Phil Ochs

Phil Ochs was one of the primary exponents of protest folk in the '60s and one of the most highly regarded songwriters to emerge from the '60s Greenwich Village folk scene. He was born in El Paso, Texas and had an itinerant youth. In the '50s he developed a love of country music and rock 'n' roll, but by the start of the '60s, folk music became a passion for Ochs, and in 1962 he relocated to Greenwich Village, taking part in the folk explosion happening there. He helped popularize the use of topical, politically charged songs to protest widespread injustices, from the Vietnam war and the Jim Crow South to more specific targets. Artists like Pete Seeger and Joe & Eddie were recording Ochs's songs as early as 1963, and Elektra released his first album, All the News That's Fit to Sing, the following year. This and his next two LPs, I Ain't Marching Anymore and In Concert, full of protest songs featuring just Ochs and his acoustic guitar, established his reputation. But after switching to A&M Records, Ochs shifted to a more expansive approach, embracing everything from folk rock to orchestrated art-folk suites on such records as 1967's Pleasures of the Harbor and 1968's Tape from California. Though was often critically lauded, Ochs was never commercially successful, and lacked the voice-of-a-generation status of his contemporary Bob Dylan. He tried to address this by adding rock 'n' roll and country to his musical menu in the '70s, but it didn't help much. His growing depression eventually combined with his increasing substance abuse problems and his bipolarity to create a kind of perfect storm of tribulations that led to Ochs's suicide when he hung himself on April 9, 1976 at his home in Far Rockaway, New York at the age of 35.