she was concerned, Columbus was the penultimate stop in the American move westward toward oblivion, the kind of hicktown you'd read about or see in the movies. No one seemed to be doing anything. Townfolk clutching sweaty bottles of Coca-Cola would gather at the general store for the main event of the day-the arrival of the mail truck. On one occasion, when she returned home from a trip to town, Gertrude found a rattlesnake coiled on her front porch; fortunately, her screams brought along a neighbor, who shot the snake as casually as he might have shooed a fly from an apple pie cooling on a windowsill.

Gertrude blamed her husband for her predicament. Two years earlier, Jack Ochs, with his medical degree and his flowery talk of life in America, had sweet-talked her into leaving her homeland. How could she have known what lay ahead? Two of her closest friends in Scotland, Heddy and Dinah, had married American doctors and were living the good life in the States. How could she have suspected that it would be any different for her?

But Jack was nothing if not different. Not only had he struggled to establish a practice in this godforsaken country, but he also had suffered the horrible misfortune of being drafted into the army and shipped off to a CCC camp in New Mexico. Gertrude and their daughter, Sonia, born three years earlier in Scotland, had traveled with Jack to their new home in the Southwest.

In Gertrude's mind, one thing was absolutely certain: she would not be bearing her second child in Columbus. It was bad enough that she had been dragged to the outer reaches of civilization, but she would not hear of having a baby in anything but a proper medical facility, which, in this case, meant traveling to a larger city. The only nearby candidate to meet the expectant mother's qualifications was El Paso, Texas, so in December 1940, with her baby's delivery date rapidly approaching. Gertrude packed a suitcase with books, candy bars, and a single nightgown, and left for the city. She would be on her own, staying in a hotel, until the baby arrived. Her first son, Philip David, was born on December 19, 1940.

Jacob "Jack" Ochs, despite his wife's feelings to the contrary, was actually a product of the American Dream realized, at least to a modest extent. Both of his parents' families had immigrated to the United States in the late-nineteenth century, both coming from the same town, Mlawa, in Russ-Poland. Both families settled in New York City, where some of the Old World traditions could be maintained while the new immigrants settled into a different way of life.

It wasn't easy. Fanny Busky Ochs, Jacob's mother, would never forget the hardship of her early years in America. The entire family-Fanny, her parents, and her four sisters and two brothers-were crowded into a two-room railroad flat on Manhattan's Lower East Side, living on next to nothing and sleeping wherever they could find the space. While Fanny's father tried to eke out a living as the proprietor of a small grocery store, Fanny's mother tried to hold things together at home, taking care of her children while making hats or sewing clothes to supplement the family income. Fanny would recall that her wardrobe consisted of two dresses, one that was worn when the other was being washed, and on her one and only day of school in America, she was ridiculed by her classmates when she turned up without shoes. ("I suppose I looked like something that came from a tree," she reflected. "so they had a good laugh.") She never returned to school, and would never learn to read or write in English.

Instead of attending classes, Fanny went to work, doing whatever she could to earn extra money for the family. For a while, she baked bagels and sold them on the street; she also helped her mother sew hats. The day-to-day trials made her tough and self-sufficient. Although she was barely five feet tall as an adult, she could make it instantly clear, with no room for discussion or argument, that she was not a person to be lightly regarded.

Her future husband, Joe Ochs, was a strong contrast. At nearly six-foot-four, he towered over Fanny, yet he was very quiet and gentle-the kind of individual not given to fighting or raising his voice. This nature of his proved to be beneficial after he and Fanny were married in 1898. Fanny, the dominant force around the house, would order Joe around in even the tiniest of matters, with very little protest from her husband. Joe might come downstairs in the morning, announce that he intended to make scrambled eggs for breakfast, only to hear his wife insist that he soft-boil them; the next morning, Joe would start the water to boil eggs, only to have Fanny chide him for not scrambling them. Joe would simply shrug and take out the skillet.

Jacob Ochs, born in 1910, was the youngest of his parents' four children. At age four, he moved with his family to Arverne (Rockaway Beach), where the Ochs family enjoyed its first home-a brand-new frame house for which Joe Ochs paid the princely sum of four thousand dollars. Joe was justifiably proud of this turn of events: he had no education, very little job training, and had been raised in poverty, yet he had worked himself into the position where he could afford a reasonably good life for his family. He had invested the money he'd earned from his store in Manhattan into a small grocery store and bungalow-building business on Rockaway Beach, and he was holding his own in the business when he moved his family in 1914.

Jack inherited his father's easygoing personality, which definitely set him apart from his two older brothers, David and Sam, who were as hard-nosed as their mother. Unfortunately, Jack had not been handed his father's ambition, and there was very little discussion of his making a career in the bungalow business. Instead, he and his sister Eva would be the first family members to attend and finish college, and with their degrees, both would be afforded opportunities to work as professionals. To someone like Jack, a dreamer if ever there was one, the education was a mixed blessing. He would not have to work with his hands like his father and brothers, but he was also being saddled with the responsibility that accompanied the investment in his degree. He figured, fairly early on, that he would do best as a doctor.

After attending pre-med school at the University of Virginia, Jack was disappointed to learn that he couldn't get into any American medical schools; the quotas for Jewish students had been reached. Undaunted, Jack decided to attend medical school overseas. The University of Edinburgh in Scotland was friendly to Americans wanting to earn medical degrees. Jack's decision to go to school there proved to be fortuitous, at least in terms of his meeting his future wife. Harry Phin, Jack's closest friend at the university, had an older sister that he wanted Jack to meet.

For as long as she could remember, Gertrude Phin had been accustomed to the finer things. Her father, George, owned two highly successful tobacco shops in Edinburgh, and he had parlayed his earnings into the kind of life that would see that his wife and five children would never want for a thing. The family lived in a ten-room stone mansion, complete with live-in maid's quarters and a parlor that was never used. Four huge bedrooms, each with its own fireplace, occupied the top floor.

Despite such material wealth, life at the Phin household was less than ideal. George was a cold, domineering presence, rigid in the rules that he set and not given to displays of affection toward his wife and children. Little power plays were the order of the day. When, for instance, it was time for the children to receive their weekly allowances, George would make them stand around and wait until he was finished with a meal or otherwise inclined to dispense the money. Proper behavior was expected at all times.

When Gertrude met Jack Ochs, she was less than impressed. The American, by her estimation, might have been pleasant enough. and there was no doubting that he was a natural-born storyteller. but he lacked the social graces to which she was accustomed. Jack. however, was not to be easily discouraged. He liked his friend's older sister and was determined to win her over. It didn't hurt, either, that Gertrude's parents found Jack agreeable and considered him a good match for their daughter.

Jack regaled the family with tales of New York and America, using his charm to embellish his stories about how his parents owned a string of bungalows by the sea, and how he was going to make a big success of himself as a doctor with his own practice. Gertrude eventually subscribed to Jack's stories, and the two began to plot out the details for their marriage and eventual move to the dream life in the United States that Jack so eagerly described.

They were married on June 24, 1936, and Sonia was born in April 1937. The newly wed mother soon determined that raising a child was not something that came naturally to her. Children could be time-consuming and demanding, and Gertrude, who could barely take care of herself and couldn't cook even the most basic of meals, resented the imposition of having to look after her daughter by herself while her husband was doing his internship in York, England.

In time, the young family boarded a ship for America, Jack with his medical degree, Gertrude with the hope that her life would square itself away in the new land. Neither could have predicted the many turns that would dictate the direction their lives would take.

Gertrude was angry and bitterly disappointed when she realized that her life in America was going to be dramatically different from the one she had envisioned. When Jack had spoken of his parents' owning bungalows, Gertrude had pictured exquisite cottages by the sea-the kind she had seen in Scotland-not modest frame units that looked like all the other houses around it and that seemed to be located in the middle of nowhere. When Jack earned his medical degree, Gertrude had anticipated instant success and wealth, not a protracted struggle to establish a practice in post-Depression America. Feeling trapped and betrayed, Gertrude took out her frustration on her husband, berating him as a failure and criticizing his every move around the house.

Upon moving to the States, the Ochs family moved into an apartment in Manhattan, near Seventh Avenue and Fourteenth Street, and Jack found work in one of Manhattan's medical facilities. Then Jack received his call from Uncle Sam. Fierce battles were being fought in both Europe and the Far East, and while American politicians debated over the wisdom of entering the century's second world war, the country's armed forces were gearing up, preparing for what seemed to be inevitable. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor less than two weeks before Philip's first birthday, the family knew that Jack would be in the army for some time to come.

By the time Jack was shipped overseas, the family had grown accustomed to a rather nomadic existence. After a stay in Columbus, New Mexico, Jack had been transferred first to San Antonio, and then to Austin. To Gertrude, who had been raised in rock-solid stability, the moving around represented just another reason to question her marriage to this strange American doctor. For Sonia, there was the challenge of meeting new sets of playmates and learning new terrain. On her first day of kindergarten, she got lost walking home from school and had to be rescued, frightened and sobbing on the street curb, by the ice cream man. Although not gravely affected by the changing locales, Philip had other changes to deal with during this period: a younger brother, Michael, was added to the family in 1943.

Before departing for the war in Europe, Jack moved his family back to New York. Gertrude would need help in raising the children, he decided, and he could think of no better place than with his parents. Little did he know that Gertrude would find life with his mother to be the ultimate confinement, or that his and Gertrude's early years together, trying as they were, would prove to be the least difficult years of his marriage.

Jack was sent to England, where he was to await further assignment.

So far, his time in the service had been, at the very best, a mixed bag. During his years of training. Jack had done little to endear himself to his superior officers. He was a bit too moody and rebellious for his own good, and though these traits were not of the sort to get him drummed out of the army, they did cost him the opportunity to gain a decent officer's commission. In addition, when he did finally find himself up for promotion, Jack shrugged off the opportunity, refusing to fill out the paperwork necessary to assure his move up.

There was a reason for Jack's erratic behavior, though it wouldn't be determined until much later, after he had been hospitalized, given a battery of treatments (including shock treatments), and finally diagnosed as being manic depressive. In the army, he was seen as being eccentric-and not always unpleasantly so. In England, he was nicknamed "Charlie"-short for "Goodtime Charlie"-because of his buoyant personality. His paycheck would arrive, and Jack would spend it as if a time limit had been imposed on the contents of his wallet. Nights out with the boys, fine liquor and food, new clothingJack would enjoy life to the hilt, only to have to scrimp for the rest of the month to make ends meet until the next paycheck. Then it came time to repeat the procedure...

His darker side emerged when he was called upon to apply his medical skills to the fodder of war. Working on soldiers injured in the Battle of the Bulge proved to be a hellish task, and seeing the day-to-day carnage had a profound effect on the good-natured doctor. In no time, he was as shell-shocked as the young men on the battlefront, his depression leaving him hard-pressed to concentrate on his duties. In time, the army realized that he had become another war casualty and, in November 1945, a deeply troubled Jack Ochs was issued an honorable medical discharge and shipped back to the States. He had been in the service for nearly five years.

Jack's absence had been rough on his wife, if for no other reason than because Gertrude found life with her in-laws-and particularly Fanny-to be more unbearable than life with her husband. As a guest of Jack's parents, Gertrude had no choice but to accept the ways of the household, which was not always easy. Fanny could be both demanding and critical, and contending with her, as well as trying to raise three children without the physical presence of their father, was difficult for Gertrude. At one point, all three children came down with the chicken pox, one after the other, which was immediately followed by individual cases of the measles. Gertrude was all but imprisoned in the house, looking after her children's needs, unable to escape the constant hectoring of her mother-in-law.

After Jack's return, the family moved to a house in Far Rockaway. The Ochses celebrated Christmas 1945 amidst packed boxes of belongings, a small Christmas tree perched atop the kitchen table, and the presents piled underneath. It wasn't much, but at least they were all together again, living in their own house and looking to the future.

The reunion was short-lived. Jack needed psychiatric treatment, and he had barely unpacked when he was off to a hospital on Long Island. It would be his home for nearly two years.

The long-term effects of his father's absence on Philip, coupled with the many changes of homes that he would go through during his childhood, can never be accurately determined, but there is no doubting that Philip was markedly different from his older sister and younger brother. Sonia and Michael were cheerful and gregarious, both capable of easily making new friends and adapting to the changes of scenery. Philip, on the other hand, was naturally shy and tended to be withdrawn even among his own family. Making new friends was exceedingly difficult and, as a boy, Philip would never have more than one friend at a time. In school, he was quiet and inattentive, more inclined to wander the landscapes of his own imagination than to pay attention to anything a teacher might have to say.

In February 1947, with Jack still gone, Gertrude decided to take her children for an extended stay with her family in Scotland. Traveling by boat in the middle of winter made for a long trip. Philip. Sonia, and Michael filled some of their hours by playing on the ship's deck, which had been glazed by frozen sea spray, their footing made delightfully precarious by the combination of icy floorboards and the pitching ship. The games were brought to an abrupt halt one day when Philip lost his balance and slid across the deck toward the edge of the ship. At the last second, he latched onto a volleyball net that had been left at the side of the deck. As an adult, Phil Ochs would use the imagery of the sea in a number of his songs. but his initial introduction to it as a six-year-old was anything but romantic.

He would also hold a chauvinistic attitude toward Scotland in his later years, though there is very little evidence to indicate that his six months in the country were especially memorable. Every morning, he and Sonia took a bus to the Liberton School, a tiny schoolhouse located just outside of Edinburgh. Philip would carry his books in an old music case his mother had used as a child, and it was not uncommon for him to leave his books behind, either at school or on the bus, his absent-mindedness driving his mother to near distraction.

"He was a dreamer, with a capital D," his sister remarked many years later, noting that this characteristic remained consistent through adulthood. As a child, Philip would lose his school books; as an adult, it would be his wallet. When he began to wear glasses, Philip would lose or break them with a regularity that proved to be humiliating to his mother.

"My mother had bought him glasses at Sears," Sonny recalled, "and they had some kind of policy in which you were insured if the glasses were lost or broken. It got to the point where my mother was downright embarrassed to walk in because they had replaced or repaired so many pairs of glasses. She felt guilty and wanted to pay. but they wouldn't let her."

Teachers could be equally exasperated with Philip's spaciness. He generally earned good grades, but his instructors were hard-pressed to understand why: he never seemed to be paying attention to anything going on in class.

One particular teacher-a Miss Jocelyn-eventually exploded in frustration. She had taught Sonia a few years earlier and deemed her to be a model student, which only meant that Sonia had fallen in step with her teacher's strict, traditionalist approach to learning. Philip, on the other hand, was different; he didn't listen or participate in class. Miss Jocelyn complained about this to Sonia, and to prove her point, she summoned Philip's sister to her classroom one day.

"I cannot stand it anymore," she said, obviously at wit's end. "I cannot teach your brother."

Sitting in the back of the room, Philip stared out the window, oblivious to Sonia's presence in the classroom.

"I'll show you what the problem is," Miss Jocelyn continued. "Philip," she called out.

The youngster did not respond.

"Philip!" she called out in a louder, more insistent tone. Philip continued to stare off into space.

"PHILIP OCHS!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.

"Huh?"

Miss Jocelyn turned to Sonia. "I want you to go home and tell your mother that I cannot stand it anymore," she said. "He's this way all the time." Sonia dutifully reported the incident to her mother, but they both realized that there was no changing the boy. He was incorrigible.

For a dreamer like Philip Ochs, the ultimate parallel universe was a darkened movie theater and a Western double feature. In the world of cinema, life was as uncluttered and black-and-white as the giant heroic images projected onto the screen. In the real world, life could be complicated and sometimes painful, even for the good guys; in the movie theater, justice always prevailed.

Philip's interest in movies began innocently enough: whenever she needed a babysitter, or just wanted some time to herself, his mother would send him and Michael to one of Far Rockaway's three movie theaters. The boys watched movie after movie, never tiring of the action pictures, taking in as many as nine movies a week. Philip loved The Count of Monte Cristo, King Kong, and any movie featuring John Wayne. To Philip, John Wayne-and, to only a slightly lesser extent, Audie Murphy-symbolized everything that America stood for.

Movies quickly became the most important activity in Philip's life. Anything connected to the movies drew his instant attention, from the films themselves to his sister's movie magazines and posters. Whenever he went to the movie theater. Philip brought along his Kodak Brownie camera and took pictures of the theater's marquee; he even attempted to shoot photographs of the movies as they played on the big screen. He collected scores of movie-star postcards that he could purchase for a penny in vending machines.

The obsession would last a lifetime. As an adult, he would attend thousands of movies, quite often as many as three or four a day. Friends marveled at his ability to remember not only titles, release dates, plots, directors, and stars, but seemingly every minor detail connected with every film he saw. Not surprisingly, he often saw dramatic events in his life as if they were scenes in a movie and he was the film's protagonist. Movies gave him his first exposure to the idea of celebrity, and even in his youthful years, he knew that this was a status he wanted to attain.

After his release from the hospital, Jack Ochs tried to start a private medical practice in Far Rockaway. He put together a small office and, anticipating extra work if someone happened to step on a piece of glass or other sharp object, he hung a shingle near the beach. Patients, however, were hard to come by.

Life was even tougher at home. Gertrude continued to badger him relentlessly, criticizing his inability as a doctor, husband, and father. At this point, Jack and Gertrude's marriage was totally loveless. Neither showed the slightest affection for the other, and the two slept in separate beds, prompting their children to joke as adults that their parents were either blessed with three immaculate conceptions or had actually had sex a grand total of three times over the course of their marriage. The only thing keeping the two together was Gertrude's uncompromising belief that divorce was simply out of the question.

On a typical day, Jack would come home from work, eat dinner, and immediately retire to his room, where he would either read in bed or go to sleep. Contact with his children was held to a minimum. Every so often, he might take Sonny to a track meet or baseball game, but this kind of bonding was nonexistent between him and the boys, who never showed any interest in sports. As a rule, Jack preferred to keep to himself.

"My father was almost like a phantom." Sonny explained, remembering her father as more of a fixture than a living being around the house. "He was there, but he wasn't there." Significantly, when Sonny and Michael, as adults, were asked what the two of them might have inherited from their father, both offered identical responses: "Nothing."

Jack eventually gave up the hope of practicing medicine in Far Rockaway, and after inquiring about employment opportunities in area hospitals and clinics, he found a job working in a TB clinic in Otisville, a tiny community in upstate New York. Rather than relocate his family, Jack packed his bags and moved alone. Given his state of mind and his problems with his wife, the decision must have felt like an escape.

If Gertrude Ochs made one lasting impression upon their children, it was the emphasis she placed on confronting the truth. Throughout their lives, Sonny, Phil, and Michael would be candid to the point of being unsettling, no matter how difficult it was to face up to the truth. On occasion, Phil's honesty could make him look naive, as if he didn't realize that being forthright could cause him trouble.

However, there was one occasion when he could not bring himself to own up to the truth.

He had just turned nine. The family was going shopping in Jamaica, Queens, and Philip, not wanting to go along, asked if he could stay home. His parents agreed. To amuse himself during their absence, Philip repaired to his mother's clothing closet, which also housed the cardboard box with all the children's toys. The closet was dark, so Philip, unable to find what he was looking for, struck a match to shed a little light on his search. The flame caught the bottom of a piece of Gertrude's clothing, and before he knew what was happening, Philip had a fire going in the closet. He ran to the kitchen, filled a pot with water, and tried to dowse the fire. When this failed to extinguish the flames, Philip tried to think of someone who could help him. He had been expressly forbidden to talk to strangers, and the only people he knew in the area were his former next-door neighbors, who were now living a block away, on Rose Street. Philip ran up the alleyway to their house, let himself in, and reported the fire to the family's teenage daughter. The daughter immediately called the Fire Department, and firefighters were still at the scene when the Ochs family returned from their shopping trip. When questioned about the fire, Philip denied having anything to do with it, claiming he had no idea how it had started-a story he would stand by for years to come.

The fire turned out to be one of very few eventful moments in an otherwise passive childhood. Like his father, Philip preferred to spend his time alone in his room, and on those occasions when he was around Sonny or Michael, a squabble always seemed to take place. Philip would tease or pick on Michael, who was physically incapable of defending himself in a fight, and he thought nothing of taking advantage of his younger brother in other ways. Philip especially enjoyed trading toys with Michael because he knew he could always bargain to his advantage. Sonny, who resented the interest that Philip charged whenever he loaned her money, would jump to Michael's aid, and before long the three would be going at it, infuriating Gertrude with their incessant fighting and teasing.

If he was around, Jack bore the brunt of Gertrude's frustration.

"Take these goddamn kids out of here so I can have some peace and quiet," she'd order her husband, virtually on a weekly basis. Jack would then gather the kids in the family car and take them for long drives in the countryside, giving Gertrude time to cool off. On other occasions, Jack would take them out on his own, using the time for rare moments with his children.

Over the years, the evening meals became a study of how dysfunctional the family really was. Gertrude loved to read, and she insisted on bringing a book to the dinner table with her. That, however, was only the beginning. She also demanded silence while she read, so the typical Ochs family dinner would find four people-or five, if Jack was present-sitting at the table and reading books or comic books, the entire meal taken in silence, unless, of course, the kids were fighting among themselves, which was not at all uncommon.

In June 1951, the Ochs family moved from Far Rockaway to Perrysburg, a tiny rural town in upstate New York. Jack had moved on to another job in another TB clinic, and this time he took his family with him. Phil spent a year attending a three-room schoolhouse before he was shipped off to nearby Gowanda, where a larger, central school was located. It was here that he began his musical training.

Gertrude believed that her children would benefit from music lessons, and she urged them to select an instrument to study. Sonny picked the piano, which she learned to play efficiently: Michael chose the saxophone, and Philip decided to go with the clarinet.

"He was incredibly gifted," Michael said of his brother. "I took the saxophone and was good at it, but then he picked it up and topped me in a week. He was so much better that I quit right away. He was a natural."

At first Philip was less than enthusiastic about taking any instrument, but in no time he was attacking his musical studies with a passion that bordered the fanatical. Every day after school, he would head straight to his room and practice for hours, running through his scales over and over, the family dog positioned at his feet and howling along with him. Before long, the endless repetitions unnerved the entire family.

"It was absolute torture," Sonny insisted, noting that such behavior was in keeping with her brother's obsessive nature. In fact, as Sonny recalled, the persistent practicing led to a humorous episode a year or so later, when Philip decided to supplement his musical knowledge by learning to play the drums. The family lived in a four-unit apartment complex at the time, and when Gertrude casually mentioned to her downstairs neighbor-who happened to be married to the assistant director of the hospital where Jack worked-that Philip was thinking of taking up the drums, she received a firm, unenthusiastic response.

"Over my dead body," the woman told Gertrude. "If he's going to learn drums, he's going out in the woods. He's not doing it in that apartment. A person can take only so much."

Nothing ever came of Philip's interest in drums; mastering the clarinet kept him busy enough. He was a standout on the instrument-so much so that he quickly surpassed other students who had been studying it for years. His technical skills went unquestioned, but even more important, he showed a remarkable gift for interpretation. Each year, Philip would go to Fredonia State Teacher's College, where he would have his musical skills professionally analyzed, and every year he would earn A's for his individual performances. "You have exceptional musical feeling and the ability to transfer it on your instrument is abundant," commented one judge, who encouraged Philip to continue his studies.

In just over three years' time, Philip's progress on the clarinet was so remarkable that his teacher, Mr. Navarro, was genuinely upset when the Perrysburg TB hospital closed down and Jack was forced to look for work in another city. Students like Philip didn't come along often, and Navarro wanted to see him through the school term. It would be in her son's best interests, the instructor told Gertrude, if Philip remained behind and finished his course of study. Philip could stay with him. Gertrude, of course, disagreed.

It was December 1954, and the family was off to another part of the country-to Columbus, Ohio, and still another TB hospital.

By then, Sonny was no longer living at home. Gertrude had received a modest inheritance when her mother died, and in an effort to provide more poise and polish for a daughter she considered to be too tomboyish, Gertrude sent Sonny to a finishing school in Switzerland. Sonny loved living in rural New York, and she never forgave her parents, first, for sending her to Switzerland against her wishes, and. second, for moving while she was away.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, life followed its familiar pattern for the Ochs clan. Jack took a job at the local TB hospital, the family found an apartment on the hospital grounds and ate the same food served to the patients, and the boys were enrolled in a small country school.

As an adult, Phil Ochs would retain fond memories of his time in Columbus. The city, fairly small in those days, was especially uninhabited on the outskirts of town, where the Ochs family lived, and life was an uncluttered slice from Rockwellian Americana. Philip loved to take his bicycle on long rides down Alum Creek Drive, a rural stretch of road that seemed to accentuate the area's natural beauty. Many of his classmates were country kids who didn't report to school until after the October harvest, and who left school for spring planting.

As one might expect, Gertrude found the scene totally unacceptable. Their apartment, placed in the midst of a hospital complex, an old-age home, and a cemetery, was a far cry from serenity. Jack was again going through a manic phase, manifested by his fighting with the hospital's head nurse; from past experiences, Gertrude could tell that he was not long for his job. As for the boys... well, there had to be something better than a country-bumpkin school offering little more than nineteenth-century educational standards.

Gertrude was especially appalled when Philip came home with a friend who appeared to embody everything she disliked about the area. With his unkempt hair and sloppy clothes, Dave Sweazy was anything but the kind of boy Gertrude would have preferred her son to be hanging around with. It didn't matter that this was Philip's first close friend; Sweazy seemed so uncultured to Gertrude that the best she could muster for him was pity.

Philip ignored his mother's objections to his new friend. After years of staying off on his own, having occasional, but never especially close friends, Philip had come across someone he could talk to for hours on end-a buddy who shared his enthusiasm for going to the movies or for just hanging out. Philip enjoyed having Sweazy over at the house as a dinner guest, or for long conversations in his room. Significantly, he took a number of photographs of Sweazy, and on one occasion posed with him in a dimestore photo booth; the pictures were then added to Philip's scrapbook of movie marquees and film stars-an honor bestowed upon no other friend to that point.

Sweazy made an important contribution to bringing Philip out of his shell. After moving to Columbus, Philip had continued his train-ing on the clarinet, studying at the Capital University Conservatory of Music and achieving the unheard-of status of principal soloist in the college orchestra by his sixteenth birthday. Despite his talent and membership in the orchestra, Philip was never really a part of the group. At school, he continued to stay away from the crowd, distinguishing himself in neither academics nor athletics. If anything, his occasional playground fights established him as a moody figure. With Sweazy, Philip could be himself and be accepted for it.

Unfortunately, the friendship was short-lived. Gertrude had every intention of extracting her sons from the small school they attended, and she told Philip and Michael that they would be transferring to the Columbus Academy the following school year. When Philip balked at the notion, Gertrude countered with the suggestion that he come up with an alternative. Phil mulled it over, and after seeing an advertisement in the New York Times Magazine, he announced that he wanted to attend the Staunton Military Academy in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

As far as Gertrude was concerned, Philip wouldn't be leaving soon enough, especially after his latest bit of mischief with Dave Sweazy. The two had been to another Western playing at the movie theater, and afterward, inspired by the onscreen gunplay, Philip decided to check out his own quick-draw capability with a Sweazy family pistol. The gun went off, and Philip was fortunate to escape with only a flesh wound in his leg.

Philip, Gertrude concluded, might be better off elsewhere.

In retrospect, it seems ironic that Phil Ochs, who made "I Ain't Marching Anymore" his signature song, could have enjoyed military school as much as he did. However, he was anything but a rebel when he departed for Staunton, Virginia, in the fall of 1956. If anything, he needed to find a compromise to his conflicting needs of both fitting in and setting himself apart from his classmates.

As he later admitted, he was nothing more than a confused teenager.

"I had no idea what I was going to be," he said. "I was just an American nebbish, being formed by societal forces, completely captivated by movies, the whole James Dean, Marlon Brando trip."

In some respects, military school was an ideal environment for Philip. All students were subject to the same rigid rules and schedules; everyone marched to the same beat, awoke to the same bell, and could commiserate with each other when academic life became too structured or oppressive. Since he was extremely shy around girls to begin with, Philip found that he could walk more freely in the all-boys school, where guys could be guys without the added distractions of the opposite sex. It was easier to fit in when one was literally living with one's classmates. Guys spoke in a shorthand, hung out together, pulled pranks and stunts, formed their own society. In Staunton, Philip shortened his name to "Phil"-indicative, perhaps, of his new, freer spirit.

Phil found small ways to distinguish himself. Although he had always been awkward and uncoordinated in athletics, he discovered that he enjoyed lifting weights and could hold his own in the weight room; classmates nicknamed him "Mr. Universe." He was also a member of Staunton's marching band, but this proved to be a disappointment. Wearing a uniform and marching in formation offered absolutely no opportunity for creativity, and as the months passed by, Phil considered dropping clarinet entirely.

His attention was now directed to another type of music-the kind being broadcast by a nearby country radio station. Phil loved the voices of Faron Young, Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, and Lefty Frizzell, who offered emotional impact in their deceptively simple phrasing. The same could be said about Johnny Cash or Hank Williams, who appeared to have arisen straight from the masses. Then there was Elvis Presley, who filtered every sound that was truly American through a voice that came from an uncharted place and served it to a public thirsty for something new. In Phil's eyes, Presley truly was the King.

For Phil, the music was more than just a casual pleasure; it quickly became another obsession. He listened to it nonstop on his radio. He hummed or sang along. When he returned to Ohio for summer vacation, he bought records at the local record shop and argued about his musical discoveries with Michael, who was also interested in music, though he preferred rhythm and blues to the country-flavored music that Phil liked. Phil entertained the notion of being a singer himself someday.

The family, by now all too familiar with Phil's obsessive nature, humored him, although Gertrude was bothered when Phil talked about giving up the clarinet, for which he had proven talent, and becoming a star, which seemed so far removed from the real world. At one time, Gertrude had listened to a young man's visions of grandeur; now, two decades and numerous problems with her husband later, she knew reality well enough to map its course.

Phil had no idea how he would attain the stardom that he talked about, but he was sensible enough to acknowledge that he would do well to continue his education after his graduation from high school. Ohio State, the local Columbus campus, was a logical choice.

Besides his passion for music, Phil had cultivated a strong interest in writing during his two years at Staunton. When the academy sponsored a short-story writing contest for its students, Phil entered "White Milk to Red Wine," a brief yet very effective vignette that took the contest's ten-dollar second prize:

I had never been so worried in all my life. When I got out of bed that morning a cold sweat came over me. I knew I had to fight him sooner or later, and today was it. He had bullied me so often, and now I had finally reached my breaking point. If a person is stronger than others, he doesn't have the right to pick on people smaller and weaker than him.

He insulted me in front of my friends. I had to make a stand. In a moment of anger, I challenged him to a fight the next day after lunch. When he accepted, he threw back his head and laughed cruelly.

I went to school the following day feeling like David when he went to meet Goliath. Unfortunately, I had no slingshot to cover me. My morning classes seemed to pass too quickly and the lunch I ate had no taste. When I walked towards the meeting place, I knew how a condemned man feels as he walks the last mile. All of a sudden a hand gripped my shoulder. I spun around and there he stood. The only difference was that the triumphant look was gone from his face. He stammered nervously and said that he didn't mean to pick on me, and that he didn't want to fight.

With a sigh of relief I agreed, and we walked back to the school to spend another routine kindergarten afternoon.

The story, with its dramatic presentation and O. Henry-like surprise ending, gave some indication of the artist and person Phil Ochs would become in the future. Phil would always see a much larger picture framed in everyday events, and in "White Milk to Red Wine," he viewed his confrontation with the schoolyard bully as symbolic of the struggle between smaller, weaker people and their tormentors. Further, in citing the David-and-Goliath Bible tale, he acknowledged that his story was hardly new. Nevertheless, in making a passing reference to the epic struggle, he added impact to the ironic, humorous ending.

As an adult, Phil would integrate similar elements of drama and irony in his songs. The idea of showing courage in the face of tough opposition would become a personal credo motivating his political activism and topical protest music.

Of main importance, for the time being, was the recognition that the story brought Phil. After being raised in a household where he had to struggle to be noticed, he had moved away and discovered that he could be honored for what he had to say. For an aspiring star, this was a small but considerable start.

Phil had never been comfortable with his physical appearance. He had a long nose, weak eyes, and ears that stuck out too far; his lack of athleticism had left him with a soft yet gangly frame. He realized, as a result of his mother's constantly carrying on about other people's physical appearance, and especially in comparison to his collection of movie-star pictures, that he was, at utter best, plain in his appearance, and he believed that he had to do better if he could ever hope to stand out in the public eye.

His weight-lifting regimen at Staunton had put him on the right track. Contact lenses helped, as did a brand-new, brushed-back, and longer hairstyle. Despite these improvements, Phil was dissatisfied. Something had to be done about his nose.

Shortly after his graduation from Staunton, Phil told his mother that he wanted corrective surgery. He wanted to start college with a new look, and he wanted to give himself at least a decent chance to succeed in whatever he would eventually be doing. Gertrude was not inclined to go along with such foolish vanity, and it took some convincing on Phil's-and, eventually, Sonny's-part to change her mind, but the surgery was finally done. The procedure might have been unnecessary, but there was no doubting that the new Phil Ochs looked better than the old one. After a childhood spent in the background, he was ready to step forward and make his mark.

Chapter Two-The Singing Socialists

OHIO STATE did not agree with Phil Ochs. The studies were challenging, and he found it difficult to make new friends. There had been more comradery among the students at Staunton, a greater sense of unity; at Ohio State, students applied themselves to their individual courses of study, their thoughts geared to future careers.

When Phil enrolled at the Columbus campus, he had no idea what his eventual major would be. He still hoped to find a way into the entertainment field, perhaps as an actor or a singer, but these were not necessarily the kind of careers that one prepared for at a university. There was no specific curriculum for stardom.

After a semester of taking general courses and spending lonely nights in his dorm, Phil decided he'd had enough. College, he reasoned, was a waste of time and money, at least for the time being; he ought to be checking out the real world.

With this in mind, Phil closed out his first semester, took a leave of absence from the university, and told his parents that he was going to head down to Florida to look into the prospects of earning a living as a singer.

This was not the kind of news that Gertrude hoped to hear. By all indications, Phil was turning out to be just like his father. Jack could never settle down or hold a job. He'd been fired from his job in Columbus and had taken another one in Cleveland, hauling Gertrude and Michael to Cleveland Heights in the wake of his decision. He never seemed focused, never able to find his place and grow comfortable with it. Like Phil, Jack had briefly pursued a youthful fantasy. As a teenager, he had left home and roamed around the South for several months, trying to establish himself as a prizefighter. He had returned home, whipped and penniless. Phil, Gertrude concluded, was destined to similar failure. He was the proverbial chip off the old block.

Gertrude had good reason to be concerned. Phil's plans for Florida were half-baked. Indeed, he had been collecting records and listening to the radio with such burning enthusiasm that he now knew the lyrics to scores of popular songs, but he had no formal training as a singer and could not accompany himself on an instrument. He had no connections to help him find work in the South, nowhere to stay while he was trying to establish himself. He had little to recommend him for any kind of job.

Nevertheless, Phil was adamant about going, even when his mother warned him that the family would not support him while he was pursuing his foolhardy ambitions. Phil packed his bag and, in late February, caught a bus to Miami.

He had no sooner set foot in Florida than he was picked up for vagrancy and sentenced to fifteen days in the county jail. To Phil, who tended to romanticize some of the events of his life as if they were scenes in an epic motion picture, the jail time was one big adventure. He was passing his hours with real people, receiving a better education than he could have ever expected back home. The sheriff failed to share such enthusiasm. As far as he could tell, Phil was just a clean-cut Midwestern kid completely alone and out of his element. and there was no telling what effect the other prisoners would have on him. To isolate Phil from the others, the sheriff gave him a number of odd jobs to do, including the task of washing his car every day.

The two weeks passed and Phil was back on the streets, in no better shape than he had been in prior to his arrest. He still had no job or place to stay, and his efforts to find work as a singer were predictably dismal. He picked up a couple of jobs, one selling shoes and another washing dishes, but neither lasted for more than a few days. He grew sick from the lack of nutrition; his gums bled from pyorrhea. He finally gave up, called home, and asked his mother to send the money he needed for return fare to Cleveland.

Had he never become famous for his antiestablishment stance, Phil's fiasco in Florida might have been written off as a harmless, youthful mistake-little more than a case of poor judgment. Unfortunately, the FBI would eventually use the arrest as evidence of Phil's criminality, as proof of his instability, as if sleeping in the park had set him off on the road to becoming a clear and present danger to the state.

In the heyday of the Beat Generation, when young people on college campuses across the United States wore black and affected a look that they felt jumped straight from the pages of Kerouac and Ginsberg. Phil Ochs was as collegiate as they came, conservatively dressed and always smiling, ending many of his conversations with a cheery "see you around campus." When he began his second semester at Ohio State in the fall of 1959, his attitudes were still relatively straight-laced, his interests still geared more toward the movies than the political goings-on in the world.

All that was about to change.

Prior to enrolling for fall semester classes, Phil shopped around for an off-campus place to live. He found a boarding house on East 15th Avenue in Columbus, and moved in a week before classes began. Phil shared a room with another student, who was none too pleased to see Phil set up his portable record player, stock it with rock 'n' roll and country records, and plop back onto his bed, ready to listen to the music for hours on end. As at home, Phil covered the walls of his room with posters of Elvis Presley, John Wayne, and other heroes, and he showed no inclination whatsoever to clean up after himself. He had no sooner moved in than his roommate started looking for a way out.

One day, early into the school year, a tall, lanky student strolled by Phil's room and, seeing the door open, paused to listen to the music coming from the record player. As usual, Phil was sprawled out on his bed, listening to Elvis. The student introduced himself as Jim Glover.

Like Phil, Jim was a music aficionado, but his tastes were quite different. Whereas Phil liked songs for their stories, Jim listened to songs for their messages. Jim loved the dust-bowl ballads of Woody Guthrie and the politically charged songs popularized by Pete Seeger and the Weavers. Phil knew very little about this kind of music, but Jim's passion for it convinced him that he ought to give it a listen. In addition, Phil was excited to learn that Jim could play guitar and banjo, and that he could sing a wide range of folk and country songs. The two became instant friends, and in no time Jim had replaced Phil's disgruntled roommate at the boarding house.

Jim loved debating politics as much as he liked listening to or playing music, and this interest quickly rubbed off on Phil. Other than a casual interest in the McCarthy hearings, Phil's parents had never shown much enthusiasm for politics. Phil had picked up a basic interest in politics on his own. Like many Americans, he had been captivated by the news reports of Castro's revolution in Cuba, and the larger-than-life Cuban leader represented to Phil a real-life hero in the tradition of his gunslinging matinee idols. Phil read whatever he could find about the revolution, and by the time he met Jim Glover, he could speak with some authority about the events that had taken place so close to the American shores.

Phil spent a lot of time at Jim's parents' house, and he particularly enjoyed the many hours that he, Jim, and Jim's father spent at the dinner table, discussing the issues of the day. Jim's father, an Ohio State alumnus, was as political as they came. An open Marxist, Mr. Glover represented a radical voice quite alien to Phil, and he heard plenty about the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee, red-baiting, unionism, and Joe McCarthy. Mr. Glover claimed to know Gus Hall, one of the top-ranking Communist Party officials in America, and he loved to lecture the boys on the oppressed masses and his personal vision for a greater, left-leaning future. Phil took it all in, totally impressed by the man who seemed to know so much more about the important things going on in the world than his own family.

Phil offered his own contributions to the discussions. He had done his homework on the Cuban revolution, and could hold his own whenever the talk turned to Castro's plans for his country. According to Jim Glover, "Phil knew more about Castro and Cuba than my dad did. My dad knew about the persecution of people-of the associations in the country that the government was trying to spy on, the McCarthy period. But he really didn't know much about Castro. He didn't know anything more about Castro than anyone else who reads the papers. But Phil did."

Back at the rooming house, Phil and Jim would discuss politics late into the evening. Although he never read much other than the daily newspapers, Phil now skimmed over books of political philosophy and history, going through texts like a student cramming for an exam. He proved to be a quick study. The United States was preparing for another presidential election, and Phil watched with great interest as the battle lines were drawn between conservative incumbent Republicans, represented by two-term Eisenhower vice-president Richard Nixon, and the decisively more liberal Democrats, to be represented by either Hubert Humphrey, the former mayor of Minneapolis and current senator from Minnesota, or by John Kennedy, the young, charismatic senator from Massachusetts. Phil was delighted when Kennedy seized the Democratic Party nomination, and he and Jim Glover bantered back and forth about the prospects of Kennedy's winning the general election in November.

Jim didn't see Kennedy as having much chance. "I wasn't really too familiar with Kennedy at all," he confessed years later, long after history had run its course and Kennedy had become one of American history's great success stories. "I thought Nixon would definitely win because he had the experience."

Phil disagreed, so much so that he proposed an unusual wager: he would put fifty dollars on Kennedy if Jim would bet his Kay acoustic guitar on Nixon. It didn't matter that Phil was in no financial position to lose the bet, or that he couldn't play guitar. He had every intention of winning, and when he did, he would talk his roommate into teaching him how to play.

Returning to Ohio State on the rebound from his disaster in Florida turned out to be an ideal scenario for Phil. This time around, he was much more comfortable on campus, much more prepared to focus on academic endeavors. He excelled in his classes and made himself a familiar figure around campus. To a large extent, this change could be attributed to his conversations with Jim Glover and his father: for the first time in his life, people were listening to what he had to say and taking his opinion seriously. After growing up in a household where all three children would jockey to be noticed-even if it was negative attention garnered from misbehavior-Phil was being treated seriously by his peers.

Thus encouraged, Phil pushed himself to a higher level of campus activity. He helped organize and participated in student affairs, including protests against mandatory ROTC training and the way student government was conducted at Ohio State. He talked politics nonstop with fellow students. Most importantly, he began to write.

Editors of The Lantern, the Ohio State student newspaper, and Sundial, the campus humor magazine, discovered that Phil was a bundle of opinions, especially on politics and music. With his manic energy, he could jump from topic to topic with no effort at all, and, better yet, he could witness events, analyze them, and write about them at a speed uncommon to other students, whose outside interests and extracurricular activities hindered them from making daily deadlines. In short, editors could see Phil as an ideal candidate to work at The Lantern or Sundial.

Or so they thought.

Unbeknownst to these editors. Phil also harbored a self-destructive side-one that would never permit him to be satisfied with the status quo. Like his father, Phil was destined to be a wanderer, never content with minor gains or successes, always looking for more. In the beginning, however, he was happy to work for The Lantern and Sundial, and he applied himself to the task with his customary zeal. To remain close to the action, he moved out of the rooming house and back to a campus dormitory, staying in Steeb Hall with many of his fellow reporters. Journalism became more than just a potential major; it became a way of life. A newshound unsurpassed, Phil studied newspapers with the enthusiasm of a theologian poring over Holy Scripture, reading and taking notes on the events of the day, his commentary making its way into the many pieces that he turned out for The Lantern and Sundial.

Phil would write on a wide variety of topics in the months ahead. from politics to the arts; he contributed articles on student affairs and government, as well as reviews of concerts and plays. His loose, conversational style-a strong suit later in his life, when he was on-stage and chatting between songs-was ideal for his Sundial pieces, regardless of whether he was writing about local appearances of the Kingston Trio or Limeliters, or sending up campus politics in biting satirical sketches. For the Lantern, he stayed closer to straight journalism, conforming to a style practiced by the rest of his peers. Either way, his opinions were always close to the surface.

In time, Phil became one of Ohio State's most prolific writers, but he was still dissatisfied. He had far too many ideas for the available creative outlets. In addition, his opinions on some issues were far too radical for his Lantern editors, who advised him to tone down his commentary. Phil's continuing defense of Castro and the political affairs of Cuba made his editors and fellow reporters quite nervous, not simply because of political differences of opinion, but also because funding for The Lantern originated from highly conservative sources.

Angered by the opposition to some of his ideas, Phil looked for other journalistic outlets. He wrote letters to the editors of the daily newspapers in the area, though this was only a partial success, since there were limits to the number of letters he could publish in any given period of time. In frustration, he started his own newspaper, The Word; a sporadically released publication designed to print material deemed too controversial for The Lantern.

Phil's friendship with Jim Glover led to one other major outlet for his opinion-a venue he would have never dreamed possible just a few years earlier, when he was playing clarinet and marching in formation at Staunton.

He could speak through his music.

Upon winning his election bet with Glover, Phil had talked him into teaching him how to play the guitar. Ironically, Phil did not take to the instrument as quickly as he had learned to play the clarinet or his brother's saxophone, and while his playing on the guitar was average at best, Phil would never treat the instrument as anything other than a means of accompaniment, existing only to complement his voice and ideas.

Jim taught Phil a few basic folk songs, and before long the two were playing together, Jim on banjo and Phil on guitar, Jim harmonizing with Phil's singing of the lead melodies. The two worked well together. Phil learned quickly, picking up new chords and chord progressions almost every night, applying small creative flourishes to compensate for his rudimentary skills on guitar. His voice was pleasing enough, even if it did tend to rise from his throat rather than his diaphragm, creating a natural flutter that future record producers would try to minimize on his recordings. Fortunately for Phil, his vocal weaknesses were easily neutralized by Jim Glover's exceptional harmonies.

As would be the case throughout his life, Phil's main talent was his ability to write songs. His bottomless well of ideas, already evident in his journalism, supplied him with the basis for countless songs. and Phil had barely learned to play the guitar when he began to write lyrics and apply them to folk-influenced tunes that he could make up on the spot. Each newspaper headline seemed to provide the grist for a new song, which Phil would put together and present to an approving Jim Glover.

Boosted by his confidence in his newfound musical abilities, Phil quite naturally started to consider a way to apply them to his long-standing hopes of entering the entertainment field. Folk music, though far from the rage it would become in a year or two, was becoming popular in the area, on campus and in several folk clubs starting up in the Cleveland area, and Phil fancied the idea of making a name for himself. Folk music, he believed, could be both artful and. Informative.

In no time, he was forging a scheme for a "can't miss" folk duo. As Phil saw it, he would be the brains of the operation, writing songs and overseeing the duo's business affairs, while Jim, with his great voice and good looks, would provide the onstage appeal. Phil outlined his plans to Jim on a number of occasions, his enthusiasm overwhelming any of Glover's skepticism, and the two agreed to give it a shot. Pointing to the heavy political content of their material, Jim suggested that they call themselves The Singing Socialists.

Phil loved it. The idea of the "Singing Socialists" resonated with echoes of Joe Hill and the Wobblies, Woody Guthrie's work songs, Pete Seeger and the Weavers, and the battles against McCarthyism. Phil hoped to follow the same path, as well as continue the tradition of the news-singing troubador. His first two songs had been an angry diatribe against the Bay of Pigs invasion and a caustic commentary on Billy Sol Estes, a Texas millionaire recently involved in a price-fixing scandal.

The part-political/part-chip-on-the-shoulder stance played well on campus, where Phil and Jim found a built-in, sympathetic audience for their impromptu concerts, or at parties thrown by friends. The two were a study of contrasts, Jim loose and affable, never quite taking the music too seriously, Phil somber and entirely focused, playing each song as if it had the power to change people's minds and move them to action..

The differences were never as apparent as when the Singing Socialists were enlisted to play at a private party hosted by a powerful Republican family in Columbus. Phil had set up the engagement-more than likely without letting the party's hosts in on the precise nature of the duo's material. After singing several numbers, Phil and Jim were approached by an angry guest who demanded to know if they were communists. The confrontation made Jim nervous, but Phil shrugged it off. "Well," he casually told Jim, assuming his posture of always knowing what was best for the duo, "we gotta make waves."

There was a limit, however, to how many waves the Singing Socialists could make, and Phil recognized as much. One could raise all kinds of hell when playing in private, but there were limits to how far you could go if you intended to perform in public.

Such was Phil's argument when, without warning, he decided to change the duo's name just prior to a Singing Socialists appearance at a local talent show. Sensing that a good showing in the competition might lead to an engagement or two in some of Cleveland's folk clubs, Phil suggested that he and Jim call themselves the Sundowners, the name originating from a Robert Mitchum film. Jim had no objection to the new title, and so, without fanfare or public notice, the short career of the Singing Socialists sank below the horizon, never to rise again.

Despite his interest in commercial endeavors, Phil never compromised his politics, in either his music or his journalism. In fact, his political stance grew more radical as time went on. The editors of The Lantern, bothered by Phil's positions, pulled him from all political stories-a decision that did not sit well with Phil, who was clearly one of the better writers on the paper, and whose opinions could now be published only if he submitted a formal letter to the editor. Rather than force the issue, Phil fulfilled his other assignments for the paper, hoping that his compliance, along with his talent as a journalist, might earn him the position of editor-in-chief of The Lantern during his senior year.

He and Jim Glover continued to work on new material for the Sundowners, practicing in the basement of Phil's parents' house and playing sporadically in public, usually for a handful of students hanging out on campus. Phil managed to maintain his grades, but Jim was beginning to struggle. For both, academics were almost beside the point.

Getting established was difficult. The popularity of the Kingston Trio had spawned all kinds of imitators, and encouraged countless teenagers and college students to pick up guitars and learn folk songs. Competition was fierce, even for nonpaying gigs. Phil and Jim would turn up at clubs like the Sacred Mushroom or Larry's, listen to their contemporaries or better known national acts such as the Journeymen or the Country Gentlemen, and occasionally step on-stage for a few numbers of their own. Any opportunity to be seen and heard was important.

The Sundowners' big break presented itself when they auditioned for a paying, headlining gig at a new Cleveland coffeehouse called La Cave. The coffeehouse's management was looking for new, inexpensive entertainment, and college kids like Phil Ochs and Jim Glover were just the type of act they were seeking. The Sundowners performed well during their audition, and they were hired to work on a probationary basis: they would play a weekend at La Cave-the club's opening weekend-and if they received a decent response, they would be asked back for another weekend.

This was all that Phil needed to hear. He was certain that the Sundowners would overwhelm management and audience alike with a repertoire of standard folk songs and original tunes; all he and Jim needed to do was polish their act and firm up a solid set list.

Jim, true to form, was nowhere near as worked up as Phil about the La Cave engagement, so when Phil gave him a new song and asked him to learn it overnight, Jim failed to see the urgency in Phil's request. Jim figured that he had plenty of time to learn the song. Such reasoning, he regretted to learn, was incorrect. The next day. when Phil dropped by and wanted to rehearse the song, and Jim told him he hadn't even looked at it, Phil flew into a rage and declared an end to the Sundowners and his friendship with Jim.

At first, Jim was unconcerned. Phil had a way of blowing things out of proportion, especially in matters political or musical, and Jim was convinced that Phil would eventually cool off and come around. Phil could be stubborn, but there was no way that he would jeopardize their first big chance-or so Jim thought. The days passed and Phil held his ground. Nothing that Jim did could mollify him-not the conciliatory words, not the matching shirts that Jim purchased for the Sundowners' professional debut. On the evening of the first scheduled performance, only Jim showed up at the coffeehouse, and he and Phil were promptly fired by the managers of La Cave. As a performing outfit, the Sundowners had gone under faster than the Singing Socialists.

The duo's demise had little effect on Phil, who fully believed that he could make it on his own as a solo act. He had his songs, his guitar, and very little use for Jim Glover. He was anything but shattered when, a short time after the La Cave fiasco, his former best friend called to inform him that he was leaving Ohio State and taking off for New York, where he hoped to build a career as a folksinger. As far as Phil was concerned, Jim Glover was history.

Phil would face even greater disappointment within a few months, but for the time being he busied himself with the task of lining up his own club dates. Most places weren't at all interested in signing on either expensive or bargain-rate headliners, even if the singer could boast, as Phil could, of writing original material; too many unknown talents were willing to work for free. After being turned down by a number of club owners, Phil finally latched onto a week-long engagement at Faragher's, a Cleveland Heights club owned by performer Danny Dalton. The club was going through hard times and couldn't offer payment to its performers, but Phil, having exhausted his other options, was willing to work simply for the experience.

As a performer, Phil had a long way to go. His skills on guitar still needed improvement, and as a singer he was no better or worse than any number of other aspiring, unpolished young acts. What Phil had on the others was his undeniable enthusiasm and sincerity: it was virtually impossible for an audience not to be impressed by someone who put such effort into his work. Phil would walk onstage, stutter a few introductory remarks, often in a humorous, self-deprecating style, strumming his guitar to fill the quiet moments, and then he would be off, singing a repertoire of standard folk songs, with one or two originals sprinkled in for good measure. He tried so hard that he would inevitably win over an audience in a matter of two or three numbers.

Phil was ready to try anything to break through. In one of his most unusual career moves, he wrote a theme song for the Cleveland Indians baseball team and sent it to the local radio station that broadcast the team's games. Not surprisingly, the tape was returned, along with the kind of encouraging note intended to let the young songwriter down lightly.

"Your song shows a lot of originality and much fine spirit," the letter read. "It might make a fine specialty number. I would suggest that you send this tape directly to the ball club."

The song was never recorded.

Phil's association with Faragher's paid off in a big way. The club staggered through the early portion of the summer of '61. barely meeting expenses and finally suffering the indignity of having its electricity cut off. Dalton somehow managed to keep the club open, running operations by candlelight when he had to, and just when it seemed as if he had no alternative but to close its doors, he contacted Tom Smothers, an old friend, and asked if the Smothers Brothers would appear at the club as a personal favor. The Smothers Brothers, in Cleveland to tape a television show, were one of the fastest-rising new comedy acts in the country, and their appearance before an SRO crowd at Faragher's reversed the club's fortunes, giving it a badly needed shot of credibility. Suddenly, Faragher's was one of the most prestigious places to play in the Cleveland area.

Phil opened for the Smothers Brothers, as well as for other well-known acts playing at the club that summer, including the Greenbriar Boys, Judy Henske, and the Knob Lick Upper Ten Thousand. For Phil, the exposure was minimal, usually involving his playing a couple of songs before introducing the headliners, but the contacts that he made were important. In time, he would become good friends with Judy Henske and Erik Jacobsen, the latter a member of the Knob Lick Upper Ten Thousand and eventually the producer for such popular national acts as the Lovin' Spoonful, Tim Hardin, and Chris Isaak. Talking shop with these and other professionals meant a lot to a college kid with hopes of making his own name in the business.

"Everybody came through that particular summer," Phil recalled nearly a decade later, in a radio interview with Studs Terkel. "It was really a fantastic experience," he noted, "because I had literally only been playing guitar for a couple of months, doing these little ditties."

One performer spent extra time encouraging Phil that summer. Bob Gibson, a well-respected folksinger who had seen his career threatened by his political beliefs, was impressed by Phil's music and sincerity, and during his stint at Faragher's, Gibson went out of his way to take Phil aside and offer him the benefit of his experience. Topical songwriting was risky business, he told Phil, detailing his own problems finding work on television or radio as a result of the HUAC investigations. Not only could you find trouble when expressing unpopular beliefs, but doing so could lead to unrealistic results: friends and enemies alike would judge a person on the basis of the music alone, the friends pumping up the artist because they agreed with his political stand, the enemies trying to destroy him because they hated it. Neither was good for one's career, and both could have very negative effects on the artist.

Phil listened carefully to what Gibson had to say. It all rang true enough to him. In just a brief period of time, Phil had seen the effects of his political beliefs on others. Around Ohio State, he had attracted a small following of students who hung on his every word-people who were hearing his message but not his music. Conversely, he had already been penalized by the editors of the campus paper for his unpopular opinions. Neither side really understood him or knew who he was, any more than Jim Glover had been able to puzzle out his utter, uncompromising devotion to the self-discipline needed to make music.

Bob Gibson's influence on Phil went far beyond his words of advice; the two even collaborated on a couple of new songs. Gibson, Phil discovered, was a man of countless melodies, but he struggled with lyrics. This, of course, was no problem for Phil, who could write lyrics by the hour. Gibson carried around a tape of his favorite melodies, and after listening to some of the tunes, Phil set out to write lyrics for them. The final products-"One More Parade" and "That's the Way It's Gonna Be"-were more mature and fully realized songs than Phil's earlier efforts.

In the development of his songwriting and guitar-playing skills, Phil owed more than a passing nod to Bob Gibson's influence. If Jim Glover was Phil's teacher, Gibson was his first true musical mentor, even if their first encounter lasted only a few days.

"I don't think Gibson gets nearly the credit he should for being not a, but the seminal musical influence on Phil," noted Dave Van Ronk, another well-established singer and musician who would meet Phil a few months later. "I thought Phil was a very interesting extension of Bob Gibson. He really assimilated a great deal of what Bob was doing musically. Of course, he had harnessed all of this for his political commentary, which Bob never really was interested in doing. It was marvelous that he and Bob collaborated on songs. It was like Bob collaborating with his political self, or Phil collaborating with his nonpolitical self. It was perfect."

Phil's senior year at Ohio State found him at a crossroads: he was obviously gifted enough to work as a journalist after his graduation, but he had also grown confident enough in his musical ability to seriously consider a career as a singer. He was now in demand at several of the local clubs, and he even mended fences with Jim Glover during one of Jim's return visits to Ohio, the two making a reunion appearance onstage at Larry's. Gertrude urged Phil to take the more responsible, stable route of the journalist, but Phil wasn't sure which way to go.

In the end, fate had as much to do with Phil's ultimate decision as anything.

When he began his final year of college, all that Phil had to look forward to, other than finishing his work for his diploma, was landing the editor-in-chief position at The Lantern. He was certain that his work over the past two years had earned him the title. What he didn't figure, however, was the bottom-line effect that his politics had had on the newspaper's editorial board. When it came time to choose the new editor, Phil was passed over in favor of someone with less talent but, more important in the university's eyes, a much less radical view.

Phil was crushed by the decision, and he could see no point in continuing to write innocuous reviews and profiles for the paper. He had something to say, and if he couldn't say it through his journalistic writings, perhaps he ought to look into something else. When he had been in Ohio visiting, Jim Glover had spoken of the modest success he was enjoying as a folksinger in New York. The brief Sundowners reunion had gone well enough for Phil to consider reviving the act in the country's biggest city. As Phil saw it, he had nothing to lose.

Gertrude, not surprisingly, disagreed. It was sheer folly, she argued, for Phil to be leaving school during his final quarter to pursue a dream that was bound to fail. What difference did a couple months make? Why not stay in school and graduate? Hadn't he learned anything from his miserable experiences in Florida? Had he no idea of the odds against his making a name for himself in the music business? What was he going to do when it all fell through?

Phil was hearing none of it. He dropped out of school, bought a one-way bus ticket to New York City, and headed out to what he felt was his inevitable future in show business.

Chapter Three-Bound for Glory

PHIL LOOKED UP Jim Glover as soon as he arrived in New York. Not only did he need a place to stay, but he was eager to resume the Sundowners partnership for what he hoped would be a long, successful run in the Greenwich Village folk clubs.

Glover, however, had gone through significant changes since he and Phil had parted ways, and he was in no position to resurrect their old Ohio State days. Almost immediately after moving to New York, Jim had met Jean Ray, a drama student from California. Jim ran into Jean when he dropped by the Cafe Raffio, one of the city's lesser known folk establishments, during his job search. Jean worked as a singer at the club, and after Jim was hired as a solo act, the two would practice together. They soon discovered that they operated more effectively as a duo, and a new stage act was developed. "Jim and Jean" quickly turned into one of the more popular folk acts in the area. A romance blossomed from the partnership, and the two were living together in Jean's tiny Greenwich Village apartment when Phil Ochs blew into town from the Midwest. Seeing that Phil had no place to stay, Jim invited him to move in with them.

Anyone else in Phil's position might have noticed that he was disruptive to his hosts' daily routine, but Phil was too focused on his own agenda to notice or care. It was going to be just like old times in Ohio, he insisted, and for a while it looked as if that was how things were going to turn out. Phil brainstormed with Jim until all hours of the night, showing him new songs, talking politics, and re-establishing their friendship. Phil had big plans for the Sundowners-plans that definitely did not include Jean.

Both Jim and Jean were at a loss over what to do about Phil.

When he had taken Phil in, Jim had figured that his guest would crash at their place until he found work and an apartment of his own. but as the days started to add up. Jim wondered if Phil was ever going to leave. He enjoyed having Phil around, but he was underfoot in such cramped quarters, and Jim worried when Phil ignored his often repeated insistence that he was now a part of Jim and Jean, not the Sundowners. Jean, too, was fond of Phil, but she resented the way he monopolized her boyfriend's time. Phil was always hanging around, either at the apartment or at the Raffio, where he would show up to watch Jim and Jean at work. For some reason, Phil didn't seem to understand that things had changed. The apartment was not a college dorm room, even if, with two sloppy young men around, it was starting to look like one.

Jean gave the problem a lot of thought. One solution, she figured, was finding Phil a woman.

Under the usual circumstances, Jean's matchmaking plans might have been welcomed by someone like Phil, who was new in town and shy around women to begin with, but Phil had never shown much interest in women. He had rarely been seen in the company of a young woman while he was in high school or college, and as a young adult he showed very little propensity for establishing the type of lasting relationships with women that most men his age took for granted. Even later, after he had reached the pinnacle of his fame and might have found himself in the position to take part in the one-night stands enjoyed by so many performers, Phil generally avoided the traffic, prompting his manager at the time to joke that the only people attracted to him were the "Earth Shoe groupies."

Through Jean Ray, Phil met Alice Skinner, an attractive eighteen-year-old who, like Jean, attended the Sanford Meisner School and hoped to eventually act on Broadway. Alice had an apartment in the same building as Jim and Jean, and to complete the scenario of ever-crossing paths, Alice worked at the Raffio.

Phil and Alice were mismatched from the start. Alice had been raised by a wealthy aunt in Philadelphia, and had attended private schools, whereas Phil had come from a nomadic and struggling middle-class background. Alice had nowhere near Phil's education. Neither had spent much time in the real world.

"What you had here," observed Sonny Ochs, "were two basically good people who needed somebody to lead them. They were two followers looking for a leader, and neither one of them could lead. That was the tragedy of the relationship."

Phil certainly needed someone to direct him in matters of the heart. His work kept him totally occupied day and night, and most evenings, when Alice was in bed, hoping that Phil might just once spend a little time with her, Phil would be in the next room, sitting at the kitchen table and feverishly working on his next song.

Neither showed an interest or aptitude for domestic chores. Dustballs gathered in the corners of the rooms, newspapers accumulated into a sea of scattered or stacked sections of the New York Times. Stalactites formed in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. Cockroaches were so abundant that Phil made a game out of suddenly turning on a light, attacking them with a fly swatter, and keeping a running tally of the body count.

Phil's sloppiness would always be a bone of contention between Phil and his family, and even Phil and his friends. At times, he seemed totally unaware or unconcerned about his personal appearance or hygiene-a problem that became more pronounced as time went on. Shirt buttons would go undone, and Phil's bare belly would peek out at people; his hair, naturally oily to begin with, would look downright greasy if he let too much time pass without washing it. None of it seemed to bother him. All that mattered was the music.*

Phil could not have planned a better time or place to take up his musical career: folk music was surging in national popularity, especially on the East Coast, where it had taken a stronghold in New York City, as well as in the Boston-Cambridge area. There were the inevitable disputes between older, hard-line purists and the new, younger camp of singers, and from the debates came a greater range in music, best typified, perhaps, in the differences between two of folk music's rising stars-the sweet-voiced, traditional-sounding Joan Baez, who had drawn national attention during her carefully orchestrated debut at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, and Bob Dylan, the young singer-songwriter from Minnesota, who had arrived in New York in 1961 with tall tales about his past, a voice so rough that it appeared as if he were trying to sing badly, and a gigantic talent and presence that belied his age and experience. Baez had a manager and recording contract, and she performed on college campuses and at the higher-paying New York clubs such as the Village Vanguard; Dylan, though establishing an enormous reputation among his peers, was still struggling to break through, playing in the smaller Village outlets and backing better known folk and blues acts.

Bars and clubs featuring folk music were popping up all over the Village, especially around the coffeehouse strips on MacDougal and Bleecker Streets, where NYU students flocked to pass inexpensive hours of conversation and entertainment. The names and ownerships of the clubs would change-the Fat Black Pussycat became the Commons, the Cock 'n' Bull became the Bitter End-but just-in-town folkies and tourists alike knew how to find such establishments as the Cafe Wha? or the Gaslight. On any given night, you could hear some of the best new performers just by hopping from club to club.

When Phil Ochs hit town, one of the most coveted establishments to play was a bar and restaurant known as Gerdes Folk City. Like many of the clubs in the Village, Folk City had an illustrious history, complete with a rise to prominence that, in retrospect, seems purely accidental.

William Gerdes, the original owner of the place, had run a successful restaurant on West Third Street in the first half of the twentieth century, his patrons coming mostly from the surrounding Italian and German neighborhoods. Over the passing decades, the long-established ethnic configuration changed, and the neighborhoods along with it, and by the time Gerdes decided to sell his business, the area around the restaurant had deteriorated badly and the octogenarian owner could no longer depend upon his old clientele to support him. He sold the establishment in 1952 to Mike Porco, his brother John, and Joe Bastone, a cousin of the Porcos. All three were Italian immigrants.

With his thick Calabrian accent and Old World values, Mike Porco would have fit well into the neighborhood several decades earlier. He had a natural gift of gab, along with a true empathy for the hardships of the working stiffs living in the neighborhood. He managed to maintain a good business for several years after buying Gerdes, but the changing times were imposing new demands. The city had condemned much of the property in the area, and residents were forced to relocate when the heavy equipment was brought in to knock down the old, decaying buildings-all to be replaced by new high-rises. It was obvious to the owners of Gerdes that the restaurant would never survive in its present location.

Porco looked around and found a place at 11 West Fourth Street-a nineteenth-century brownstone that had once served as a spray-gun factory. This, he decided, would be the site of the new Gerdes. Business, however, continued to sag, and in an effort to pick up new customers, Porco obtained a cabaret license and hired bongo players and small jazz combos to cater to the weekend beatniks that flooded the Village. Unfortunately for Porco, the heyday of the Beat Generation was rapidly fading, and he had to find a new form of entertainment to save a restaurant that was barely scraping by.

The answer to his problems arrived late in 1959, when Porco was approached by two young men with a compelling proposition. Israel G. "Izzy" Young, who ran the Folklore Center a short distance away. on MacDougal Street, and Tom Prendergast, a local businessman, were looking to stage folk nights in Greenwich Village, but they needed to find a regular location for these concerts-a place similar to Gerdes. There was a burgeoning interest in folk music, they told Porco, and all he had to do was run his bar and restaurant; they would take care of booking and paying the talent. Porco would be able to keep the profits from what was sure to be a lucrative bar business, and the two entrepreneurs would keep whatever was left from the gate receipts after the acts had been paid. Young suggested that Porco rename the club the "Fifth Peg"† to attract the folk crowd. Porco complied, and the new business opened in January 1960.

The plan worked. Young and Prendergast booked some of the best talent around, and once word about the club began to circulate, Porco found himself serving large, thirsty crowds. His bar business thrived. Young and Prendergast, however, had a difficult time realizing a profit at their end of the business, mainly because, in booking some of the better and more popular acts in the area, they were taking on performers whose wages were barely met by the club's gate receipts. The two eventually approached Porco about changing the arrangement, but Porco would hear none of it. Why should he offer a percentage of his bar profits to the two promoters? If they couldn't earn a profit for their efforts, that was their problem. Young and Prendergast dropped out of the partnership, leaving an inexperienced bar owner the task of booking his own entertainment.

Porco may not have known a folk song from a show tune, but he was a shrewd enough businessman to keep his establishment rolling along. After the departure of Young and Prendergast, Porco renamed his place Gerdes Folk City and began staging open-mike nights on Mondays, which had always been the slowest evenings for business. The talent show experiment succeeded better than Porco ever could have imagined: young folk artists lined up for the chance to play, even if there was no payment involved, and customers jammed Folk City to capacity. Robert Shelton, a New York Times music critic, whose review of a Bob Dylan performance had launched Dylan's career, began to drop in to see who was around, as did Charlie Rothschild, a folk manager always on the lookout for new acts. Shelton and Rothschild proposed that Porco give his talent night a catchy title: "Call it a hootenanny."

Porco had never heard the word before-nor had most people outside of folk circles. This would change in a hurry: in a year or two, most of the country would not only be familiar with the word, but people would be using it in casual everyday conversation.

"Hootenanny": the four syllables rolled easily off the tongue. The word had a playful sound to it, and when hearing it for the first time, you had a sense, even before learning its meaning, of something homey and folksy.

Woody Guthrie, generally acknowledged as the person responsible for bringing the word to the East Coast, claimed to have first heard the word "hootenanny" in his travels through the Pacific Northwest, where ghosts of the IWW (International Workers of the World) still hung in the air of old union halls. It originally referred to union singalongs, but by the time it was being bandied about the Greenwich Village folk clubs a couple of decades later, it applied to any gathering of folk musicians and singers-the more informal the assembly, the better.

Singalongs had been around forever, and Guthrie had been to a good many of them in all parts of the country. He had helped popularize them as a member of the Almanac Singers, arguably the best agit-prop group making the rounds in the 1940s. Now, just as folk music was enjoying its burgeoning popularity on the East Coast, Woody Guthrie lay dying an excruciatingly slow and inhumane death in a New Jersey hospital, victim of Huntington's chorea. Despite his physical absence from the folk scene, he was as important a presence as anyone who was there in the flesh, his place in American folk music's family tree absolutely assured.

Guthrie may not have been in the position to help push the new folk movement forward, but two of his contemporaries, Pete Seeger and Sis Cunningham, both former members of the Almanac Singers, played significant roles in fueling the popularity of folk music. Through his work as a solo artist, as well as his membership in the Weavers, Seeger had become the best known folksinger in the country. Tough and brilliant, unrepentant about his unionism (which had landed him in trouble during the era of McCarthyism), and encyclopedic in his knowledge of folk music and history. Seeger brought intelligence and passion to a scene ripe for commercial exploitation. Seeger had enjoyed enviable commercial success-the Weavers' "Goodnight Irene" had been one of the best-selling recordings of the 1950s-but he had done so without compromising the integrity of his music. He willingly accepted his position as elder statesman to the new generation of singers and songwriters, though there would come a time, in the not-so-distant future, when his traditionalist attitudes would be called into question.

Agnes "Sis" Cunningham's contribution to the movement was a modest mimeographed publication called Broadside. The magazine, Cunningham recalled, came together as the result of conversations that she and her husband, Gordon Friesen, had had with Malvina Reynolds and Pete Seeger.

"Malvina Reynolds thought it would be a good idea to have a magazine devoted just to topical songs," said Cunningham. "Sing Out! contained topical songs, but it was a general folk song magazine. They'd dig up old folk songs and print them. Malvina wanted to do her own thing."

Reynolds, author of a number of classic songs, most notably, "Little Boxes," was too involved in her songwriting and performing career to work on the proposed publication, so she suggested that Cunningham, with her topical music background, and Friesen, a journalist who had once been blacklisted for his leftist sympathies, try their hand at it. Pete Seeger felt likewise. Seeger had recently been in England and was delighted to see that country's interest in topical music, but like Reynolds, he was too busy to edit a new publication in the States.

With Seeger's assistance, Cunningham and Friesen enlisted the assistance of Gil Turner, who was acting as emcee at Folk City. Not only was he younger than Sis and Gordon, but Turner also had the connections that assured the magazine plenty of new material.

"The three of us went to work," said Cunningham. "We got ahold of a mailing list of three hundred people, and we sent out a letter, just to feel out what people thought about the magazine. We got mostly good responses. So we just went right ahead. We came out every two weeks for quite a while, just cranking them out on a mimeograph machine. It was slow going at first, and we always had financial troubles, but sure enough, it took hold."

Phil plugged into the Village folk scene with manic energy. This, he told himself, was where he would make his mark. He darted from club to club, taking in countless shows, convinced that his talent was the equal to anything he was witnessing in the different clubs. He was poignant, insightful, witty, and entertaining-all qualities that made the others stand out. All he needed were the right breaks and proper connections.

He became a familiar performer at the folk clubs. He haunted the Village "basket houses," playing for free or next to nothing, picking up the change dropped in the baskets passed around after his short sets. He was a regular at The Third Side. He could often be found standing in line and taking numbers for a possible appearance at the overcrowded Folk City hootenannies. He landed a gig at the Palisades Amusement Park. None of these jobs paid enough for much more than coffee, drinks, sandwiches or, on an extremely rare occasion, a sack of groceries, but this was of no great concern to Phil. Alice was earning enough money to pay the rent and cover their bills, and if being flat broke all the time was really a matter of paying your dues, as most folkies claimed, at least he wasn't paying them alone. Very few folksingers kicking around the streets of Lower Manhattan had shine on their shoes.

Phil became a regular at Gordon Friesen and Sis Cunningham's Upper West Side apartment, where regular Broadside meetings brought together some of the city's best folksingers and journalists. Friesen had taken quite a liking to Phil, and he encouraged Phil to pursue his obvious gifts as a topical songwriter. Phil never let him down.

"He would dig into his jacket pocket and bring out scraps of paper on which he had scribbled new songs on the subway ride up to our place," Friesen recalled. According to Friesen, Phil habitually dropped by with two or three new offerings, and on one occasion, he amazed everyone at the Broadside offices by walking in with seven new works, all written on the subway ride uptown. "When I asked him where he got the ideas for his lyrics," Friesen said, "he would respond, 'From Newsweek, of course,' and hold up a copy of the latest issue. Then I asked where he got his tunes and he would reply, half-laughing, 'From Mozart.'"

Phil had a great distance to travel before he could even begin to skirt, let alone walk in, Mozart's shadow, but the Newsweek part of his statement was easy to understand: all of his material was coming directly from the headlines of the day. However, most of his early lyrics, if judged from a strictly critical standpoint, left much to be desired. Phil's passion for his subject matter bubbled at the surface of every new song, but in all but a couple instances, his lyrics seemed forced and often derivative, bogged down by the kind of sloganeering that sounded good at the moment, when emotions ran high and an issue was fresh, but which ultimately robbed a song of a durability that extended much beyond yesterday's headlines.

Of course, longevity was not a high priority to Phil, who, at least in the early goings, aspired to nothing more than scratching a day-to-day living. Nor was he especially concerned that he was young and inexperienced and getting most of his information from secondhand sources. With any luck at all, he would have plenty of future opportunity to travel and witness history in the making. For the time being. he wanted to register his thoughts on the issues of the day.

Broadside provided him with an outlet for such opinion, and he took full advantage of the opportunity. His first entry, "Billy Sol," one of the early numbers he had written while he was still at Ohio State, appeared in Broadside #13, and from that point on, Phil had a song in every one of the magazine's biweekly issues. Phil would turn up at Gordon and Sis's apartment and play his latest songs for the Broadside reel-to-reel tape recorder. Sis Cunningham would then listen to the playbacks and make up lead sheets for publication in future issues of the magazine. Phil's contributions began to pile up, and he soon found himself in the same position he'd been in during his early tenure at The Lantern, when he had more material on his hands than he could possibly see published.

In April, Phil headed down to Florida for a two-week series of gigs in a Fort Lauderdale club called the House of Pegasus. The Florida dates, which found Phil backing the Knob Lick Upper Ten Thousand, meant a great deal to the young folksinger. Beside being paying gigs. which were still far and few between, the appearances also gave Phil the opportunity to work his material on audiences far removed, at least geographically, from the predictably supportive East Coast audiences he had grown accustomed to.

Not that he had reason to worry: his performances were well received, and Phil, now being billed in newspaper ads as "a Will Rogers of Folksinging," was given a strong review in the Ft. Lauderdale News. "His social protest material," offered the reviewer, "is excellently-written stuff, with rhyming and rhythm bringing across his barbs with deadly accuracy."

Erik Jacobsen, the driving force behind Phil's backing the Knob Lick Upper Ten Thousand in Florida, shared a hotel room with Phil. and was amazed by his self-discipline.

"He was up every day at dawn, sitting with his guitar, working and writing for hours everyday, just sitting in a chair or cross-legged on the floor, playing and writing lyrics," Jacobsen remarked. "He was so young and enthusiastic. In his later years, he'd make me retell this very story. He'd say. Tell me how I used to be,' because he couldn't believe that he had worked so hard."

Phil's time in Florida represented one final gasp of life as it "used to be." On a professional level, Phil's life was constantly moving forward, even if not as rapidly as he would have hoped. From a personal standpoint, however, his life was about to change suddenly and significantly. Phil learned as much one day when Jacobsen handed him a telegram from New York: Alice was pregnant, and she would be coming to Fort Lauderdale to discuss the situation in detail with Phil.

For Phil, this was the worst possible news. He had to stay free, available to travel on a moment's notice, if he ever expected to move up in his profession, and having a child around would certainly put the clamps on his mobility. Furthermore, Phil wasn't certain that he loved Alice enough to make the marriage commitment she was seeking. There was something imposing and even frightening about making their relationship legal and tidy.

The two spent many hours talking over their options after Alice arrived in Florida. Alice intended to have the child, one way or another, but she would have preferred to have Phil around, ideally as her husband, participating in the child's upbringing. She hated the idea of pressuring Phil into marriage, so rather than push him, she told him to think everything over and come up with his own plan of action.

Phil waffled on his decision, and he asked Alice for more time to make up his mind. Alice agreed, vowing to keep her pregnancy a secret until Phil had figured out what he was going to do. Phil promised to deliver a decision when he returned from Florida.

Phil agonized over Alice's pregnancy, and for another opinion on the matter, he called his sister in Far Rockaway. Sonny had been through her own family crisis when she had married against her mother's wishes, only to see the marriage end in divorce. She had recently moved back to the hometown of her youth.

"I don't know what to do," Phil told Sonny. "Alice is four months pregnant and she wants me to marry her, but I don't think I want to marry her."

Sonny had already spoken to Alice, and as far as she was concerned, there was only one proper course of action.

"She wants to have the baby." Sonny said, going back over what Phil already knew, "but she won't do it without being married. I think you owe her at least that much."

Still fearing the commitment, Phil told Sonny that he needed more time to think it over.

"What's there to think about?" Sonny demanded. "What the hell's the big deal? I mean, it's not the rest of your life. All you're doing is giving the baby a legitimate name. If it works out, fine. If it doesn't, so what? You can always get divorced. At least she'll have the baby. You could at least do that much for her."

Phil listened to what Sonny had to say, and when she was finished, he insisted that he had to give the matter more thought. Although frustrated by the conversation, Sonny could do nothing but reiterate her position.

Once again, fate played a large role in helping Phil make an important decision when, only a few days after his talk with Sonny, Phil received a return call from his sister, this time to inform him that his father had died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage.

"You don't have a week to think about it," Sonny said, bringing up the topic of Alice's pregnancy. "You have twenty-four hours."

"Why?"

"Phil, your father just dropped dead. They're bringing his body to New York. The funeral is tomorrow and Ma's going to be here. You better decide what you're going to do right now."

"Why do I have to be there? What's the difference if I'm there or not?"

Sonny could not believe what she was hearing.

"Phil," she said, "this is your father. Regardless of the feelings you have or don't have, you must be at the funeral, and it's tomorrow. So you get your ass out here, and you make your decision by tomorrow, because Ma's going to be here and you're going to have to tell her."

Phil waited until the most inappropriate moment to drop the news about Alice's pregnancy. The family was sitting in the funeral limousine, riding out to the cemetery to put Jacob Ochs' body in the earth, when Phil turned to his mother.

"Ma, I have something to tell you."

"What?"

"Alice and I are getting married." "Why?"

"Because Alice is pregnant."

"Why?"

Thirty years after the fact, Sonny could laugh about the conversation.

"It was something out of an Abbott and Costello movie," she said, noting that Phil's behavior was completely in character, consistent with her brother's ignorance of social convention, while Gertrude's clipped responses were the result of her still being in shock over Jack's death. "I mean, I'm sitting there and listening to this, and I'm very upset because my father's dead, and I'm very upset about the whole thing that's going on with Phil and Alice, and in the meantime, the way it's coming out is so funny."

Phil's announcement caught Gertrude completely off balance. She was just beginning to accept her son's choice of careers, and all of a sudden he seemed to be doing his damnedest to undermine his future. Tying himself to a family would only slow him down. Despite these feelings, Gertrude said nothing to Phil or Alice to discourage them.

In the wake of the strange chain of events preceding their marriage, Phil and Alice's wedding was anticlimactic, as much a post-script as anything else. Jim Glover stood in as Phil's best man, and Jean Ray served as the bridesmaid at a private ceremony at City Hall. At one point during the proceedings, the justice of the peace halted the ceremony and scolded Phil for giggling off and on throughout the service. Alice reassured the judge that she and Phil were snickering because they were nervous, not because they disrespected the ceremony or the institution of matrimony.

In fact, neither had a clue about what marriage was all about, which, given the family history of both bride and groom, was only natural. Ultimately, it made little difference. The union may have been doomed before the ink had dried on the marriage license, but the wedding had served its purpose.

One day, not long after Phil and Alice's wedding. Gertrude and Sonny visited the couple in their apartment. After her husband's death, Gertrude had moved back to Far Rockaway, supposedly to gather her family around her for support. Sonny now lived a short walking distance away, and Michael was still living at home, although he planned to enroll for fall classes at Adelphi University within a few months. Jack's funeral had brought the family together in an unsteady truce, particularly between Sonny and Gertrude, who still had to resolve issues dating back to Sonny's adolescence.

Gertrude was horrified by the sloppy condition of Phil's apartment, but in the spirit of keeping the peace, she said very little. In all likelihood, Phil wouldn't have noticed if Gertrude had brought in a Marine Corps drill sergeant to dress him down: throughout his mother and sister's visit, he sat off by himself, strumming the same four-chord progression over and over on his guitar, oblivious to the fact that he was being rude to guests who had gone to some trouble to visit him. Sonny listened in silence for a while, and, finally, when she could take the repetition no longer, she demanded to know what Phil was doing.

"I'm playing the greatest song I'll ever write," he replied in a matter-of-fact manner.

"Well then," Sonny said, "sing it. What are the words?"

Phil continued to strum his guitar. "I haven't written them yet," he said.

When the words finally did come to him, they constituted his most powerful, mature lyrics to date, combining, in three brief verses, Phil's sense of social conscience with heartfelt patriotism:

C'mon and take a walk with me through this green and growin' land
Walk through the meadows and the mountains and the sand,
Walk through the valleys and the rivers and the plains,
Walk through the sun and walk through the rain...

It was a new anthem, complete with a chorus that could easily compete with Irving Berlin's song of a few decades earlier.

Here's a land full of power and glory
Beauty that words cannot recall
Oh her power will rest on the strength of her freedom
Her glory shall rest on us all, on us all.

"Power and the Glory"-a title that Phil had lifted from the Graham Greene novel-had a melody that owed more than a nodding debt to Bob Gibson, and lyrics that might have been written by the great Woody Guthrie himself. Phil had enormous respect for both songwriters. Like so many putative folksingers, Bob Dylan included, Phil visited Guthrie in the hospital. Unfortunately, Guthrie's health had deteriorated to such an extent that Phil was unable to converse with him or play music for him, as Dylan had done during his earlier visit, but Phil's homage to Guthrie, "Bound for Glory," written shortly after his visit and at about the same time as "Power and the Glory," was arguably a better tribute than Dylan's "Song for Woody":

Now they sing out his praises on every distant shore
But so few remember what he was fightin' for
Oh why sing the songs and forget about the aim
He wrote them for a reason, why not sing them for the same
And now he's bound for a glory of his own
And now he's bound for glory

For the blossoming songwriter, the long hours of work were beginning to pay off.

By the summer of 1963, interest in folk music was hitting a new peak. In recent months, there had been chart successes and television controversies, magazine cover stories, and SRO concerts at universities across the country. There seemed to be a new topical song for every issue of the day: the civil rights movement alone led to dozens of memorable new entries.

At the white-hot center of all the attention was Bob Dylan, whose "Blowin' in the Wind," as covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary, had become the music sensation of the season. Dylan's second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, released in May to overwhelming critical acclaim, featured three songs ("Blowin' in the Wind." "Masters of War," and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall") destined to become classics. People outside of the East Coast folk hub might not have seen Dylan or heard him play-many could not even pronounce his name correctly-but they were familiar with the name.

No one was happier about this turn of events than Phil Ochs. He and Dylan had become very close over the past year, and Phil was genuinely pleased by Dylan's good fortune. Dylan had set a standard for the rest of the folk community, and as Phil saw it, the entire folk industry stood to benefit from all the attention directed at Dylan.

Nowhere was this as apparent as at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, which Robert Shelton would later term "a dress rehearsal for Woodstock nation... the cocoon of an alternative culture." The event, held between July 26 and 28, saw nearly fifty thousand people convert the small Rhode Island town into what Dave Van Ronk would jokingly refer to as "a convention minus only the bags of water," with folkies playing the role of "shriners with guitars."

"There was a definite pandemonium right from the beginning." recalled Tom Paxton, another young folksinger performing at the festival. Much of the brouhaha, he noted, was swirling around Bob Dylan, who gave the performance of his life on the first evening of the festival, bringing the crowd to its feet when, as a grand finale to the opening night's performances, he locked arms onstage with Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, The Freedom Singers, Theodore Bikel, and Peter, Paul and Mary, and sang a moving version of "We Shall Overcome."

The three-day affair, called "Dylan's crowning moment" by biographer Anthony Scaduto, produced numerous lasting images for the participants: Dylan's wandering around the grounds with a twenty-foot bullwhip coiled around his shoulder... Tom Paxton distributing postcards calling for a general boycott of television's Hootenanny program... workshops finding a heady combination of old-timers and new faces... countless after-hours parties in hotel rooms.

Arlo Guthrie, just fifteen years old at the time, remembered Newport '63 as a time of great fun and comradery, with an underlying seriousness that gave it an added sense of importance. "I loved the spirit of the festival which, in a way, held the promise of a new world, where all of these diverse performers from around the world, from all these different traditions, could spend a few days together." Like so many in attendance, Guthrie enjoyed the accessibility of people who previously had been only faces on album covers.

For Phil, Newport '63 was a mixed bag. He was thrilled when he was asked to take part in one of the weekend's workshops, but by the time he made it to Newport's Freebody Park, he had worked himself into such a state of anxiety that he was almost unable to perform.

His problems began during the drive from New York to Rhode Island, when he developed a headache so severe that it literally reduced him to tears. To alleviate his suffering. Phil sprawled out across the back seat of the car, but he was still in sorry shape when the group arrived in Newport. On two separate occasions, he was rushed to the hospital-one time in his own car, and once by ambulance-where he was treated, given medication, and advised to cancel his performance.

That, of course, was not about to happen, and when it came time for him to play, a badly weakened Phil Ochs took the stage, hoping only to survive the ordeal. He opened the set with "Too Many Martyrs," a ballad he had written with Bob Gibson about the murder of Medgar Evers. His singing and playing were in less than top form, but he was picking up strength by the time he reached the song's penultimate verse:

They laid him in the ground while the bugle sounded clear
They laid him in his grave when victory was near
While we waited for the future with the wisdom of our plans
The country gained a killer, and the country lost a man

The crowd ate it up. The civil rights movement had inspired many of the protest and topical songs featured at Newport that year. and Phil's entry was symbolic of the movement's great passion and sense of commitment. Phil's second number, "Talking Birmingham Jam," was another indictment of Southern segregationist practices, and Phil delivered it confidently, showing no sign of the illness he'd experienced only a short time earlier, when he was preparing to go onstage. Like his other spoken songs, "Talking Birmingham Jam" was a scalding commentary delivered in a wry, almost offhanded manner:

Well, I've seen travel in many ways
I've traveled in cars and old subways
But in Birmingham some people chose
To fly down the street from a fire hose
Doin' some Hard Travelin'
From hydrants of plenty.

Throughout his career, Phil used his sense of humor to win over crowds and ease his own nervousness onstage, and his performance of "Talking Birmingham Jam" served both purposes well at Newport. Phil concluded his set with "Power and the Glory," receiving a standing ovation when he had finished. Emotionally spent, Phil left the stage and collapsed under a tree.

Phil's headaches at Newport were just the beginning of what appeared to be strong bouts of performance anxiety that would plague him throughout his life. Severe headaches, constricted throat, dry- mouth-the symptoms would vary, but they would render him all but useless before a show. Not that performance anxiety was all that rare: many singers grew frightened or even ill before stepping out into the onstage lights.

"A lot of them suffered like that," said Harold Leventhal, who represented some of the biggest names in the folk scene, including Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. "I had to push some top artists onstage when it was time to go out, because they froze going out from the curtain."

In Phil's case, the attacks were almost legendary. Sis Cunningham remembered him complaining to her on a number of occasions of having "something funny happening in my head... like there's a bubble in my head." Erik Jacobsen cited an occasion where Phil's anxiety was so pronounced that he went numb in his fingers and toes, and had to be soothed with massages before he was able to perform. Sam Hood, owner of The Gaslight, recalled a time when Phil was so worked up that he asked if he could play his club date lying down on the stage.

Such attacks, however, were infrequent, and Phil never missed a show in his career as the result of his anxiety.

*Anecdotes about Phil's sloppiness are plentiful, but one particular story not only illustrates this aspect of his character, but also acts as a poignant commentary about the nature of Phil's relationship with another contemporary-Bob Dylan.

†The "fifth peg" is in reference to the tuning peg on a banjo.

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	{{Library work\|title=There ~~But For Fortune~~: ~~The Life~~ of Phil Ochs\|author=Michael Schumacher\|published_date=1996\|type=Book}}		{{Library work\|title=There but for fortune: the life of Phil Ochs\|author=Michael Schumacher\|published_date=1996\|type=Book}}

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Library:There but for fortune: the life of Phil Ochs: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 03:03, 28 April 2024

Contents