Phil Ochs – No More Songs (3-CD Set)

Midway through Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Chicago”, the battle hymn of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, just at the point where they’re singing “We can change the world/Rear-range the world,” the singer’s voice cracks. And with it, my heart. Every time. It’s as if crystallized in that instant is the realization that we could, but wouldn’t change much of anything.

Those of us who believed the promises of the ’60s have never altogether recovered. Witness Neil Young’s subsequent endorsement of Ronald Reagan, and what we have made of the world now that our generation is taking its assigned turn in the barrel. Certainly Phil Ochs, perhaps the last Romantic poet, who took his life April 9, 1976, felt keenly the failure of the revolution he so eloquently sang about.

Born December 19, 1940, in El Paso, Texas, to an Army doctor who quickly fell into postwar depression, Ochs was graduated from the Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, then attended journalism school at Ohio State. That combination made of Ochs a warrior and a devout socialist. Toss in a fondness for Elvis and John Wayne, and an insatiable desire for stardom, and you will have some notion of the conflicts at work within the singer. The folk boom of the ’50s, and the guitar of roommate Jim Glover, made of Ochs a singer-songwriter — heir, with Dylan for a time, to the legacy of Woody Guthrie. Maybe, save for Billy Bragg and sadly unknown Seattle folk singer Jim Page, the last heir to Guthrie.

Ochs recorded eight LPs during his life, beginning with two collections of topical folk songs for Elektra (1964’s All The News That’s Fit To Sing and 1965’s I Ain’t Marching Anymore), followed by the live (but overdubbed) Phil Ochs In Concert. He then switched management and labels, recording the more personal Pleasures Of The Harbor (1967), Tape From California (1968), Rehearsals For Retirement (1969), and the ironic Greatest Hits (1970, produced by Van Dyke Parks) for A&M. A&M-Canada also was prevailed upon to release the live results of his switch to electric guitar (and a gold Nudie suit), Gunfight At Carnegie Hall, in 1974. Michael Ochs, who managed Phil off and on and is now known for his comprehensive archive of rock photographs, assembled the two-LP compilation Chords Of Fame shortly after his brother died, which is how I came to be acquainted with Phil Ochs.

Most of those titles, and several posthumous releases, remain in print, a testimony to the endurance of the young socialist’s songs (and despite the absence of chart success). Rhino’s three-disc set, presumably envisioned as a more comprehensive Chords Of Fame, seeks…well, I’m not sure what it seeks, but if it’ll goad a few more folks into discovering the work of a first-rate songwriter, so much the better.

The first two discs are concerned principally with Ochs’ topical folk songs, from the bitter humor of “Love Me I’m A Liberal” and “Draft Dodger Rag” to the savage invective of “Santo Domingo” or “Here’s To The State Of Mississippi”. With rare exception, however, the product of a military school’s rage is directed not toward the soldiers but the policy makers. Only a former soldier could make the polite couplet “If I’ve got something to say, sir/I’m going to say it now” bite with such fury. And no matter your familiarity with the politicians of the moment, “White Boots Marching In A Yellow Land” is an extraordinary song.

Like Guthrie before him, Ochs was always capable of depth and tenderness beyond politics, typified by his early treatment of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells” and his homage to Guthrie (“Bound For Glory”, also the title of Guthrie’s 1943 autobiography). He was also capable of enormous patriotism, as in “The Power And The Glory”.

The third disc mines Ochs’ rich and deeply personal songs. Three of these are tender classics — “Tape From California”, “The Flower Lady” and “Pleasures Of The Harbor” — yet I can imagine no singer today able to do them justice. Not because he had an extraordinary voice (reminiscent, somehow, of Buddy Holly). No, no singer today could summon the innocent certainty, the Romantic intensity that was inescapably Ochs’ gift. (It cannot, incidentally, have been pure accident that the psychedelic art of the ’60s, the visual component of the protest movement, was drawn from Romantic, late 19th-century Art Nouveau origins.)

His wry near-hit “Outside A Small Circle Of Friends”, which stalled on radio because it mentioned marijuana, also shows up on the third disc. Ah, and let’s not forget “Gas Station Woman”, a flat-out country gem waiting for rehabilitation. Regrettably, “Here’s To The State Of Richard Nixon” didn’t make it.

All that said, this is also a frustrating set. Live tracks are intercut throughout, which may seem fine on paper but serves only to make the listening experience herky-jerky. The live version of “Tape From California”, for example, doesn’t do full justice to the song (it’s from the Gunfight session, and while there are fine moments of performance art on that LP, it’s still a troubled time), and only occasionally does the presence of an audience provoke sparks from Ochs. Worse, the live cuts break the mood.

Four previously unreleased tracks, all of modest fidelity, are also offered here. “We Seek No Wider War” is a special treat (the other three are “Morning”, a demo of “Song Of A Soldier”, and a demo of “Cross My Heart”), but the wide variety in sound quality is frustrating. And, perhaps because I’ve lived with Chords of Fame for two decades, that earlier set seems a vastly more coherent summation of Ochs’ genius.

Yes, genius. Torn, tortured, and sometimes mired in the heat of the moment’s battle, Phil Ochs was a rarely gifted songwriter. And whatever quibbles this set may provoke, the songs will always speak eloquently for themselves.