Phil Ochs – Death of A Rebel – A book that is a tragic tale.

I am reading ‘Death of a Rebel’ by Marc Eliot.

Phil is a hero of mine and this book is a sad reflection on the things that should have been. I don’t know how accurate description this is of that man but I’m taking it at face value. Phil was, like all of us, a flawed individual. That voice of protest should, and could have done so much more if it wasn’t for those same traps that snare so many great people.

Phil was caught by a series of them.

Trap number one was his ambition. He desperately wanted to be successful and famous.

Trap number two was Bob Dylan. It ate him up to see Bob’s huge success while he languished behind.

Trap number three was alcohol. He drank to cope with his nerves and he drank to cope with his failure. The drink made him depressed and the depression made him drink.

Trap number four was success. The degree of success he attained created problems; the major one of which was that he could not possibly live up to the expectations. How could he produce a song as good as the one before; they had loved that one. The only answer was to do things totally different or give up altogether. Neither paid of for Phil.

Trap number five was the double edged sword of his own naiveté. It led him into ambitious enterprises, like the Yippies, which could not possibly have success on a grand scale, yet when they inevitably failed he could not cope.

Phil committed suicide in the mid-seventies. He could not cope with what had become of the possibilities he once possessed.

It was all so easy at the beginning when he did not have a monkey on his back. The songs poured out of him. He had nothing to live up to; nothing to lose. He had a cause. He was obsessed and passionate. The creative muse was unleashed.

Then the five traps began to set it. Psychologically it messed with his head. They were in conflict with each other. How could you be rich and famous and stay true to your ideals? Yet Dylan seemed to do it effortlessly. The alcohol, and to a  lesser extent the antidepressants, was a prop that would ultimately destroy him.

The truth of the matter was that Phil was a very nervous man, unsure of himself, yet buoyed up with self-belief and bravado. Going on stage was an agony. He was shy. Yet he revelled in it. He was, like everyone, a cocktail of psychological motives and failings that vacillated causing him to be pitched between arrogance and dejection. One minute he believed he could single-handedly safe the world, the next he was worthless. He was not very handsome, did not have a lot of sex appeal and seemed to have a low sex drive and a inability with women that created an almost misogynistic attitude.

To be human is a terrible thing.

If he had only got through that terrible time in the seventies he might have rediscovered his sustaining passion.