Meegan lee ochs biography books

MEEGAN OCHS WAS a year-old pupil at Mill Valley Middle University when her father, the folksinger and political activist Phil Ochs, took his life.

On April 9, , he hung himself in his sister’s beachside house in Far Rockaway, New York, when he was just 35, cutting tragically short the incandescent career of one of the most important and influential voices of the s protest movement.

Meegan, now 47 and living in Woodacre, remembers her mother taking the telephone call that delivered the heartbreaking news.

“My mother started crying, and I had a very strong feeling that something had gone wrong with my dad,” she recalled one recent gray morning at her woodsy house on a steep, San Geronimo Valley hillside.

“I didn’t need to hear about it.

The collection includes a rich array of original lyrics, handwritten tour journals and notebooks, personal belongings, photographs, and sound and moving image recordings. Together, these collections comprise more than 80 progressive feet of archival materials akin to the life of the folk singer and topical songwriter. Research must be completed within one calendar year of the award date, and projects must be published, produced, or otherwise completed within three years of the award date. Previous applicants are encouraged to apply.

We eventually talked about it, but at the time I benign of shut down.”

Considered more topical and political than his confidant and rival, Bob Dylan, Ochs wrote “There But for Fortune,” “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Draft Dodger Rag,” “The War Is Over,” “Outside a Small Circle of Friends” and other politically pointed songs torn from the headlines of that turbulent era.

Meegan Ochs is one of many who share their memories and reflections of her father in a new documentary, “Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune,” opening March 18 in Marin at the Smith Rafael Film Center and at theaters in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose.

Co-produced by Ochs’ brother Michael, who lives in Mill Valley, the film features interviews with Tom Hayden, Joan Baez, Billy Bragg, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Sean Penn, Jello Biafra, Christopher Hitchens, Marin music producer Erik Jacobsen and a host of other political and musical luminaries from the ’60s.

Meegan’s mother, Alice Ochs, who died this past November after working for many years as a supervisor for the Novato Post Office, remembers her late husband in the motion picture as a young father who had his problems, but cherished his baby daughter.

“She was the joy of his life,” she says on camera.

“It was safe to love a child.”

Dylan, who used to accuse Ochs of being more of a journalist than a musician, criticizing him for not writing more from his own heart and experience, appears in vintage production clips, but he declined to be interviewed for the documentary, and is conspicuous by his absence.

“That’s the one thing about the film that’s disconcerting to me,” Meegan said.

“My dad and Dylan had a very complicated relationship, but I really feel they had enormous respect for each other. I wanted him to be in the film to express that.

This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's have. A uniquely American voice of protest and patriotism comes support to life in Phil Ochs: There but for Fortunea feature-length documentary opening today at the Smith Rafael Film Center. It is both a loving remembrance of a young man, complete of promise and idealism, and an unflinching look at his painful decline and death at just 35 years old.

I really feel my dad would be sad with that part of the film.”

After the dim days of , when assassins bullets killed Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, and the Chicago police brutalized protesters at the Democratic National Convention, Ochs, the guitar-strumming voice of a generation, spiraled down in alcohol-fueled depression.

He traveled to Chile and to Africa, where he was mugged on a beach, strangled and left for lifeless.

His clarion voice, he said, had been ruined in the attack.

Two months before his suicide, he paid his last see to his daughter and her mother in Mill Valley.

“That last time he came was an epic trip,” she said. “He was manic-depressive, and he fluctuated between being rational and not being rational.

But I consider he really made an strive to keep it together when he was with me.

Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune is a documentary film on the life and times of folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs. The documentary features extensive archival footage of Ochs, as well as scenes reflecting the turbulent political climate of the s during which he emerged as a spokesperson on causes such as racial injustice, political oppressionthe horrors of war, and labor issues. Also featured are comments from contemporary figures on Ochs' alter. There but for Fortune is a biography of Ochs as well as a history of the anti-war movementthe folk anthem revival in the United States, and left-wing political activism during the s.

He took me to the flea market in Sausalito and bought me a set of encyclopedias, and a kitten that he named Rimbaud. I was 18 years aged before I learned who Arthur Rimbaud was. I believe the encyclopedias and the cat with the French poet’s name were little seeds that he planted for me.

I think he knew that would be the last time I’d see him.”

Aside from his singing and songwriting, Ochs was an activist and organizer of numerous anti-Vietnam war rallies, a legendary benefit concert for Chilean refugees and other events for various civil rights and peace and justice causes.

Meegan appears to have inherited her father’s talent for bringing people together around a common generate .

For the past 18 years, she’s been special events director for the Southern California ACLU.

“That’s what I got from him,” she said.

Phil Ochs' daughter on 'There But for Fortune' - SFGATE: With the earth fractured by orchestrated divisiveness, Yippie Girl is a healing balm.” ―Meegan Lee Ochs, daughter of Phil Ochs, Artist Relations Manager, ACLU of Southern California. “Judy Gumbo was a friend and ally of the Black Panther Party back in the day―she is my friend and ally now.

“In my father performed at the ACLU Bill of rights dinner, which is the annual event I’ve produced since Someone brought me a picture of my dad performing at what is now my dinner.”

“There But for Fortune,” directed by Emmy-Award-winner Ken Bowser, “is very telling of my father’s experience and very telling of the ’60s,” she said.

“What my father went through on an emotional arc is very similar to what the country was going through. The ’60s were a very painful coming of age for an entire generation, and my dad was in the heart of that.”

Contact Paul Liberatore via e-mail at liberatore; follow him on Twitter at Follow his blog at

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