Σάββατο 17 Απριλίου 2021

Meegan Lee Ochs: “I wish my father’s songs were less relevant than they still are”

 

Meegan and Phil Ochs (Photo credit: Alice Ochs)

Only daughter of the great troubadour of politically engaged folk music Phil Ochs, Meegan Lee Ochs lovingly shares with us memories of her father, who committed suicide 45 years ago, on the 9th of April of 1976.

You were only a teen when Phil Ochs, your father, committed suicide on the 9th of April, 1976. Could his death have been avoided or was he too determined/internally pressed?

I was 12 when my father died.

I lived with both of my parents until I was 2 ½, and then my mother and I moved to Mill Valley, California. My father moved to Los Angeles, California, and we visited both with my traveling to see him in LA, and his visiting me in Mill Valley.

My father suffered from a chemical imbalance that is now called Bi-Polar and at the time was called Manic Depression. Because I didn’t live with him, I didn’t experience the depression.

There were medications available, but they were not as fine-tuned as they are now. Lithium was prescribed at a much higher dose than was needed and had a reputation of taking away creativity.

From what I know, he had a prescription at the end of his life but had never taken it.

His creativity was his core, and I believe his fear of losing that was a price he was not willing to pay. He spoke about suicide frequently -not with me-, and there were concerns and many attempts to help from our family and his friends.

His father had been hospitalized for Manic Depression, and it seems clear that he inherited this from his father.

“What if” is a dangerous game for survivors of the suicide of a loved one. When I was 12, I thought if I had called him right before, I could have saved him.  The omnipotence of youth…

In retrospect, his decision does not seem to be a momentary thought.  It seems he was plagued with depression for most of his adult life.

He must have thought the only way to ensure that he would never suffer that deep depression again is if he were not here to experience it. I would give anything for him to have survived those years and could be with us still.

Losing a parent at such a tender age must have been devastating. How did you manage to come to terms with his loss and move on with your life on all levels?

My mother’s parents died when she was nine and 15. When my father died when I was 12, and my mother was struggling with drug addiction, I lived in fear of losing her as well. 

I’m grateful she was able to come out of drug addiction and live a productive life for another thirty years. Losing my father and nearly losing my mother involved my needing to have personal responsibility at a young age. 

I’m a silver linings person, so I see it as having made me self-reliant. Having his music and video of him helped me.

It is no replacement, but I literally have a documentary about my father made by Ken Bowser for my son to be able to know his grandfather much better than nearly any child whose grandparent dies before they are born.

Has your subsequent orientation, professional or political, been influenced, even subconsciously, by your relationship with your father or your memories of him?

For 28 years and counting I have been working at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU) as a fundraiser and event producer.

My father was a political folk singer, but he was also an organizer.

He was a founding member of the Yippies and engaged in various forms of protest including declaring the Vietnam war over and marching through the streets of New York letting people viscerally feel what ending the war could feel like.

There is no question that my life is infused with my father, his music, and his activism. The core belief that people should have equal opportunity and fighting against discrimination are in the fiber of my being.

My initial activism in high school was working with Planned Parenthood as a teen leader talking to peers about birth control access.

In my 20s, I was a volunteer fundraiser, raising funds for Central American Refugee organizations and traveling to El Salvador twice.

First on a fact-finding mission after five Jesuit priests were murdered and then when Ruben Zamora ran for public office in the early 1990s.

Of the many people that my father has guided into my life after his passing is Sean Penn. I met him when I was 19 and he was 23. He became like a brother to me, and I worked with him for three years, which was an amazing experience.

I joke that I attended “Penn University” because so many people I met through Sean have remained a part of my life and affected my work.

Though our dream of a film about my father have not been realized, it feels like the perfect time might actually be now.

Like my father, my adult life has been a mix of politics and entertainment. In 1992, I started working at the ACLU SoCal. I produced events including the Bill of Rights Awards.

In 1999, I created the ACLU’s online auction. Currently, I work on our annual Bill of Rights Awards, but most of my time is spent on auctions and sweepstakes and working with influencers to promote advocacy campaigns.

Many of my father’s friends have supported my work at the ACLU.

In the folk tradition of adapting songs to new circumstances, my father reimagined his song Here’s to the State of Mississippi as Here’s to the State of Richard Nixon.

Many years later, Tim Robbins and Eddie Vedder rewrote the song as Here’s to the State of George W. and I discreetly wanted someone to redo it again as Here’s to the State of Donald Trump.

And the speeches of the President are the ravings of a clown” has never been truer than for the Florida retiree.

Did you appreciate and enjoy his music and overall attitude while he was still alive? Which are your favorite Phil Ochs’s albums and why?

Just so you know, mine are All the news that’s fit to sing and Pleasures of the harbor- original pristine vinyl copies!

I have enjoyed my father’s music since I was a child.  My understanding of his powerful and clever lyrics has evolved over the years, and with understanding I am even more grateful for how he used his creativity to make the world a more just place for all.

From my perspective, the storytelling throughout his career mirrors his evolution from a curious and patriot youth who loved storytelling to his awareness that challenging your government when it does not live up to the ideals it espouses is not only a right but a responsibility.

All the News That’s Fit to Sing has an overarching story.

From celebrating America beauty in Power and the Glory, the legacy of a troubadour in Bound for Glory, blind patriotism in One More Parade, tragedy of loss in Too Many Martyrs and the hope of What's That I Hear.

Pleasures of the Harbor as an album and a song are a creative departure and stunning in my view.

Crucifixion and Pleasures of the Harbor are both intricate and expressive stories told with an orchestral presentation and beautiful melodies.

Outside of a Small Circle of Friends is another favorite song and is also on that album.

I Ain't Marching Anymore became an anthem for the anti-war movement,

Draft Dodger Rag is a song I adore, and That Was the President is a beautiful tribute to Kennedy in addition to Crucifixion.

The way he introduced his songs was often as insightful as the songs he wrote.

In Concert features my favorite introduction was to his song Love me I’m a Liberal.

He describes liberals as a shady group, 10% to the left in the best of times and 10% to the right of center if it affects them personally. Both the lyrics of the song and the introduction paint a vivid challenge/criticism of much of his listening audience.

Asking them to look in the mirror and see if they are progressive on a convenient and surface level, or deeply committed to social justice and willing to do the work.

From this album, other favorites include Chords of Fame, Joe Hill, The War is Over and Changes, which was written about my mother Alice.

Rehearsals for Retirement contains possibly his most succinct lyric of all: “I am the masculine American Man, I Kill Therefore I Am.”

In September 2014, you announced that you were donating your father’s valuable archives to the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

What was included in those archives and why did you decide to donate them to the Woody Guthrie Center?

My father’s brother/my uncle Michael Ochs is an extraordinary man. He managed part of my father’s career and is solely responsible for caring for my father’s belongings.

In fact, he flew to rescue a moving truck my father abandoned and drove it to LA saving nearly everything that he did not archive himself.

The items I donated included my father’s yearly journals and countless notebooks that chronicled his adventures, thoughts, song ideas, newspaper clippings, lyric sheets, Broadside Magazines, and personal notes from those he admired including Pete Seeger.

His Gold Lame suit worn in at the Gunfight at Carnegie Hall concerts, Miranda, the wig manikin that inspired the song Miranda, countless photographs -many taken by Michael and my mother-, posters, correspondence etc.

The Woody Guthrie Center is the perfect home for his belongings. Their collections not only include Woody Guthrie’s amazing archive, but also highlight items from the full spectrum of folk artists.

The research archive and educational opportunities for students of all ages are priceless.

I’m grateful that they are now caring for my father’s belongings in their climate controlled archival storage, and in the artistic way they curate what is displayed at the center. 

Every decision I make is my imagined response he would have done himself.  I feel he is smiling up there somewhere at the thought of his belongings hanging out with Woody’s, Pete Seeger’s and others he admired.

Meegan Lee Ochs with her husband and their son


45 years after your father’s untimely death, what do you most miss of him both as a committed, politicized artist and a troubled human being? Do you feel that his musical legacy is still felt nowadays, in the US as well as abroad?

Personally, I would love for my father to have known my beloved husband Jay, my stepdaughter Cierra, who is a performer herself and my son Caiden.

As far as the challenges he faced through manic depression, it was devastating to him, and took him from me.

However, I believe that I inherited ADHD and Dyslexia from my father, as did my son. There are challenges in both, but I sincerely believe that in addition to distraction there is hyper focus, which informed his life and mine.

Dyslexia is a different way of processing information and much of what made him amazing was rooted in these differences.

The number of times I have been told in my life “nobody has ever thought of doing it that way before” is many.  That is another gift from my father.

My advocacy is my small way of continuing his work on social justice, and I would have loved to have shared that with him. I wish my father’s songs were less relevant than they still are. In the last four years they became even more so. 

Many generations have been inspired by my father’s music, which I am immensely proud of.

However, my hope is that the relevance of the songs diminishes over time, and that his dream of a fair and just world will be realized.

The reason I am working for the ACLU is that I wanted to work for the rights of those marginalized in our society including people of color, the LGBTQ community, women, and those living with a disability, as well as working to protect free speech, voting rights and access, workers’ rights, immigrant rights and prisoners’ rights.

I am so grateful to dedicate my life to this work. My father performed at the ACLU of Southern California’s Bill of Rights Dinner when I was 9. Who would have thought that I would end up producing that event for more than two decades?

Had he still been alive, which causes would he be fighting for, to your mind?

Though I don’t know if it would have been through song, I believe he would be uplifting economic justice, workers’ rights, and the effort to end voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

I would like to warmly thank Meegan Lee Ochs for kindly sharing so many valuable memories and thoughts 45 years after the death of Phil Ochs, and also for providing the photographing material which illustrates the article.

Meegan Lee Ochs


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