Phil Ochs: There
But for Fortune
Director:
Kenneth Bowser
Year:
2011
Rating: 7.0
In 1962 a young handsome man of 22 came out of Ohio to join the folk music
scene in Greenwich Village. Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary,
Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton, Eric Anderson were all part of the scene and soon
Phil Ochs fit right in. He was a prolific songwriter and singer profoundly
moved by the injustices he saw around him - many that we are still seeing
today - civil rights, American intervention abroad, inequality, miscarriage
of justice, police brutality - and he wrote and sang about them. Almost exclusively
about them. But he did more than sing - he also organized protests and benefit
concerts. He helped form the Yippie Movement and was in Chicago during the
Democratic Convention. The assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and King
hurt him badly. But he kept on writing and singing. Him and his guitar.
When Allende won the Presidency of Chile he went to visit to help celebrate.
His assassination with the approval of the CIA also was a blow to him. He
had hoped to be a huge success as a singer/song writer and it never happened.
He didn't write about love. He wrote about the world around him. And in truth
how much of that can a listener take. A lot of political songs have an expiration
date and how many of them do people play today though some such as I Ain't
Marching Any More, The War is Over, There But for Fortune, Love Me, I'm a
Liberal (mocking do nothing liberals) still resonate today. When success
didn't come in either his music or his causes he began to drink. lost control,
stopped writing - and went into a depression from which he could not pull
himself out. The film theorizes that the 70's killed him - when the Vietnam
War was over the radical causes seemed to disappear and he felt he had no
more reasons. no more causes. He hung himself in 1976 at the age of 35. This
is a fine documentary about his life with many songs performed by him and
interviews with a lot of people who knew him.
