Caught Between Being not-Dylan and (I think) Suing Don McLean

Poor Phil Ochs.
For starters, consider that my entire generation from the 70's, even avid students like me of the Rolling Stone Record Guide (et al, et al) has no idea who he was.  I only learned about him in 2001, from Stephen King's novel Hearts in Atlantis, where Ochs is repeatedly namechecked as a humble but broadly important figure of the counterculture.  The proto-protesters of King's 60's aren't listening to Dylan's "Masters of War" but rather Ochs' "Fogey From Muskogee".

Ochs seems to have been slighted from multiple potential fan bases. Consider:
1) Dylan, a peer, abandoned sincerity for crazy imagery, facile chameleonism, and cynicism to, finally, great aclaim.  Ochs, appearing to be a step behind, evolved with less sureity and mixed reviews, slipping in stature.
2) In a Robert Bork/ Michael Phelps moment, Ochs had what could have been a pretty cool, rambling epic radio hit, "Tape From California" become censored because one character in it, a burned out Nam vet is described as "passing his pipe" to the song's narrator, Ochs.   It's funny to think of the hypocrisy of bands in the 60s not being allowed to admit that they got high.
3) Ochs had a lesser-known rival zoom past him, aping his style a bit, I think.  Sitting here today in a coffee shop on 34th Street, I heard "American Pie" for the millionth royalty-generating time in my life and realized that Don McLean's voice (his voice itself!) and song both derive from Ochs just as much as, say, Sum 41 derives from Green Day nowadays. To me, "American Pie" seems all-Ochs, both the rambling narrative and lingering pre-occupation with pre-Boomer culture (i.e. fifties rock and roll-- see Ochs gold-lame-suit appearance in his late 60s "Gunfight at Carnegie Hall").

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In 1976, after Ochs hanged himself at his sisters home in Rockaway, Queens, Bella Abzug had the following entered into the Congressional record:
Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, a young folksinger whose music personified the protest mood of the 1960s took his own life. Phil Ochs — whose original compositions were compelling moral statements against war in Southeast Asia — apparently felt that he had run out of words.

While his tragic action was undoubtedly motivated by terrible personal despair, his death is a political as well as an artistic tragedy. I believe it is indicative of the despair many of the activists of the 1960s are experiencing as they perceive a government which continues the distortion of national priorities that is exemplified in the military budget we have before us.

Comments

[Steve Wylder]

I've been thinking about Phil Ochs a lot during the past months. The novel I'm working on involves the the "Festival of Life" during the 1968 Democratic Convention. Ochs sang at the LBJ Un-Birthday Party at the Chicago Coliseum, singing "I Ain't Marching Anymore," "The Power and Glory," and "The War is Over." As a patriotic song, "The Power and Glory" ought to be sung instead of such inanities as "God Bless the USA." But the prophetic lines,

Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of her poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand

probably precludes its widespread use at civic events.

I was going to say that McLean wasn't an imitator of Ochs, but on second thought, I think you're right. Even McLean's best song, "Vincent," has images that might have shown up in an Ochs song. Ochs's imagery in "The War is Over" is a case in point:

One-legged veterans will greet the dawn
And they're whistling marches as they mow the lawn
And the gargoyles only sit and grieve
The gypsy fortune teller told me that we'd been deceived
You only are what you believe

My daughter told me that Ochs may have considered suing Paul Simon. She had read somewhere that Simon and Garfunkel lifted Ochs's arrangement of "Scarborough Fair," and that incident deepened his depression. I couldn't find anything about it on the Web, but it's possible.

Thanks for reminding us of Phil Ochs and prodding me to do a post his performance at the Coliseum.