Philip David Ochs (December 19, 1940 – April 9, 1976) was an American protest singer (or, as he preferred, a topical singer) and songwriter who was known for his sharp wit, sardonic humour, earnest humanism, political activism, insightful and alliterative lyrics, and distinctive voice. He wrote hundreds of songs in the 1960s and 1970s and released eight albums.
Phil Ochs was born in El Paso. His family moved frequently. He first studied music in New York and then moved to Ohio. When he was in the fifth grade he began playing the clarinet and soon demonstrated extraordinary musical aptitude. By age sixteen he was the lead clarinet soloist for Capital University's Conservatory of Music in Columbus, Ohio. In 1956, at his own request, he was sent to the Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and after graduation he enrolled at Ohio State University in 1958. There he majored in journalism, became obsessed with Elvis Presley and James Dean, adopted a radical political philosophy, abandoned the clarinet for the guitar, began composing folk songs, and started his own newspaper when the student paper refused to publish his leftist writings.
After winning local acclaim as a folksinger, Ochs dropped out of college one semester short of graduation and moved to New York City. On 15 March 1963 he performed his first paid concert at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village and soon was playing at a variety of clubs and writing for the folk music magazine Broadside. That year he married Alice Skinner, with whom he had a daughter; they separated in 1965. Ochs's first exposure to a large audience came in July 1963 at the Newport Folk Festival, a performance that brought him widespread acclaim. As his fame grew, Ochs's Bleecker Street apartment became a frequent hangout for other folk singers, including the emerging Bob Dylan, who became a close friend.
In 1964 Ochs traveled to Mississippi for a series of concerts; he had just arrived when the bodies of three murdered civil rights workers were found in a nearby swamp. "I'm afraid they're going to kill me while I'm singing on stage," he told a friend. But he survived, and the experience led him to write one of his most significant songs, "Here's To the State of Mississippi," a scathing attack on white southerners. In 1965 Ochs released his second album, I Ain't Marching Anymore, a brilliant collection of fourteen biting political songs. Among them were the clever satire "Draft Dodger Rag" and "That Was the President," an elegy to John Kennedy.
In 1965 one of Ochs's most poignant songs, "There But for Fortune," became a Top Forty hit for Joan Baez. Always an aggressive self-promoter, Ochs had enough of a following by 1966 to sell out Carnegie Hall for a concert appearance that later became part of a live album, Phil Ochs in Concert. By this time Dylan had converted to rock music, and Ochs also began writing songs that were less overtly political. His best songs from 1966 and 1967, including "Changes,""When I'm Gone," and "Crucifixion," were more personal and abstract than his previous work, and more musically intricate. But to his dismay none of them became hits.
Using an alter ego pseudonym of John Train (in real terms, his nemesis), Ochs would walk around the Village in a state of paranoia, hyperactivity and drunkenness. His entire savings of over $30,000 was wasted on hare-brained schemes, his erratic behaviour cost him a spot on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, a touring concept he and Dylan had talked about. Eventually, Ochs wound up sleeping in the Chelsea Hotel boiler room.
In a final desperate act of emptiness, Ochs hanged himself in the bathroom of his sister's house in Far Rockaway, New York, on April 9th, 1976, a broken figure far removed from his erstwhile status as one of the finest performers of his generation and at least for a short time a man considered to be Bob Dylan's greatest songwriting rival.
(Edited from Encyclopedia.com & Irish Times.com)