Born on December 19th, 1940, in El Paso, Texas, Phil Ochs moved to New York in the early 1960s, quickly joining the radical Greenwich Village band of political performers. Inspired by political activists/ protest singers such as Woody Guthrie and Tom Paxton, Ochs was initially sidelined into working with the Broadside magazine movement, eventually signing to Elektra records where his early work was hailed as that of a major new talent. Ochs's forte was the topical folk song, and with the possible exception of Bob Dylan at this time, there was no more revered topical songwriter walking the length and breadth of Greenwich Village. Epitomising the frantic exuberance of Kennedy-era political activism, Ochs's left-wing songs (some terrific, such as An Evening With Salvadore Allende, Crucifixion and Changes, others decidedly average) were enhanced by a shrewd sense of humour and compassion.
Yet, as the decade's political causes became fuzzy, so did his sense of commitment, and though his notion of melody remained, full-blown disillusionment set in. His first (and last) studio album of the 1970s was ironically titled Phil Ochs Greatest Hits, and witnessed the songwriter don a gold lame suit during promotional duties in an effort, he said at the time, to "wed Elvis Presley to the politics of Che Guevara". Needless to say, his in-concert medleys of rock 'n' roll were roundly derided by a so-called liberal audience expecting down-the-line social commentary. By the mid-1970s, Ochs, along with his era, his politics and his art, was on the skids: an attempted strangulation during a tour of Africa permanently damaged his vocal chords, chronic songwriting block set in and the by now schizophrenic singer succumbed to alcoholism. Using an alter ego pseudonym of John Train (in real terms, his nemesis), Ochs would walk around the Village in a state of paranoia, hyperactivity and drunkenness. His entire savings of over $30,000 was wasted on hare-brained schemes, his erraticism costing him a spot on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, a touring concept he and Dylan had talked about. Eventually, Ochs wound up sleeping in the Chelsea Hotel boiler room.
In a final desperate act of emptiness, Ochs hanged himself in the bathroom of his sister's house in Far Rockaway, New York, on April 9th, 1976, a broken figure far removed from his erstwhile status as one of the finest performers of his generation and at least for a short time a man considered to be Bob Dylan's greatest songwriting rival.
www.cs.pdx.edu/trent/ochs/
