President O just hosted a celebration of protest music from the Civil Rights era – a not inappropriate gesture considering that the Sixties have turned fifty and we now have a black man in the White House. Dylan was on hand performing “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” and Joan Baez sang “We Shall Overcome.” But there was an 800-pound gorilla in the room (I use that metaphor instead of “elephant” in case any Republicans were inadvertently present) in the guise of the ghost of Phil Ochs.
I didn’t even know who Phil Ochs was until I started college in ’66. Maybe I had heard his “There But for Fortune” sung by Joan Baez and thought it was pretty, or was amused by the Chad Mitchell Trio doing his “Draft Dodger Rag.” Then I bought a copy of I Ain’t Marching Anymore (1965) and was impressed with his scathing commentary on racial tension, “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.” But it was the title track that completely turned my head around.
Unlike other protest songs like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” that merely lamented war and violence, this one suggested action – or rather, resistance – and expressed an attitude I hadn’t encountered in the music of the era: not “let there be peace” or “stop the fighting” or “alas, mankind” but just “I refuse to participate in this insanity.” I don’t know that anybody before then had ever put it so bluntly.
Ochs had no sooner released this scorching statement when along comes a concert album with the achingly beautiful “Changes”:
The world's spinning madly, it drifts in the dark
swings through a hollow of haze
a race around the stars
a journey through the universe ablaze
with changes
There was no one quite like him. Only Dylan’s early songs had the same journalistic/poetic balance, but Dylan was to back off from current affairs. Phil went on to write more protest songs even while dallying with artsier lyrics, to help found the Yippie movement, to take a few bizarre turns, and eventually to take his own life. But he was as much a seminal figure of the Sixties as anyone, and “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” left an indelible mark on my political consciousness.
Of course, that particular song had special significance in the days of the draft. The fact that we now have a volunteer army suggests more of a willingness to engage in combat – or does it? It’s still the old who lead us to the wars and the young who fall. Maybe the continuation of unnecessary or unwinnable wars will make young men & women think twice before enlisting, because the sentiment of Ochs’s song applies to any era, not just the sixties.
But somehow I don’t think the White House is going to be hosting a celebration of anti-war music anytime soon.
I didn’t even know who Phil Ochs was until I started college in ’66. Maybe I had heard his “There But for Fortune” sung by Joan Baez and thought it was pretty, or was amused by the Chad Mitchell Trio doing his “Draft Dodger Rag.” Then I bought a copy of I Ain’t Marching Anymore (1965) and was impressed with his scathing commentary on racial tension, “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.” But it was the title track that completely turned my head around.Unlike other protest songs like “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” that merely lamented war and violence, this one suggested action – or rather, resistance – and expressed an attitude I hadn’t encountered in the music of the era: not “let there be peace” or “stop the fighting” or “alas, mankind” but just “I refuse to participate in this insanity.” I don’t know that anybody before then had ever put it so bluntly.
Ochs had no sooner released this scorching statement when along comes a concert album with the achingly beautiful “Changes”:
The world's spinning madly, it drifts in the dark
swings through a hollow of haze
a race around the stars
a journey through the universe ablaze
with changes
There was no one quite like him. Only Dylan’s early songs had the same journalistic/poetic balance, but Dylan was to back off from current affairs. Phil went on to write more protest songs even while dallying with artsier lyrics, to help found the Yippie movement, to take a few bizarre turns, and eventually to take his own life. But he was as much a seminal figure of the Sixties as anyone, and “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” left an indelible mark on my political consciousness.
Of course, that particular song had special significance in the days of the draft. The fact that we now have a volunteer army suggests more of a willingness to engage in combat – or does it? It’s still the old who lead us to the wars and the young who fall. Maybe the continuation of unnecessary or unwinnable wars will make young men & women think twice before enlisting, because the sentiment of Ochs’s song applies to any era, not just the sixties.
But somehow I don’t think the White House is going to be hosting a celebration of anti-war music anytime soon.
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