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
