Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune
.If you have a Roku, you can subscribe to the highly recommended PBS channel and currently stream There But for Fortune for free. Watch it.
Ochs was an outstanding songwriter and one of the leading lights of the 1960s protest song folk movement. Ochs was deeply committed politically throughout his life, but that commitment led him into a number of dark experiences that deeply scarred him.
After introducing Ochs' rise as a musician in the early and mid 60s, the documentary moves on to outline how Ochs was deeply embittered by the police riots at the 1968 Democratic convention, where Ochs was one of the leaders of the protests outside. Shortly before that event, Ochs had moved to California and began to depart somewhat from his musical roots and his music, although still political, had grown more experimental. The negative reaction and his commercial failures seem to have further embittered Ochs.
Suffering from alcoholism and depression, Ochs slid into a deep writer's block. He decided to travel and wound up in Chile, where he befriended local folksinger Victor Jara and saw in Chile and its leader Salvador Allende leading lights in the movement for democratic socialism. Alas, the United States did not see things in the same way, and in an atrocious act of foreign intrusion (and a stain on the Chicago School of Economics), the U.S. orchestrated a coup and the overthrow of the democratic government to be replaced by Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship. The U.S. and its favored economists orchestrated economic reforms mainly designed to benefit the rich and American business interests (sound familiar? U.S. economic policies of the last 30+ years are mainly built on the same economic theories and policies). Meanwhile, Pinochet began mass murdering anyone deemed to be part of the opposition. That included Victor Jara.
As depicted by There But For Fortune, Jara's death both scarred Ochs and led to one of Ochs' last major performing feats - staging a big benefit concert for the Chilean people. Ochs' mental condition continued to deteriorate, a mugging incident left him with a damaged voice, and the end of the Vietnam War seemed to cast Ochs adrift without much purpose and he lost touch with reality. Ochs spent some time living on the street before committing suicide in 1976. He was just 35 years old.
The American Masters documentary does an outstanding job threading Ochs' story - inspiring, yet tragic - with his great music. With protest music so out of fashion, and perhaps because people were so eager to move beyond the turmoil of the 1960s, Ochs has unfortunately been relegated to the status of something of a musical footnote. His music and his commitment to change merit more recognition from generations such as my own - too young to have heard his music first-hand, but old enough to see that the problems Ochs agitated against in act and in music still afflict us nearly 40 years after Ochs' tragic death.
Again, definitely check out this worthwhile documentary - especially if you don't know a lot about Phil Ochs.
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