Marshall Fine: HuffPost Review: Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune
Some young suicides and early deaths of artists result in enduring and
even outsized reputations after death: James Dean, Sylvia Plath.
But Phil Ochs is a tragic case of someone who had it and lost it - and
then succumbed to demons that were bigger than he was. As Phil Ochs:
There But For Fortune shows, he was a mover and a shaker who went his
own way, even as he lost his way.
His suicide at 35 in 1976 came at a point when his musical relevance had
long since dissipated. But there was a period in the mid-1960s when his
name was often mentioned in the same breath as Bob Dylan's, as an avatar
of a new wave of the folk-music revival.
He was called a "protest singer" - but, then, so was Dylan for a while.
His songs - dealing with the civil-rights movement and then the Vietnam
war - had wit and bite and edge. As this documentary by Ken Bowser
shows, Ochs didn't just sing about the issues that concerned him - he
organized and acted, working as part of the organizing group behind the
Yippie protests in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention
and performing in Lincoln Park, then later organizing a major concert
after the CIA-enabled coup that toppled Salvador Allende in Chile.
Bowser's documentary calls on a variety of witnesses to Ochs' life,
including contemporaries such as Joan Baez and Tom Hayden, fans such as
Sean Penn and Christopher Hitchens - and his family, particularly
brother Michael.
The portrait they sketch is of a man driven by his political beliefs,
shattered by the deaths of John F. Kennedy and disillusioned by the
ineffectiveness of protest against the Vietnam War. A prolific writer,
he suffered commercial decline when he tried to expand his musical
profile beyond the topical into more personal songs.
But he also suffered a legacy of mental illness: specifically, bipolar
disorder, which also afflicted his father. As his musical fortunes
declined, his mental problems were exacerbated by heavy drinking.
Eventually, broke and depressed, he hung himself.
Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune probably won't start a Phil Ochs
revival; there have been tribute album compilations in the past. Yet it
resurrects a vibrant, spirited talent from a period that is regularly
besooted by culture warriors, seeking to cast the 1960s and early 1970s
as one long pot-smoking binge, instead of the period of awakening and
upheaval in social consciousness that it was.
If you were an Ochs fan, it will remind you of why you were. And if
you're new to Phil Ochs, it will reveal a voice silenced too early and,
just maybe, send you scurrying to iTunes for a sampling of his work.
Click here: Find more reviews, interviews and commentary on my website.
Follow Marshall Fine on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hollywoodnfine
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