Bob Dylan: Performing Artist, 1974-1986 - The Middle Years

by Paul Williams

Dylan is challenging himself and his band, looking to create an entirely new show and new sound to reflect the new moment he finds himself in, emotionally and creatively. Among the other noises crowding him from within and without, Dylan had the recent (April 9) suicide of Phil Ochs to contend with: Ochs, a tortured and sometimes violently crazed man during his last sad months, had an obsessive, competitive love/hate relationship with Dylan (largely in his own mind, though Dylan was not above twisting the knife in public, responding to Ochs' goading with cool, vicious putdowns) going back to the Sixties and the Village folk scene. Ochs told friends that not being included in the Rolling Thunder Revue was the final blow for him, thus setting Dylan up as "responsible" for his death (though Ochs was in no condition to be included on anyone's tour). Dylan's long slow break-up with Sara had obviously reached the fire and brimstone stage, and, according to Spitz, he was juggling wife, family, and new girlfriend and going through at least a fifth of bourbon a day. "Right now I've got not much to lose," he sings in the Lakeland "If You See Her," and that seems a pretty good summation of the place Dylan was performing from each night of this 1976 tour.

United Fruit

Demo recorded for Broadside, 1965:



And the fruit boats ride on the waves
And the crew will dream of return
Back to the Florida waters
For the work of unloading onto the trains

And the ships will dance by the shore
With fruit from Venezuela
Brazil and Costa Rica
But the fruit from the island of Cuba is carried no more

And on the decks it will lay
Picked by the hands of the peons
At the lowest possible wages
While the profits are made by the strangers from far away

Now some pick the fruit of the vine
While others will go to the mountains
And eat the fruit of the hillside
And learn the way of the rifle and wait for the time

Allianza dollars are spent
To raise the towering buildings
For the weary bones of the workers
So they will be strong in the morning to go back again

And the companies keep a sharp eye
And pay their respects to the army
To watch for the hot-blooded leaders
And be prepared for the junta to crush them like flies

So heavy the price that they pay
As daily the fruit it is stolen
Over the blue Caribbean
But the lengthening shadow of Cuba will hinder the way

And the fruit boats ride on the waves
And the crew will dream of return
Back to the Florida waters
For the work of unloading onto the trains


The Clash used lyrics from "United Fruit" in "Up in Heaven (Not Only Here)" on the album Sandinista! (1980):



The towers of London, these crumbling rocks
Reality estates that the hero's got
And every hour's marked by the chime of a clock
Whatcha gonna do when the darkness surrounds?
You can piss in the lifts which have broken down
You can watch from the debris the last bedroom light
We're invisible here just past midnight

The wives hate their husbands and their husbands don't care
Their children daub slogans to prove they lived there
A giant pipe organ up in the air
You can't live in a home which should not have been built
By the bourgeoise clerks who bear no guilt
When the wind hits this building, this building it tilts
One day it will surely fall to the ground

Fear is just another commodity here
They sell us peeping holes to peek when we hear
A bang on the door resoundingly clear
Who would really want to move in here?
The children play far away, the corridors are bare
This room is a cage, it's like captivity
How can anyone exist in such misery?

It has been said not only here

"Allianza dollars are spent
To raise the towering buildings
For the weary bones of the workers
To go back in the morning"

It has been said not only here

"Allianza dollars are spent
To raise the towering buildings
For the weary bones of the workers
To be strong in the morning
To go back again"

It has been said

"To raise the buildings"

"Allianza dollars are spent
To raise the towering buildings
For the weary bones of the workers
To be strong in the morning"

Phil Ochs Covers: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - My Life

Robert Kennedy and His Times

by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Henry Jackson, Kennedy's old friend from the McCarthy committee, the party chairman in 1960, read the Senate Johnson's letter defending the bombing. Kennedy's proposals, Jackson said, put the United States into a position of weakness. Fulbright, McGovern, Clark, Tydings, Claiborne Pell, Albert Gore, John Sherman Cooper, supported Kennedy. At the end of the long day, Kennedy returned to his office. An aide suggested that Jackson deserved a gift. "Why not send him the coatimundi?" He caught the shuttle to New York. Phil Ochs, the folk singer, who had come down to Washington to hear the speech, was with him. Kennedy remembered that Bob Dylan was supposed to have changed his name to help his career and asked Ochs whether this was so. Ochs said it was. Kennedy said, "You think it would help me if I changed mine?"

What Are You Fighting For?

Demo version, recorded for Broadside:



Oh you tell me that there's danger to this land you call your own
And you watched them build the war machines right beside your home
And you tell me that you're ready to go marchin' to the war
Oh I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Before you pack your rifle and sail across the sea
Just think upon the Southern part of land that you call free
Oh, there's many kinds of slavery and we've found many more
Yes I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

And before you walk out on your job and answer to the call
Just think about the millions who have no job at all
And the men who wait for handouts with their eyes upon the floor
I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Turn on your TV, turn it on so loud
And watch the fool a-smiling there and tell me that you're proud
And listen to your radio, the noise it starts to pour
Oh I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Read your morning papers, read every single line
And tell me if you can believe that simple world you find
Read every slanted word till your eyes are getting sore
I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

And listen to your leaders, the ones that won the race
As they stand right there before you and lie into your face
If you ever try to buy them, you know what they stand for
I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Put ragged clothes upon your back and sleep upon the ground,
And tell police about your rights as they drag you down
And ask them as they lead you to some deserted door
Yes I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

But the hardest thing I'll ask you, if you will only try
Is take your children by their hands and look into their eyes
And there you'll see the answer you should have seen before
If you'll win the wars at home, there'll be no fighting anymore


Studio version, Early Years:



Oh you tell me that there's danger to this land you call your own
And you watched them build the war machines right beside your home
And you tell me that you're ready to go marchin' to the war
Oh I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Before you pack your rifle, go sail across the sea
Just think upon the Southern part of land that you call free
Oh there's many kinds of slavery and we've found many more
Yes I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

And before you walk out on your job and answer to the call
Just think about the millions who have no job at all
And the men who wait for handouts with their eyes upon the floor
Oh I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

And read your morning papers, read every single line
And tell me if you can believe that simple world you find
Read every slanted word till your eyes are getting sore
Yes I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Listen to your leaders, the ones that won the race
As they stand there right before you and lie into your face
If you ever try to buy them, you know what they stand for
I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

Put ragged clothes upon your back and sleep upon the ground
And tell police about your rights as they drag you down
And ask them as they lead you to some deserted door
Yes I know you're set for fighting, but what are you fighting for?

But the hardest thing I'll ask you, if you will only try
Is take your children by their hands and look into their eyes
And there you'll see the answer you should have seen before
If you'll win the wars at home, there'll be no fighting anymore

Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan

by Howard Sounes

Years before, when he was Bob's traveling companion and gofer, Bobby Neuwirth was known as "Tacos-to-Go." Now he appeared on stage at Gerde's, wearing a Zorro mask and Bob's gray fedora hat, as "The Masked Tortilla." This was the character he adopted for Renaldo & Clara. After he read a poem at Gerde's for the benefit of the cameras, Neuwirth surrendered the fedora and microphone to a pallid, unhealthy-looking Phil Ochs. Bloated by alcoholism, Ochs was a tragic figure, banned from the nearby Bitter End because of his drunkenness. Ochs had been one of the first people Bob had talked to about The Rolling Thunder Revue, and he desperately wanted to join the troupe. Unfortunately, it was inconceivable; part of the time he believed himself a character called John Train, and as such he was paranoid, aggressive, and suicidal. "He was in a psychotic tailspin," says friend David Van Ronk. Ochs's performance at Gerde's was sad for many to watch. Wearing Bob's fedora, he sang directly to Dylan and, when Dylan got up from his chair at one point, Ochs called out plaintively as if worried that he might leave the room. Bob replied that he was only going to the bar.

Phil Ochs Covers: Ani DiFranco - When I'm Gone

Buffy Sainte-Marie

"Folk songs usually last because they're about something that future generations can understand: war, peace, love, hate... classic themes," she said. "Something like Universal Soldier, I very deliberately wrote hoping that it would last for generations and cross languages and countries, and it's still appreciated now, 40 years later."

[...]

Along with some of her own recordings, she noted the effectiveness of songs by Phil Ochs and some of Bob Dylan's earlier works.

"I think that's probably why some of us got put out of business, because they were effective," she said.

[Read More]

The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America

by Edward P. Morgan

John F. Kennedy and the Promise of the Early 1960s

"There was a definite flowering-out of positive feelings when John Kennedy became President. The Civil Rights movement was giving off positive vibrations. There was a great feeling of reform, that things could be changed. . . . Things looked incredibly promising."
--Phil Ochs, folksinger

Phil Ochs: Marxist Minstrel

Phil Ochs Covers: Melanie - Chords of Fame

How the Left Lost Teen Spirit

by Danny Goldberg

I was still emotionally connected to aspects of the political agenda of the counterculture. In May 1970 I joined yet another antiwar march on Washington with Danny Fields. Danny knew writer Stu Werbin, one of the organizers of the event, so we were welcomed into the fenced-off backstage area. This was before the era of slickly produced plastic laminated backstage passes. If you got backstage, you stayed there.

I was astonished to see my hero Phil Ochs, who had walked out into the crowd, trying to convince one of the young antiwar-movement security guards to let him back into the stage area. I rushed over and yelled at the guard that Ochs was part of the program. The guard acquiesced immediately, since I was on the right side of the fence and had conviction in my voice. Ochs waved appreciatively.

It was to be my only face-to-face encounter with my hero.

In retrospect, I realize that the confrontation between Ochs--with his populist instincts and his expansive nature--and the insecure security guard, binding himself with ill-defined rules of turf and an arbitrary pecking order, was an ominous symbol of a sad but stubborn fact: Political activists don't always respect or understand artists, even politically committed artists. And the resulting failure to communicate has haunted progressive American politics since the sixties.

Phil and Alice Ochs at Home

Emile de Antonio: Radical Filmmaker in Cold War America

by Randolph Lewis

No one expected to make a fortune from the film, and de Antonio even hoped that profits could be given away to radical causes. In fact, some profits were illicit because de Antonio had neglected such niceties as paying royalties for using some well-known songs on the soundtrack. Although folksinger Phil Ochs drunkenly granted permission for his song "The War Is Over," he died before he signed a release, and songs by Nina Simone and Bob Dylan were used without permission or payment. Yet skimping on such legalities made it possible to create an ambitious film from meager resources.

Underground is without question an ambitious film. The filmmakers skillfully intertwine personal narratives of the five Weatherpeople with a visual history of anti-imperialism, which is broadly defined to include everything from the Flint sit-down strike of 1936 to the civil rights movement, from Fidel Castro's musings on revolution to the death of the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Much of the film celebrates the success of 1960s radicalism, especially in regard to Vietnam: military helicopters are pushed into the sea while Ochs sings "The War Is Over" on the soundtrack; antiwar veterans toss their medals onto the steps of the U.S. Capitol while a crowd cheers. In the most powerful and unprecedented scene Ho Chi Minh addresses the American people in English while he walks among his countrymen.