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