Long after Phil Ochs' death, his songs still remembered

NEW YORK When Michael Ochs talks of Greenwich Village circa 1962,a sense of awe drifts through his voice.

"There was so much going on, it was ridiculous," he recalls."It was amazing."

It was the dawn of the last great American folk-musicrenaissance. And if you were lucky enough to have been in theVillage back then, you saw it rising. On any given weekend, BobDylan, Richie Havens, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, and Peter,Paul and Mary were performing somewhere."Dylan was king of the hill," says Ochs. But there was anotherguy everybody said was just about as good. He was the folk singerMichael Ochs had moved out from Ohio to see. He was Michael's olderbrother, Phil Ochs.Like Dylan, Phil was just out of his teens and from the Midwest,all youthful energy and innocence. He was filled with a passion tochange the world, and kept writing songs aimed at doing just that.They were topical, satirical, angry, funny, romantic, often allat the same time. Some of them, like "Cops of the World," excoriatedAmerica for throwing its weight around the globe in those days.Others, like "Power and the Glory," reveled almost patriotically inthe country's beauty and strength."But those days are gone now," Michael Ochs adds, laughingquietly and just a little sadly.Indeed, Phil Ochs has been dead 21 years now. His suicide atage 35 is occasionally noted by some as an invocation of the failedhopes of the '60s generation. But the music he left behind keepsfinding a new audience."Songwriters in general are lucky, because our bones can molderaway after we die, but the songs just keep going," muses an old Ochs'friend, folk music legend Pete Seeger. "Just the other day we had abig festival up here in Westchester County (N.Y.). And people weresinging some of Phil's songs."A three-CD boxed set, "Fantasies and Farewells: The Phil OchsCollection," was just released by Rhino Records. It is the firstsuch compendium to bring together Ochs' early topical songs like"There But for Fortune" and "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore," with hislater, more introspective work.It's hard to envision how Ochs, always seemingly at odds withfame, would have reacted to this. His brother believes he would havebeen pleased."I was lucky, in that toward the end we talked a lot," MichaelOchs, a friendly man with a quiet, easy laugh, says from his officein Los Angeles. "In almost every conversation, he asked me, Do youthink these songs will survive? Will the songs survive?' I said,`Of course they will.' And this is the proof."Ochs, 54, admits he wasn't really all that sure. His brother'searly songs in particular often referred to the headlines of the day.After the headlines were forgotten, wouldn't his songs be as well?Interestingly, often the answer is no.One reason, ventures the singer's 33-year-old daughter, could bethat protest songs never really go out of style when there are stillissues to protest."He wrote songs about the death penalty and farm workers andlabor issues and civil rights and other issues that we have notprogressed as far on as he might have hoped we would have by now,"says Meegan Ochs, who works for the American Civil Liberties Union ofSouthern California.Beyond that the songs have lasted because Ochs was also a greatsongwriter, with a natural ear for melody and a talent for word play.