Remembering Phil Ochs

Phil Ochs would have been 80 today. I’ve never talked about all the details, but:

In 1975 Gordon Friesen, Sis Cunningham, Pete Seeger, Rev. Fred Kirkpatrick, and Phil Ochs asked me to move to New York to be part of a new project called I HEAR AMERICA SINGING. The name was suggested by Pete and pulled from the Walt Whitman poem.

The project was to be the “next generation” of BROADSIDE; a concert and commentary series combing the magazine with the kind of intro-stories that Ralph Gleason used to do at Folk City. Our friend, Folkways Records owner Moe Asch, who had just recorded MY first album, agreed to be part of the project and issue a series of I HEAR AMERICA SINGING lps.

Brother Kirk and Gordon were certain that the project would reinvigorate Phil, building on the energy he found in producing Sammy Walker, and maybe even sober him up permanently. Phil ―who sometimes was calling himself Phil and sometimes John Train― asked me to be the full time Executive Director of the project; he and Gordon would be the producers, Brother Kirk and Pete would be board member advisors, and Sis would be the musical director.

Phil and I talked for hours and shared letters. He had huge plans for an announcement party at Madison Square Garden, co-billed as a revival of BROADSIDE. He called friends and asked them to participate (some Rock and Roll royalty). I called or wrote to friends of Sis and Gordon’s (including Janis Ian, Dylan, and of course Moe Asch).

Phil’s energy and ability to pull things together were incredible; but at the same time, he was sounding more and more erratic and over-the-top crazy. Nonetheless, we moved forward and I planned to move to New York.

Before I could make the move to the City from North Carolina, Gordon wrote me a very long letter describing Phil showing up at their apartment (at 215 West 98th Street) barefoot in a snow-storm, having given his shoes and socks to a homeless man. He had not bathed in days, his pants were wet with urine, and, he was drunk out of his mind, warning that the CIA was following him. He slept many nights on the living room floor, and Sis bathed him.

After several such incidents, Gordon said, that he and Sis convinced Phil to go to Phil’s sister’s home in Far Rockaway (Queens).

By the time I arrived in New York, on a train from Charlotte, Phil was dead. He was 35 years old. Gordon was the same age that I am now; and I was 21.

He was a friend. He tried to be a mentor. He was brilliant. We both were journalism students turned topical folksingers; he was vastly talented me not so much.

After his death, I still moved to NY. We pushed forward with the plan, as a memorial to Phil among other things. My first two Folkways albums were released. Pete, Brother Kirk, and I met regularly to make it happen. I helped Sis and Gordon assemble the album “Broadside Ballads, Vol. 11: Interviews With Phil Ochs”, as well as an interview album with Dylan (to raise money for the non-profit project).

I was listed as the producer of the Dylan album ―but THAT is another story that resulted in a pair of $656-million lawsuits instigated by CBS Records and by Dylan’s divorce from Shirley Noznisky (Sara Dylan).

With the lawsuit, it all fell apart. Rolling Stone Magazine noted the lawsuit against Folkways, Broadside, and me; but not the memorial project for Phil.

Forty-five years later, I still miss my friend PHIL OCHS. Happy birthday.