A contemporary of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Phil Ochs achieved modest success as a singer/songwriter during the mid-1960s. After receiving a standing ovation at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963, he was signed by Elektra Records. A fervent activist who...

Philip David Ochs (December 19 1940–April 9 1976) was a U.S. protest singer (or, as he preferred, a "topical singer"), songwriter, musician and recording artist who was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humor, earnest humanism, political activism,...

The days immediately following Thanksgiving are supposed to be a frenzy of shopping, but nobody seems to have told the record labels, who on this Tuesday seem to have left the shelves a little bare. Fans of “too latin for hip hop, too hip...

Ochs was known as the troubadour of the New Left. He was the most radically committed performer of the Sixties, several steps beyond Jane Fonda and about on a par with Dick Gregory. He wrote topical songs of protest and was as happy singing them at the barricades as at Carnegie Hall. They were, as he well understood, a form of political theater. They could stir emotions and, under the right circumstances, provoke action. This is what he deeply hoped would happen. Ochs wrote songs with lyrics worth listening...

Bob Dylan is 21, Phil Ochs 22, Mark Spoelstra 23, Len Chandler and Tom Paxton 25, and Peter LaFarge is the oldest of the bunch at 32…. Besides their youth they have another thing in common: they belong to a whole new school of topical songwriter-performers that has emerged in American this past year or so and is today at a peak of song production. Much of their work is of a surprisingly high artistic quality, and according to some critics may be superior as music and poetry to anything of this nature...

The girl on the ticket line wanted "two tickets to the Bob Dylan concert." In fact the evening was a "Concert Tribute to Phil Ochs," and the irony would not have been lost on Phil. Even past the very end he didn't give the people what they wanted…. Phil killed himself. If you must gauge your life, I think a good standard would be your effect on your friends. Another, if you're lucky, would be your effect on the public at large. Phil's friends gathered ...