Featured Essay: The Importance of Phil Ochs

by Nicholas Newberry

Things are grim. As I force myself to read and digest yet another news story of Trump gleefully guiding America down the path of fascism, it is hard to feel much other than despair. The only other thing that has brought me much comfort lately has been to break out my Phil Ochs collection, re-read the songbooks, re-learn the songs and focus on finishing the vinyl collection built slowly over the years.

It was in my formative years of musical taste building (14-16) that I first ran across Phil Ochs. I had already become a huge Bob Dylan fan, and found myself gravitating towards topical and protest music. One day, a good friend of mine with similar leanings popped on a compilation album that he had pilfered from his father’s cd collection. It was Ochs, and the song was “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”. I was instantly taken, and went on to track down albums and learn to play the songs with an obsessive zeal. The idealism coupled with his dry, biting wit spoke to me and Phil Ochs became an important cornerstone in my continued musical journey.

As the years went on and I became an adult with more disposable income, I began to collect vinyl. Back when I first started collecting, reissues were harder to find and Ochs was never super popular to begin with, but I would always spare a few minutes to dig through the Folk section of used records stores, both home and away, hoping to come up with a gem. I remember being overjoyed to find an old college radio catalogue tagged version of the compilation album Chords of Fame at Wax Trax on a trip to Denver. It was the thrill of the hunt and although the internet has made tracking down obscure albums all the more easy, it nevertheless felt like a reward to come across one of Phil’s albums in a store. It was like being in some small in-the-know circle: both the person who had originally bought this album and I had been spoken to in some way, and I was going to keep this flame alive.

I don’t know if I am capable of listening to the albums with a critical, objective ear, because I feel like the albums still bring out the idealist in me. Phil was a competent, though not particularly technical or impressive, guitar player. Even still, I take pleasure in being able to recreate his guitar playing note for note on songs like “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” or “The Highwayman”. Many of his later songs suffered because of questionable arrangement and orchestration decisions as the folk movement gave rise to folk rock and psychedelia. Yet even those decisions cannot mask the raw, emotional power of “The Crucifixion”, his tribute to the fallen John F. Kennedy. Just do yourself a favor and listen to one of the live, acoustic performances of the song along with the album version before you pass judgement. 

I could go on and on: my love of the rollicking live version of “Tape From California” with a full band from the live album Gunfight at Carnegie Hall. The plaintive piano playing from Lincoln Mayorga (and according to one biographer, guitar by one young session player named Warren Zevon) on “Pleasures of the Harbor” from the album of the same name. The perhaps darkly self aware, self destructive subject of the country rocker in “Chords of Fame” from the ironically titled Greatest Hits album, which contained entirely new material. It feels transcendent somehow to put one of these albums on the turntable and just sit down and listen from beginning to end in the same way the artists themselves would have done back in the day when they first received the test pressing. I’m sure a lot of other vinyl enthusiasts feel the same way. It is one of my small pleasures in these otherwise disturbing times.

Phil Ochs never achieved the level of recognition of his 60’s New York contemporaries. He never achieved the fame of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, or many of the other songwriters who would cut their teeth in the socially conscious coffee houses of Greenwich Village. He was not the most musically talented but he was persistent, clever though not the most eloquent, poetic but not the most artful. Maybe the biggest criticism that could be leveled at him is that Phil simply cared too much. But in a way, it is a compliment. Phil could never stop caring enough to shut out the injustice around him. Whereas Bob Dylan had and has, essentially, the character of Bob Dylan to distance himself from the crushing weight of demands and expectations, Phil never had that. He was always exposed and vulnerable. I think this is one of the things that led him down the path of drug and alcohol abuse, and to his suicide in 1976. 

In a way, it is Nietzschean in the utmost. Time is a flat circle, and once again America lives through its own self-inflicted nightmare and is forced to confront the fascism living in its own soul. I think Phil would have recognized that. Back then, his disdain was directed towards the conservative establishment and the Nixon political machine. If Phil were alive now, I’m sure he would have plenty still to say about our current state of affairs. Alas, he is not. But that is not necessary for his songs to carry the same meaning and message. You could substitute out specific people or organizations, but the sentiment is still exactly the same. In the song “William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed”, Ochs poetically laments the violence visited upon protestors by the state in Chicago in 1968. Nothing much has changed. 

But to me, along with all the biting social commentary, Phil Ochs still represents that American idealism. In an introduction to a live recording of “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”, Phil said:

“So what can you do? I mean, here you are a helpless soul, a helpless piece of flesh amid all this cruel, cruel machinery and terrible, heartless men. So all you can do is turn away from the filth and hopefully start to build something new someday […] so here’s a turning away song”

These albums and songs, to me, represent that turning away, the refusal to give in to the hate. It’s why they still ring true to me, and are still important, all these years later.

Nicholas Newberry resides in SLC, Utah and is a musician, vinyl enthusiast, and soccer fanatic. He plays with the bands Hectic Hobo and Orphans Cabaret and that music can be found on all the standard streaming sites. He can be found posting records from his collection, art, and other miscellany on Bluesky at @whyaccordion.bsky.social