Death of a Rebel

by Marc Eliot

Anchor Press, 316 pages

"The child was created to the slaughter house he's led.

So good to be alive when the eulogies are read.

The climax of emotion, the worship of the dead

As the cycle of sacrifice unwinds." "Crucifixion"--Phil Ochs

THEY ADVERTISED this book: "The Sixties died on April 19, 19 6." Phil Ochs dangling from his belt jammed in the bathroom doorway; it marked the end, we are told, of an era that blew away with his ashes.

But I don't know. The sixties died long before Phil Ochs wandered into his sister's bathroom in Far Rockaway, New York. And Marc Eliot makes a good case that Ochs did too. Phil Ochs went down slowly, painfully, and the actual moment of his death only confirmed what Ochs had guessed from the evidence of Chicago, or Kent State, or Chile. And by the time Ochs actually made his final break, the parts of his life that might have made his death the tombstone of his time had long since withered away.

When I mention his name now people stare blankly. Some of them even think that "A Small Circle of Friends" is just a cute movie title.

Actually, it's the title of the song Ochs wrote for Kitty Genovese. People don't remember her either, but she was murdered in New York while a crowd of people stood by.

Ochs wrote about her, and Billie Sol Estes, and the Vietnam war, and John Kennedy. As journalism student in college he sang the news the papers weren't printing. Yet his first three records sold less than 70,000 copies. Ochs finished his life never reaching the heart of the country his songs sought to transform.

Eliot's biography captures the tragedy of Ochs' life as well as anything written about him yet. It does what biographies are supposed to do; it provides a detailed account of Ochs' life from beginning to end. Through Phil Ochs' life Eliot tries to capture the essence of the '60s. However, it becomes the story not of the death of an era, but of its still-birth.

Eliot describes the ever deepening frustration Ochs endured as his songs and his career failed to reach the minds of his contemporaries. It all began, though, in 1962 in the Greenwich village folk clubs, which then featured singers like Peter Yarrow, Dave Van Ronk, and Bob Dylan. It was a time when "anyone with a pocketful of tunes, a guitar, and the guts to get up on stage was singing folk music." Ochs started out with songs like "One More Parade and "The Power and the Glory."

"The Power and the Glory" Ochs claimed, "was the best song I will ever write." It wasn't, but it expressed his life's central theme: an abiding love for the United States and a lifelong hatred for the repression perpetrated in its name.