75 Facts About Phil Ochs

Philip David Ochs was an American songwriter, protest singer, and political activist.

Phil Ochs wrote approximately 200 songs throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and released eight albums.

Politically, early in his career, Phil Ochs described himself as a "left social democrat," but became an early revolutionary after the police riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which had a profound effect on his state of mind.

Phil Ochs had a number of mental health problems, including depression, bipolar disorder and alcoholism, and died by suicide on April 9,1976.

Phil Ochs' influences included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Bob Gibson, Faron Young, and Merle Haggard.

Philip David Ochs was born on December 19,1940, in El Paso, Texas, to Jacob "Jack" Ochs, a physician who was born in New York to Polish-Jewish parents, and Gertrude Ochs, who was born in Scotland to Jewish parents.

Phil Ochs's parents met and married in Edinburgh where Jack was attending medical school, and afterwards moved to the United States.

Phil Ochs was unable to establish a successful medical practice and instead worked at a series of hospitals around the country.

Phil Ochs spent a lot of time at the movies while living in Far Rockaway, as there were three theaters in town.

Phil Ochs especially liked big screen heroes and later developed an interest in movie rebels.

From 1956 to 1958, Phil Ochs was a student at the Staunton Military Academy in rural Virginia.

Unhappy after his first quarter, 18-year-old Phil Ochs took a leave of absence and traveled to Florida, where he was jailed for two weeks for sleeping on a park bench in Miami, an incident he would later recall:.

Phil Ochs returned to Ohio State to study journalism and developed an interest in politics, with a particular interest in the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

Phil Ochs was the opening act for a number of musicians in the summer of 1961, including the Smothers Brothers.

Phil Ochs met folk singer Bob Gibson that summer as well, and according to Dave Van Ronk, Gibson became "the seminal influence" on Phil Ochs' writing.

Phil Ochs continued at Ohio State into his senior year, but was bitterly disappointed at not being appointed editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, and dropped out in his last quarter without graduating.

Phil Ochs left for New York, as Glover had, to become a folksinger.

Phil Ochs arrived in New York City in 1962 and began performing in numerous small folk nightclubs, eventually becoming an integral part of the Greenwich Village folk music scene.

Phil Ochs emerged as an unpolished but passionate vocalist who wrote pointed songs about current events: war, civil rights, labor struggles and other topics.

However, in order to get by, in November 1962, Phil Ochs accepted $50 to record a children's album, a collection of traditional popular campfire songs, titled Camp Favorites.

Phil Ochs requested his name not be used and it wasn't until well after his death that its existence became known.

Phil Ochs described himself as a "singing journalist", saying he built his songs from stories he read in Newsweek.

In 1963, Phil Ochs performed at New York's Carnegie Hall and Town Hall in hootenannies.

Phil Ochs made his first solo appearance at Carnegie Hall in 1966.

Phil Ochs contributed many songs and articles to the influential Broadside Magazine.

In 1962, Phil Ochs married Alice Skinner, who was pregnant with their daughter Meegan, in a City Hall ceremony with Jim Glover as best man and Jean Ray as bridesmaid, and witnessed by Dylan's girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo.

Phil Ochs told his wife that he thought he was going to die that night.

None of Phil Ochs's songs became hits, although "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" received a good deal of airplay.

Phil Ochs was profoundly concerned with the escalation of the Vietnam War, performing tirelessly at anti-war rallies across the country.

Phil Ochs was disappointed and bitter when his onetime hero John Wayne embraced the Vietnam War with what Ochs saw as the blind patriotism of Wayne's 1968 film, The Green Berets:.

Phil Ochs was involved in the creation of the Youth International Party, known as the Yippies, along with Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Stew Albert, and Paul Krassner.

Still, Phil Ochs helped plan the Yippies' "Festival of Life" which was to take place at the 1968 Democratic National Convention along with demonstrations by other anti-war groups including the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

Phil Ochs performed in Lincoln Park, Grant Park, and at the Chicago Coliseum, witnessed the violence perpetrated by the Chicago police against the protesters, and was arrested at one point.

Phil Ochs purchased the young boar who became known as the Yippie 1968 Presidential candidate "Pigasus the Immortal" from a farm in Illinois.

At the trial of the Chicago Seven in December 1969, Phil Ochs testified for the defense.

On his way out of the courthouse, Phil Ochs sang the song for the press corps; to Phil Ochs's amusement, his singing was broadcast that evening by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.

Phil Ochs thought that by playing the sort of music that had moved him as a teenager he could speak more directly to the American public.

Phil Ochs turned to his musical roots in country music and early rock and roll.

Phil Ochs decided he needed to be "part Elvis Presley and part Che Guevara", so he commissioned a gold lame suit from Elvis Presley's costumer Nudie Cohn.

Phil Ochs wore the gold suit on the cover of his 1970 album, Greatest Hits, which consisted of new songs largely in rock and country styles.

Phil Ochs went on tour wearing the gold suit, backed by a rock band, singing his own material along with medleys of songs by Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Merle Haggard.

Phil Ochs had been taking Valium for years to help control his nerves, and he was drinking heavily.

Phil Ochs was drinking a lot of wine and taking uppers.

Depressed by his lack of widespread appreciation and suffering from writer's block, Phil Ochs did not record any further albums.

Phil Ochs was having difficulties writing new songs during this period, but he had occasional breakthroughs.

Phil Ochs was personally invited by John Lennon to sing at a large benefit at the University of Michigan in December 1971 on behalf of John Sinclair, an activist poet who had been arrested on minor drug charges and given a severe sentence.

Phil Ochs performed at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally along with Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg, David Peel, Abbie Hoffman, and many others.

In 1972, Phil Ochs was asked to write the theme song for the film Kansas City Bomber.

In mid-1972, Phil Ochs traveled to Australia and New Zealand and then to Africa the following year, where he visited Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, and South Africa.

When Phil Ochs heard about the manner in which his friend had been killed, he was outraged and decided to organize a benefit concert to bring to public attention the situation in Chile, and raise funds for the people of Chile.

Phil Ochs' drinking became more and more of a problem, and his behavior became increasingly erratic.

In mid-1975, Phil Ochs took on the identity of John Butler Train.

Phil Ochs told people that Train had murdered Ochs and that he, John Butler Train, had replaced him.

Phil Ochs was convinced that someone was trying to kill him, so he carried a weapon at all times: a hammer, a knife, or a lead pipe.

On Christmas Eve 1975, Phil Ochs visited the apartment of Larry Sloman and Dave Peller, which he had done semi-frequently near the end of 1975.

On this particular evening, Peller recorded Phil Ochs singing ten songs, five of them new and intended for an album that "would be an unflinching narrative of his psychosis over the past year" which went by the working title of Duels in the Sun.

In January 1976, Phil Ochs moved to Far Rockaway, New York, to live with his sister Sonny.

Phil Ochs was lethargic; his only activities were watching television and playing cards with his nephews.

Phil Ochs saw a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder.

Phil Ochs was prescribed medication, and he told his sister he was taking it.

Almost fifty years after his death, Phil Ochs's songs remain relevant.

Phil Ochs's work continues to influence singers and fans worldwide, most of whom never saw him perform live.

Alice Skinner Phil Ochs was a photographer; she died in November 2010.

In September 2014, Meegan Lee Phil Ochs announced that she was donating her father's archives to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In 2005, Kind Of Like Spitting released an album, Learn: The Songs of Phil Ochs, consisting of covers of nine songs written by Ochs, to pay tribute to his music and raise awareness of the artist, whom they felt had been overlooked.

Phil Ochs was always really good no matter what he was doing.

In 2020, Welsh singer-songwriter Martyn Joseph released Days of Decision: A Tribute to Phil Ochs containing 14 Ochs covers, as well as liner notes by Ochs' sister, Sonny.

Singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith wrote a song about Phil Ochs entitled "Radio Fragile", included in her album Storms.

Phil Ochs has influenced Greek folk-rock songwriters; Dimitris Panagopoulos' Astathis Isoropia was dedicated to his memory.

Singer Harry Chapin's song "The Parade's Still Passing By" from his 1976 album On the Road to Kingdom Come is dedicated to Phil Ochs and is a response to his dissatisfaction with his lack of chart success and suicide.

Phil Ochs is mentioned in the song "The Day" from the 1986 self-titled They Might Be Giants album.

Phil Ochs is mentioned in the Stephen King novels The Tommyknockers and Hearts in Atlantis.

Phil Ochs is mentioned in David Bowie's 2013 song " Set the World on Fire" on The Next Day album.

The film included interviews with people who had known Phil Ochs, including Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, manager Harold Leventhal, and Mike Porco, the owner of Gerde's Folk City.

Experimental filmmaker Phil Solomon named his 2007 experimental film Rehearsals for Retirement after Ochs' 1969 song of the same name.