Sorry! The Publishers have delayed the release of the Phil Ochs book by three weeks. It appears there were a few distribution issues that required sorting.
Hopefully the launch with now continue as planned: Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song Paperback – 18 Oct. 2024
The book is available for preorder!
Talkin’ Cuban Crisis (Phil Ochs)
After a sombre warning of tyrannical control we need a light-hearted interlude; what better than a little skit about a nuclear holocaust?
This is a standard talking blues a la Woody Guthrie. The guitars strike out a cheerful pace with Danny embellishing Phil’s strumming with picked runs to create a light and breezy feel. Phil sings over the top in a chirpy manner, oozing with cheer. After all it’s only the end of civilisation.
This is a classic example of how to take the most serious situation, such as a potential nuclear exchange and the start of World War 3, and turn it into a jolly, comical skit while making a series of profound observations.
In October 1962, during the height of the Cold War, the USA and Russia went to the very brink. Surveillance showed that Cuba had been building sites for nuclear missiles that could destroy the USA. The Russians were about to bring their missiles. The threat was obvious. The Republicans wanted to blow Cuba to bits, invade and drive the communists out, thus removing the threat. Kennedy chose to blockade Cuba and prevent the Russians bring their missiles. The Russian fleet, bringing the missiles, were warned that if they crossed the blockade it would be an act of war and they would be sunk. The Russians declared that the blockade was an act of war and that the US had missiles in Turkey on the Russian border. There was no difference.
I remember being in school with our transistor radios on. We really thought that we would not return home and that the world would be destroyed in a nuclear conflict. The tension rose as the Russian ships continued to steam towards Cuba and looked as if they would not heed the warning. In the even the hotline between Russia and America must have nearly melted and a last minute deal was reached. The Cuban missile bases would be taken down and the US would remove its missiles from Turkey. The Russian ships turned back. We started breathing again.
The song is full of hilarious observations, the advert for pepsodent toothpaste in the middle of a crisis being one; a knock at the shallowness of culture and the greed that underpins it. It highlighted the long-standing differing attitudes between the Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans take a tough frontiers-like no nonsense stance; if something offends – blow it up! The Democrats take a more nuanced view and are not so gung-ho. The end line with Kruschev saying: ‘better red than dead’ was a reversal of the US attitude to communism of; ‘better dead than red.’
Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books
Introduction
Phil Ochs is quite an enigma; the clean-cut Boy Scout singing camp songs around an open fire, graduate of an military academy and ardent fan of the redneck John Wayne, who in no time at all became an staunch socialist mainstay of the early sixties Greenwich Village folk scene and then a radical leader of the extreme YIPPIE movement. 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. 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 and 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 to me 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’, a Phil Ochs number. I remember spending the whole afternoon listening to that one single, 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.
The story 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.
Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books
One More Parade (Phil Ochs, Bob Gibson)
Phil’s recording career kicks off with one of his strongest anti-war songs; a lambasting of the patriotic parade glorifying and sanitising war. There is a mocking disdain for the glorification of the war killing machine. Phil pulls back the shroud so that you can see behind the pomp and pageantry to the grief of the bereaved widows. The reality of war is glossed over behind a façade of bravery, parade ground precision and smart uniforms. ‘All march together. Everybody looks the same. So there’s nobody you can blame. War’s a game. World’s in flames. So start the parade!’
The number starts with a military drumbeat intro leading into plucked acoustic guitar strings picking out a melody against a background of strummed guitars. It sets up a marching rhythm that is echoed by the inflexions in Phil’s vocal. His tenor voice, strong, even strident, full of confidence and power, projecting the message of the song in no uncertain manner, full of disdain for the medals and the guns, the adulation and patriotic fervour so far removed from the appalling reality of mud, maiming and slaughter that is the reality of war.
The song came out of a collaboration with his good friend and mentor Bob Gibson. The melody was Bob’s and he provided an important step in Phil’s songwriting.
Phil Ochs On Track: Every Album, Every Song: Amazon.co.uk: Opher Goodwin: 9781789523263: Books
At school Phil had to pick an instrument. He first picked the trumpet but there were too many trumpeters, the same with 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. 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. Another weird choice. 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.
In 1958 he signed up to Ohio State University. The course he was originally signed up to remains a mystery. He’d only been there a short while before deciding that it wasn’t for him. He fled to Florida and was living rough. He was bust by the police for sleeping rough on a park bench and while in the police cell had an epiphany. He decided that what he really needed to do was to become a writer and settled on journalism. He 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. This 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. 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.
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 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!
I am currently carrying out a final read-through of my On Track Phil Ochs book. So much is so relevant to what is going on in the States right now – the rise of fascism, the conservatism of the working class, the propaganda machinery of Fox News. MAGA comes out of a system that has brainwashed generation after generation, run on fear, racism and conspiracy. Phil Ochs predicted it, described it and saw it all coming. The billionaires orchestrate it. Trump is the charismatic conman.
Here’s a little extract:
To end, he plays a rousing ‘I Ain’t Marching Anymore’ and says this:
‘I’m going to play you a protest song. A protest song is defined as something
you don’t hear on the radio. They say you don’t because the guy can’t sing
or because the words are too bad. The shit they play these days. It’s all to do
with the process all around the Western hemisphere – England, France, the
USA, Canada, the media syndrome where they control everybody’s mind with
mindlessness and mind distortions, distortions of the facts, which led all of us
into the Vietnam War and all of us into the Kennedy assassinations. What can
you do? Here you are, a helpless soul, a helpless piece of flesh amid all this
cruel, cruel machinery and terrible, heartless men. All you can do is turn away
from the filth and hopefully start to build something new someday.’
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).