New doc exposes the bleeding heart of Phil Ochs
by WALLACE BAINE, santacruzsentinel.com
March 17th 2011 1:30 AM
If you were to get out a yellow legal pad and write down the names of all
the famous figures from the 1960s counterculture you could think of 1. Bob
Dylan, 2. Abbie Hoffman, 3. Goldie Hawn on "Laugh-In," ..., you probably
would not flash on the name of Phil Ochs until around 65 or so.
Which is sad, considering that the life of Ochs "" as pointed out in the new
documentary "Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune" "" is, in microcosm, the
story of the Sixties.
Ochs is an icon of the period's lefty protest-music subculture, one of the
so-called "Woody's children" who arose out of Greenwich Village at the end
of the '50s. But because he never had his "This Land Is Your Land" or
"Blowin' in the Wind," Ochs never made the jump to become a mainstream
cultural icon.
Ken Bowser's star-studded film traces the trajectory of Ochs's life, and
since it so closely parallels the painful formative years of the baby-boom
generation, it feels intimately familiar. But what we're left with is the
pure relentless drive of Ochs to be heard, from idealistic young would-be
world changer, to haunted, soul-crushed middle-aged manic depressive.
Inspired by JFK, moved to action by the civil rights movement and the
Vietnam War, heartbroken by the famous assassinations of the times and
ultimately permanently disillusioned by the Chicago Democratic Convention,
Ochs was the kind of cultural figure unknown in today's landscape, the true
believer who puts career considerations behind
full-throated devotion to The Cause.
As the film contends, Ochs "" who died by hanging himself in 1976 "" was not
an introspective man. His music, which saturates the film, was as melodic
and heartfelt as many of his more successful contemporaries, but they were
also directly political and, even worse from the perspective of history,
topical. Ochs was inspired as a songwriter by reading the morning New York
Times.
Before he even delves into Ochs's troubled relationship with his parents,
filmmaker Bowser wades into the prickly relationship between Ochs and his
biggest rival at the time, Bob Dylan. Phil apparently worshipped Bob, but
that feeling was not mutual. Dylan, who has always disdained overtly
political music, saw Ochs as a phony, a self-righteous rabble-rouser, not a
true artist.
Indeed, to the degree that Ochs is remembered at all today, it is less for
his musical body of work "" eight albums over the course of 12 years "" than
for throwing his lot in with the leftist revolutionaries of the time,
helping form the radical group the Yippies and staging all sorts of
theatrical social actions and protests.
Bystanders from his surviving family members to card-carrying boomer icons
such as Joan Baez, Peter Yarrow, Pete Seeger and others "" however
unsurprising, Dylan's absence is hard to overlook "" comment on Ochs's
ambition and convictions, and paint a picture of a driven artist who was
looking for a breakthrough to make him, as he put it, "part Elvis Presley,
part Che Guevara."
He came to New York with a grandiose ambition to be a new John Wayne, and
the "best songwriter in New York." Upon meeting Dylan, he amended that goal
to be the "second best."
But even Ochs's most famous songs "" the definitive anti-war anthem "I Ain't
Marching Anymore" and the sharp-edged parody aimed at self-satisfied
liberals "Love Me I'm a Liberal" "" sound as dated as a Chet Huntley
broadcast from the period.
For those only barely aware, or even unaware, of the cultural/political
tumult of the Sixties, the life of Phil Ochs is a great way to experience it
on a personal level. Ochs met his end much like the idealistic decade met
its end in the barren 1970s: in bitterness and self-recrimination, surveying
the burnt-out landscape for more causes to get behind and finding only his
own image looking back at him.
Original Page: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/entertainment/ci_17632560
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