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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Meegan Lee Ochs |
