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A half century later, the man is still dead. And we're still doing our best to forget him.
Phil Ochs was, to put an easy label on it, a protest singer. His song, “I Ain't a-Marching Anymore,” about a soldier refusing to march off to yet another war, became, ironically, the theme song to a thousand anti-war protest marches in the sixties. His “Draft Dodger Rag” (Ohhhh, I'm just sixteen I got a ruptured spleen and I always carry a purse...) was a hoot. “Love Me, I'm a Liberal” bit the hand that wanted to feed him so fiercely it bleeds to this day. And his long and complicated and wonderful “Crucifixion” proved that he was at heart an artist, who could have had a celebrated career, analogous to Bob Dylan's, if his outrage at injustice hadn't demanded he put all his heart and soul and being into political action.
Ochs spoke truth to power while at the same time making Saturday-and-evening protesters, like me, who went to rallies, signed petitions, and stood in the drizzling rain holding candles for a few hours and then went home to cocktails and dinner, feel like devout Christians who hadn't yet given everything they owned to the poor.
It's been five decades since Phil Ochs, after a struggle with bipolar disorder and alcoholism, committed suicide. The confluence of these two diseases proved stronger than his will to live. Those who resented his activism did their best to pretend he never existed. Those who agreed with his goals but hadn't reshaped our lives to the Cause shamefacedly did pretty much the same.
He was simply too sincere for any of us.
So tonight, let all of us who have failed to live up to his example bow our heads and raise a glass to a man who, in e. e. cummings's phrase, was “more brave than me:more blond than you.”
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