Phil Ochs -Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song – Paperback

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It’s interesting to see the new interest in Bob Dylan’s film ‘The Complete Unknown’. It’s about that sixties period in Greenwich Village; a time when Bob and Phil were best mates, hanging out for meals with Suze and Alice. Phil should have been a dominant character in the film, friends and rivals.

Excerpt – Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song Paperback

   The seeds were sown and began to germinate and blossom at an alarming rate. Phil and Jim would sit up all night playing music, listening to music and debating music and politics.

   Phil read avidly, absorbing the essence of socialism, started organising protests against the ROTC (college Reserve Officers Training Corps) and writing radical articles that were banned from the college magazine. Frustrated at not being able to get his articles published he started his own underground magazine called ‘The Word’.

   It wasn’t long before the politics and music merged together. He formed a singing partnership with Jim and played the local folk clubs first as ‘The Singing Socialists’ and then ‘The Sundowners’. Phil had discovered his new passion. He took his music seriously, declaring: ‘music had to be relevant.’

   Just before they were due to perform at their first professional gig they split up. Jim left for New York with his mind set on becoming a professional folk singer. Phil stayed on and continued playing and writing songs. In 1961, just three months before graduating, in a fit of pique at being passed over as the editor of the college magazine (not really surprising given the radical nature of his writing), Phil left the course. He returned to stay with his parents in Columbus, Cleveland but continued singing solo in the folk clubs. He’d basically sing anywhere that would have him. Pam Raver, a performer in Columbus has an amusing anecdote from this period: it centers on one of Phil’s early solo shows.

   ‘One of his first public performances as a solo artist was at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Weisheimer Road, where he performed for a ladies luncheon,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I found that astounding because you think of him doing more radical, anti-establishment songs. God only knows the songs he performed there.’

   While singing in Farragher’s Backroom folk club in Ohio as an opener for established acts he met the folk singer Bob Gibson. Bob had an impact on his songwriting.

   The gestation period was over. In 1962 Phil followed his mentor Jim Glover to New York City and, like Bob Dylan the year before, inserted himself into the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene.

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song Paperback

Posted on by Opher

I thought some of you might appreciate another little snippet from Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song Paperback

   I have attempted to give insight into his life, motivations and each and every song.

   For those of you who have read the book a little feedback would be great. Thank you!

Excerpt from the Introduction:

   In the course of his two years in Staunton (1956-1958) he developed a love of country and western. His heroes were Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash and Faron Young. During the latter part rock ‘n’ roll had burst onto the scene and Phil became swept up in that too. He was smitten by Buddy Holly and idolised Elvis Presley. He avidly played the radio alternately tuning into Alan Freed and country and western channels.

   In 1958 he signed up to Ohio State University and arrived wearing a red leather jacket like the one James Dean wore in Rebel Without A Cause. As he had no idea what to major in he took a range of general courses. He’d only been there a short while before deciding that it wasn’t for him. He fled to Florida and was living rough, ending up bust by the police for sleeping on a park bench. While in the police cell Phil apparently had that epiphany. He decided that what he really needed to do was to become a writer and settled on journalism. He promptly went back to Ohio State and changed courses.

   While studying journalism he was listening to rock and pop music and started studying politics with a particular interest in the situation in Cuba with Fidel Castro, Russia and the American government. Politics was quite a departure and eye-opener for Phil. He’d come from a very unreligious and unpolitical background, not used to discussing real issues in depth. He took to politics with zeal and became obsessed like all new acolytes.

   According to his brother Michael, they used to have long debates about music and politics. Phil was still into his country singers and Michael was more into rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm & blues. The one person they both agreed was Elvis Presley; he was god.

   It was while at Ohio that the final link in the chain was established. It was here that he met the guy who was going to change his life – Jim Glover. Jim was a left-wing folkie and introduced Phil to the mighty musical tomes of the great Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Weavers. He also taught Phil how to play the guitar. Jim used to take him home for meals where Jim’s animated father, Hugh, an avid Marxist, would regale them with stories embroidered with his political views, becoming a substitute father for the entranced Phil.

   It’s available on Amazon or from local bookstores (Probably have to be ordered)

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books

Another excerpt from Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song

Posted on by Opher

 Another excerpt from Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song

  It was while at Ohio that the final link in the chain was established. It was here that he met the guy who was going to change his life – Jim Glover. Jim was a left-wing folkie and introduced Phil to the mighty musical tomes of the great Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Weavers. He also taught Phil how to play the guitar. Jim used to take him home for meals where Jim’s animated father, Hugh, an avid Marxist, would regale them with stories embroidered with his political views, becoming a substitute father for the entranced Phil.

   The seeds were sown and began to germinate and blossom at an alarming rate. Phil and Jim would sit up all night playing music, listening to music and debating music and politics.

   Phil read avidly, absorbing the essence of socialism, started organising protests against the ROTC (college Reserve Officers Training Corps) and writing radical articles that were banned from the college magazine. Frustrated at not being able to get his articles published he started his own underground magazine called ‘The Word’.

   It wasn’t long before the politics and music merged together. He formed a singing partnership with Jim and played the local folk clubs first as ‘The Singing Socialists’ and then ‘The Sundowners’. Phil had discovered his new passion. He took his music seriously, declaring: ‘music had to be relevant.’

   Just before they were due to perform at their first professional gig they split up. Jim left for New York with his mind set on becoming a professional folk singer. Phil stayed on and continued playing and writing songs. In 1961, just three months before graduating, in a fit of pique at being passed over as the editor of the college magazine (not really surprising given the radical nature of his writing), Phil left the course. He returned to stay with his parents in Columbus, Cleveland but continued singing solo in the folk clubs. He’d basically sing anywhere that would have him. Pam Raver, a performer in Columbus has an amusing anecdote from this period: it centers on one of Phil’s early solo shows.

   ‘One of his first public performances as a solo artist was at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Weisheimer Road, where he performed for a ladies luncheon,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I found that astounding because you think of him doing more radical, anti-establishment songs. God only knows the songs he performed there.’

   While singing in Farragher’s Backroom folk club in Ohio as an opener for established acts he met the folk singer Bob Gibson. Bob had an impact on his songwriting.

   The gestation period was over. In 1962 Phil followed his mentor Jim Glover to New York City and, like Bob Dylan the year before, inserted himself into the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene.

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books

Extract: Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song

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Extract: Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song

   This love of music took him down an even stranger route than anybody knowing him in later life could ever have imagined. At sixteen he did not like the school selected for him and choose a school for himself. He’d seen a poster with a great marching band and decided on that. He was taken with the idea of playing in a marching band. The Staunton Military Academy in rural Virginia hardly seemed the setting for the nurturing of one of the biggest rebels on the planet and avowed anti-war protester. Yet that’s where he went. Not only that but he seemed to love it. He liked the uniform, the regime and discipline and even got into weight-lifting and became more gregarious. Who could imagine?

   In the course of his two years in Staunton (1956-1958) he developed a love of country and western. His heroes were Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash and Faron Young. During the latter part rock ‘n’ roll had burst onto the scene and Phil became swept up in that too. He was smitten by Buddy Holly and idolised Elvis Presley. He avidly played the radio alternately tuning into Alan Freed and country and western channels.

   In 1958 he signed up to Ohio State University and arrived wearing a red leather jacket like the one James Dean wore in Rebel Without A Cause. As he had no idea what to major in he took a range of general courses. He’d only been there a short while before deciding that it wasn’t for him. He fled to Florida and was living rough, ending up bust by the police for sleeping on a park bench. While in the police cell Phil apparently had that epiphany. He decided that what he really needed to do was to become a writer and settled on journalism. He promptly went back to Ohio State and changed courses.

   While studying journalism he was listening to rock and pop music and started studying politics with a particular interest in the situation in Cuba with Fidel Castro, Russia and the American government. Politics was quite a departure and eye-opener for Phil. He’d come from a very unreligious and unpolitical background, not used to discussing real issues in depth. He took to politics with zeal and became obsessed like all new acolytes.

   According to his brother Michael, they used to have long debates about music and politics. Phil was still into his country singers and Michael was more into rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm & blues. The one person they both agreed was Elvis Presley; he was god.

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song Paperback

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Extract from the Introduction to Phil Ochs On Track:

   Another unusual consequence of his family situation came to the fore in the realm of child-minding. Because of the need to keep the children quiet because of their father’s nerves, Phil’s mother used an unusual method of providing child-minding for Sonny, Phil and his younger brother Michael; instead of paying for baby-sitting she sent them to the cinema. They spent huge amounts of time watching every film going, staying on to sit through film after film, lapping it up. When it wasn’t the cinema it was TV. Phil became an absolute film nut. He knew all the minor actors and collecting anything to do with film, magazines, leaflets, posters. He loved westerns and his big hero was big bad John Wayne, the tough guy who dished it out to the baddies; somehow, not the kind of hero that you naturally associate with a left-wing topical singer-songwriter. He did rectify this later with his love of more rebellious heroes in Marlon Brando and James Dean.

   At school Phil had to pick an instrument. He first picked the trumpet but there were too many trumpeters, the same with his second choice – the saxophone. He reluctantly settled for the clarinet and discovered he had a great ability with the instrument. So much so that he became a soloist with the Capital University Conservancy of Music at the age of fifteen.

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books

Now Out! – Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song Paperback

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Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song Paperback

Phil Ochs was the ‘The Prince of Protest’ in the sixties. The only real rival to Bob Dylan, he was the archetypal Greenwich Village topical songwriter. Whether protesting the Vietnam War or campaigning for civil rights, workers’ rights and social justice, Phil was always there. Phil was the man to take up causes, write songs, play at rallies and even risk his life. His clear voice and sense of melody, linked with his incisive lyrics, created songs of beauty and power. As his career progressed, with lyrics and music becoming more highly poetic and sophisticated, he still never lost sight of his cause. Towards the end of the sixties he joined with the YIPPIES in protest against the Vietnam War. But idealism became Phil’s downfall. He was an idealist who could see no point in continuing if he was unable to make the world a better place. Phil lost all hope and descended into depression, which, along with excessive alcohol consumption, led to his suicide in 1976. Shortly before he took his life, Phil asked his brother if he thought anyone would listen to his songs in the future. Well here we are; sixty years later, still listening. The songs of Phil Ochs are every bit as relevant as they ever were and they are making the world a better place!

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books

Extract – Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song – Paperback 

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   Just before they were due to perform at their first professional gig they split up. Jim left for New York with his mind set on becoming a professional folk singer. Phil stayed on and continued playing and writing songs. In 1961, just three months before graduating, in a fit of pique at being passed over as the editor of the college magazine (not really surprising given the radical nature of his writing), Phil left the course. He returned to stay with his parents in Columbus, Cleveland but continued singing solo in the folk clubs. He’d basically sing anywhere that would have him. Pam Raver, a performer in Columbus has an amusing anecdote from this period: it centers on one of Phil’s early solo shows.

   ‘One of his first public performances as a solo artist was at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Weisheimer Road, where he performed for a ladies luncheon,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I found that astounding because you think of him doing more radical, anti-establishment songs. God only knows the songs he performed there.’

   While singing in Farragher’s Backroom folk club in Ohio as an opener for established acts he met the folk singer Bob Gibson. Bob had an impact on his songwriting.

   The gestation period was over. In 1962 Phil followed his mentor Jim Glover to New York City and, like Bob Dylan the year before, inserted himself into the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene.

   A more unusual radical left-wing, anti-war folk singer would be hard to imagine. Phil’s background as a middle-class, Jewish, country and western loving, rock ‘n’ roll loving, devotee of Elvis, Jonny Cash and the all-American hero John Wayne was hardly the stuff of rebellious, intellectual folk music. But then converts are often the biggest zealots.

   This new Phil Ochs had a thorough grounding in socialism and was now an evangelical radical. He had absorbed sufficient Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, honed his songwriting and would scour Newsweek for sources of content for what was shortly to become an impressive catalogue of hard-hitting topical songs. Ironically, given Dylan’s later put-down jibe, he called himself ‘A singing journalist’.    The scene was set.

Excerpt from Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song Paperback 

Posted on by Opher

At school Phil had to pick an instrument. He first picked the trumpet but there were too many trumpeters, the same with his second choice – the saxophone. He reluctantly settled for the clarinet and discovered he had a great ability with the instrument. So much so that he became a soloist with the Capital University Conservancy of Music at the age of fifteen.

   This love of music took him down an even stranger route than anybody knowing him in later life could ever have imagined. At sixteen he did not like the school selected for him and choose a school for himself. He’d seen a poster with a great marching band and decided on that. He was taken with the idea of playing in a marching band. The Staunton Military Academy in rural Virginia hardly seemed the setting for the nurturing of one of the biggest rebels on the planet and avowed anti-war protester. Yet that’s where he went. Not only that but he seemed to love it. He liked the uniform, the regime and discipline and even got into weight-lifting and became more gregarious. Who could imagine?

   In the course of his two years in Staunton (1956-1958) he developed a love of country and western. His heroes were Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash and Faron Young. During the latter part rock ‘n’ roll had burst onto the scene and Phil became swept up in that too. He was smitten by Buddy Holly and idolised Elvis Presley. He avidly played the radio alternately tuning into Alan Freed and country and western channels.

   In 1958 he signed up to Ohio State University and arrived wearing a red leather jacket like the one James Dean wore in Rebel Without A Cause. As he had no idea what to major in he took a range of general courses. He’d only been there a short while before deciding that it wasn’t for him. He fled to Florida and was living rough, ending up bust by the police for sleeping on a park bench. While in the police cell Phil apparently had that epiphany. He decided that what he really needed to do was to become a writer and settled on journalism. He promptly went back to Ohio State and changed courses.

   While studying journalism he was listening to rock and pop music and started studying politics with a particular interest in the situation in Cuba with Fidel Castro, Russia and the American government. Politics was quite a departure and eye-opener for Phil. He’d come from a very unreligious and unpolitical background, not used to discussing real issues in depth. He took to politics with zeal and became obsessed like all new acolytes.

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song – Paperback – Extract

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Introduction

Phil Ochs was a most unlikely hero of the left. A country boy from Ohio from a middle class Jewish family, brought up in an apolitical environment, attending, by choice, a military academy and a huge fan of the redneck John Wayne. In his late teens he had an awakening. Attending Ohio State University, following an epiphany in a Florida jail, he changed courses to study politics and journalism, became embroiled in the US policies on Cuba and met Jim Glover and his Marxist father. Like a switch had been flicked. His life became a political debate. Seized by idealistic fervour he morphed into a staunch socialist mainstay of the early sixties Greenwich Village folk scene and then a radical leader of the extreme YIPPIE movement. Putting an end to the war in Vietnam and making the world a fairer place became his obsession.

   His idealistic bubble burst in the bloody streets of Chicago. Like a sun that burned too bright, his light burned fiercely before, doused in alcoholic fumes and disillusionment, it sputtered, faded and, all too soon was extinguished.

   Dylan’s much reported scathing put-down: ‘You’re not a Folk Singer; you’re a journalist’ was far from the truth. Phil was a folk singer, and so much more. He was a singer-songwriter of remarkable skill. He shone the light of his crystal mind on to the issues of the day and illuminated them for everyone to see. His songs, now sixty years old, still resonate down the decades and touch the ears, hearts and consciences of people today. As he himself stated: he did not write protest songs so much as songs of social concern. Those issues are still pertinent and those songs still relevant. Whenever singer songwriters are talked about Phil Ochs has a seat at the top table.

   I was fifteen years-old in 1964 when Phil Ochs first came to my attention. Daphne Pescoe was a full-blown, black turtle-neck wearing beatnik Joan Baez obsessive. She was a couple of years older than me and that’s a yawning chasm at that age. She looked incredibly mature and sophisticated with her long dark hair, not unlike a cross between Joan Baez and her sister Mimi Farina. Even so she took me under her wing and did her best to turn me on by playing me early Joan Baez albums on her dansette player. I don’t remember her playing anything other than Joan Baez. We would sit on the floor in her bedroom with our backs to the bed and listen intently to Joan.

   Thus it was in 1964 she had purchased the single ‘There But For Fortune’, Baez singing a Phil Ochs number. I remember spending the whole afternoon listening to that one single, fascinated, alternating with the B-side ‘Plaisir D’Amour’. By the end of the afternoon I knew the track inside out and Phil Ochs had made his entrance into my life. He never left. I went out and bought his debut album.  I was hooked from the start! Even then, as a young lad, I was a word man, a socialist anti-war equal rights kind of guy, and the energy of those early topical songs knocked me out! Then we had that voice!  – a clear, expressive instrument that he deployed in many guises, back then it was used to illustrate causes.

   The background to that discovery of Phil Ochs came through a circuitous route involving a lot of friends. They laid the groundwork that opened my mind to the appreciation of all types of music, a facility that enabled me to listen and evaluate for myself. Without that openness I might have brushed it aside. After all, this was the age of the Beatles, Stones and a thousand brilliant new bands.

   It went on from there. Phil Ochs was in the mix. He had found his place in the pantheon of my many idols.

      The story of Phil Ochs started back in El Paso, Texas, on December 19th 1940, when Phil arrived as an early Christmas present for his father, Jacob ‘Jack’ Ochs, (of Polish descent) Scottish mother Gertrude Phin Ochs and elder sister Sonny (Sonia).

   There were a number of factors that helped form Phil’s personality, the pacifism, sense of compassion and. desire for equality and justice.

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song – Paperback – Out Now!

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   According to his brother Michael, they used to have long debates about music and politics. Phil was still into his country singers and Michael was more into rock ‘n’ roll. The one person they both agreed was Elvis Presley; he was god.

   It was while at Ohio that the final link in the chain was established. It was here that he met the guy who was going to change his life – Jim Glover. Jim was a left-wing folkie and introduced Phil to the mighty musical tomes of the great Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the Weavers. He also taught Phil how to play the guitar.

   The seeds were sown and began to germinate and blossom at an alarming rate. They would sit up all night playing music, listening to music and debating music and politics.

   Phil started writing radical articles that were banned from the college magazine, so he started his own underground magazine called ‘The Word’.

   It wasn’t long before the politics and music merged together. He formed a singing partnership with Jim and played the local folk clubs first as ‘The Singing Socialists’ and then ‘The Sundowners’. Phil had discovered his new passion.

   Just before they were due to perform at their first professional gig they split up. Jim left for New York with his mind set on becoming a professional folk singer. Phil stayed on and continued playing and writing songs. In 1961, just three months before graduating, in a fit of pique at being passed over as the editor of the college magazine (not really surprising given the radical nature of his writing), Phil left the course. He returned to stay with his parents in Columbus, Cleveland and continued singing in the folk clubs. He’d basically sing anywhere that would have him. Pam Raver, a performer in Columbus has an amusing anecdote from this period: it centers on one of Phil’s early solo show s.

‘One of his first public performances as a solo artist was at the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Weisheimer Road, where he performed for a ladies luncheon,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I found that astounding because you think of him doing more radical, anti-establishment songs. God only knows the songs he performed there.’

   While singing in Farragher’s Backroom folk club as an opening act for established acts he met the folk singer Bob Gibson. Bob had an impact on his songwriting.

   The gestation period was over. In 1962 Phil followed his mentor Jim Glover to New York city and, like Bob Dylan the year before, inserted himself into the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk scene.

   A more unusual radical left-wing, anti-war folk singer would be hard to imagine. Phil came to the village as a middle-class, Jewish, country and western loving, rock ‘n’ roll loving, devotee of Elvis, Jonny Cash and the all-American hero John Wayne. Hardly the stuff of rebellious, intellectual folk music. 

   But Phil had absorbed sufficient Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, honed his songwriting and would scour Newsweek for sources of content for what was shortly to become an impressive catalogue of hard-hitting topical songs. Ironically, given Dylan’s later put-down jibe, he called himself ‘A singing journalist’.

   The scene was set.

Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books