Fifty years ago this week, as Melody Maker’s man in New York, I was at the Avery Fisher Hall to review a concert by Phil Ochs, whose LA apartment I’d rented for three months the previous year. This unusual situation, about which I’ve written at some length in my forthcoming memoir, offered me a unique insight into Phil’s world, instilling in me a warm feeling towards him and his music that lingers to this day.
I saw more concerts than I can possibly remember while I lived in New York, and the week I saw Phil I also reviewed shows by Captain Beefheart and The New Riders, all of which can be found on the Caught In The Act pages in MM dated April 27, 1974. I saw Phil perform only twice, this concert and another in New York’s Central Park in the summer of 1975. Here’s what appeared in MM 50 years ago this week.
The day of the protest singer is not quite over, even if his warnings were ignored in the sixties, and artists like Phil Ochs will always have a platform on which to air their leftist views and criticism of the current US administration.
Ochs gave a sell-out show at the Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Centre last week and was a resounding success. He was an original New York protest/folkie when Dylan walked the streets of Greenwich Village and this alone gives him an authority that more recent protesters will never have.
Each song was linked with the kind of rap that could have him deported, but the audience lapped it up. His most damning statement – that Kennedy’s killing really was a right wing plot by the establishment – struck home harder than most of his musical offerings.
Ochs is a shabby, portly fellow with short hair and gold rimmed glasses. He looks like an unkempt, underpaid college professor. His guitar, which he doesn’t play well, is old and battered and the strings buzz at certain frets. There’s strong chance he hasn’t re-strung it in many a year.
Looking, then, as if he’d just walked in off the street after an hour’s busking on the subway, Ochs delivered a series of songs in which the lyrics mattered far more than the vocal or musical attributes of the performer. Hard hitting lines were applauded in mid-song and there was a respectful silence so that his messages could get through.
He’s written some pretty tunes too. He opened with his charming song about singing bells, and followed that up with a trilogy of songs written by artists who had all spent time in jail and written about the experience. ‘There But For Fortune’, his own song, was the highlight.
Och’s protest songs sound awfully dated in 1974, however. ‘I’m Gonna Say It Now’ and ‘Outside A Small Circle of Friends’, for example, are both songs in which couplets at the end of each verse are repeated, rather like ’Blowin’ In The Wind’, in fact, and written to encourage a group of singers or the audience in a club to join in at the appropriate moment. This was all the rage 12 years ago but appears a bit dated today.
The gold lamé jacket* appeared for an encore but there was none of the rock and roll Phil performed at the controversial Carnegie Hall concert two years ago. His voice has deepened as a result of an attack with intent to rob during his recent stay in Africa. He was nearly strangled, apparently, and lucky to escape with his life.
Had he not escaped, the US would have lost an outspoken but sincere critic. After the show he invited one and all backstage to discuss his views, and several hundred accepted the offer.
* This was probably the same gold lamé suit that I tried on one day while I lived in Phil’s flat in LA. It was far too big for me - but it might fit me now.
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