Added: 2 years ago
From: antiprocon
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  • What a talent, and such an amazing voice. Tragic about his demise.

  • phil's biggest problem was phil, he killed himself

  • There was a folk singer just outside of Detroit, in the 60's by the name of Ron Coden, who did a more dramatic and powerful version of this song/poem.  Phil's version is wonderful but Ron's is very emotionally provoking.

  • Have not seen a Phil Ochs post.. use to like his music a great deal *)o(* Listen to his version of the HIGHWAY MAN.. it is a poem by

    Alfred Noyes.. the poem is fantastic much better then the tune but my Mom use to read me that poem as a bedtime story when I was really young and it still brings back great memories of her.. Just wanted to share that.. you can google the poem read it as it is much stronger then the tune but PHIL is the only one I know that did a musical version *)o(*

  • @singray7 - Phil detested liberals. He was a co-founder of YIPPIE, the Youth International Party. Listen to his song, "Love me I'm a Liberal." Peace, BluzCat

  • Billy Bragg and Tom Morello are probably the closes thing we have today to Phil Ochs. His demons got the better of him in the end, but what a ride it was.

  • a very disturbed man... yet a profound man...

  • So,

    I am old now and understand what as a youth I only wantonly felt. Yes I still believe. Follow your hearts young people, listen to the songs, dream our dreams, make them real, There are mistakes..make them and continue. Life is a journey and your map is for YOU to chart.

  • @cassandra4146 I think there is a very good reason my public education was so poor when compared to that of my parents. The power brokers know that a well educated young person is much more difficult to ship off to war, harder to lie to and take advantage of. Your generation was empowered with good education paid for by the fruits of a booming economy and rich that were taxed at a decent rate. Not so with the younger generations....schools produce workers and soldiers now.

    :(

  • @cassandra4146 I will, sister. I will carry that torch. Thanks.

  • I keep returning to this.. and it keeps reaching to me..

    C

  • am i the only 17 year old who cries when they listen to Phil Ochs?

  • @naruhinarulez I'm 17 and I cry. Partly because I look at that generation and see all the spirit and creative compassion in it, then look at ours and see nothing. I cried all through the last chaper of "On the Road" by Kerouac.

  • @Directx45000 Well I feel slightly better that I am not the only one...I cry because I wonder where all that spirit and compassion went and if it is possible to ever get it back...also because of how the majority of our generation has just stop believing in it

  • @naruhinarulez

    I know a 67 year old who still does .....

  • Phi possessed such a powerful yet sweet voice... One of a kind... such an Amazing Talent.

  • he was better than dylan

  • @zobielamouche1 more courageos

  • Phil was a regular player at the GASLIGHT in Greenwich Village.

    Thanks

    We miss you

  • an old memory...

    girlfriend and I 'borrowed' her parents car to drive from NY to Philadelphia to see Phil. Not enough $ to get home we picked up a hitchhicker from Ft Dix in New Jersey. We fought off the unwanted attentions for gas money. We were so naive. So naive....

    Thank you Phil.

  • Thank you so much for posting this! I learned the song from a friend over 30 years ago, but I never knew where she'd learned it (the music, not the poem). Imagine my elation to find this today and to finally know the source of this wonderful melody! :-)))

  • This was actually a very early song from his coffee-house days, of which many recordings survive. His performance was better then, but think of his output in the approximately four years between. Miss me some Ochs...

  • @paragtime Maybe you would like to learn a bit about Phil Ochs before you start attaching political labels to him or anyone else.

  • Phil Ochs sang "The Highwayman" at a 1970 benefit concert in Vancouver (now dubbed the "Amchitka Concert"). He opened the show, which also featured James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, and literally launched Greenpeace. Unfortunately that song didn't end up on the Greenpeace Amchitka Concert CD for technical reasons, but eight others he sang did, including the haunting version of "No More Songs" that closes Kenneth Bowser's fascinating documentary, "Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune".

  • He died.....about twenty years before I was born. Yesterday I saw a documentary about the man. "There but for Fortune." He is missed. We need his voice in this world.

  • I was blessed to see him live once in England back in 1966 (?) at the Beaulieu Folk Festival. Great time but awful rain!

  • @friend839 I was at that concert. He was absolutly amazing!!! i was soaked through to the skin,i told my daughter about that concert,she,s a phil ochs fan,but i could,nt find the concert in the list of his c0ncerts,now i know where it was,thanks a lot

  • beautiful

  • the best

  • Phil Ochs, I miss you.

  • Oh, thank you.

    For just a moment I was 16 again, and it was was 1964. Sitting front and center at the Gaslight on MacDougal Street nursing the hot apple cider I bought for my two drink minimum.

    Thank you Phil, Thank you Gaslight, and thank you antiprocon!

  • @DLMinton you lucky person.

  • I'd like someone with Phil's balls to be our president. Someone who was willing to tell the truth, fight the good fight, and let the pieces fall where they may. Someone with a feeling for mankind, a liberal to silence the big bad wolves and preach peace instead of war... unity, love, need and desire. End capitalism and destroy the republican party... let it be!

  • @singray7 Phil Ochs despised liberals, friend. Check out his song "Love Me - I'm a Liberal".

  • @ourglasslake The term "liberal" in the 1960's had a bit of a different meaning than it does today. As you can tell from the song, they were somewhat more right wing than what we might consider to be progressive liberals today. Phil self-identified as a Social Democrat, but in ''68 he supported Democratic candidate Gene McCarthy, although he changed his support to Robert Kennedy shortly before Kennedy's murder, perhaps as a result of a chance meeting with him on a plane.

  • @ourglasslake No, he despised fake liberals. Did you just look at the song title? The lyrics tell the real story. He is making fun of liberals who are only liberals when it suits them. They don't have any stake in the ideas, and when it comes down to it, they'd abandon their ideals if a better opportunity came up.

  • @ourglasslake He didn't despise liberals you didn't get it. He despised go along and get along mainstream liberalism, which is really moderatism, support for the main stream by only supporting those causes which are safely liberal. Phil wished liberals would actually be liberal. He wasn't calling out liberalism, he was calling out poseurs.

  • @singray7 Generally you're never going to see someone as strong in non mainstream belief be president. It sucks we can't have Phil Ochs for president...but its the same reason Rick Santorum has no chance to be president. balances out I think. Which is why its so hilarious when liberal thought Obama was going to ride into Washington like a knight; and conservatives think he's some radical...if either were true he would never have become president.

  • One of my favorite singers and songwriters of all time. His lyrics are better than Noyes .. by a little bit and Noyes couldn't sing and play like Phil. OK, I don't know for sure. Not in any order: Phil Ochs. Neil Young 66 to 1980. Paul Westerberg of The Replacements. John Lennon with the Beatles (not solo). Those 4 are on my Mount Rushmore. Forget Cleveland's Hall of Fame. Phil was against bombing but he would OK bombing Cleveland's Hall of Fame if no one is in the building ..I'm sure.

  • Interesting how Phil never opted for the long hair. He had the Elvis flip and the radical sensibility.

    What I liked most about Phil was his ability to spot the hypocrisy within his own circles. I own all of Phil's songs.

    I disagree with most of what he stood for, but it was his sense of individuality in songs like "Time Was" that appeal to the libertarian in me. Great songwriter.

    If I could have him over for dinner and play guitar, I would in a heart beat.

  • I dreamed I saw Phil Ochs last night, alive as you and me. Says I to Phil "You're 40 years dead,"

    "I never died," says he.

  • Web search: firstrunfeatures

    com/philochs/

  • My favorite singer/songwriter of all time. Phil, all of your loyal fans miss you today, now, more than ever!!!

  • Got his recording of this years ago, and still makes me weep for a long time even after it's over...for a while I took to plaiting a dark red love knot into my own long dark hair, but nobody ever got it...I met him in the Chicago trainwreck--tear gas really doesn't make a good ambiance for...uh, well, for anything, not for anything...We'd carry Vaseline, bandanas, wet cloth in a plastic bag, erecting again our useless talismans against our doom...

  • @ohyppest1 " erecting again our useless talismans against our doom..." very nice phrase that.

  • @jaundicedi I'm an old hippie/yippie chick--only lately it's kinda been looking like I may have "stayed too long at the fair"--nobody much left to not remember the 60's with me! My friends & lovers, real people, now seem reduced to some footnote in Fairytale Land. See what happens? Lose track for a decade or 3, and the world's changed! Did we do any good at all, or just irritate the system enough to make things worse yet? Oops! Sorry! A little edgy, but I did earn it! Hahaha! Thanks 4 yer post!

  • @ohyppest1 Your words toughed me and reminded me of a great song from one great poet of our time back then. In the song, Both Sides Now, Joni wrote: "I've looked at life from both sides now, from up and down and still somehow, It's life's illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all." Keep the faith!

  • Fantastic to find this on Youtube! Be sure to turn it up to catch Phil's guitar part - it adds to the urgency and drama of the lyric.

    I was fortunate enough to meed Phil when I was 17 and to have a long conversation with him - he gave me excellent advice and changed my life.

  • THIS IS THE BEST VERSION

  • I just heard this song in school today, and I love it now. Too bad he's gone. You'll be missed Phil!

  • Wow. This is by far the best poem ever, and I absolutely adore Phil Ochs. Great childhood memory listening to this song, OFTEN. We are missing great icons like Phil & Johnny Cash in our society! Beautiful.

  • Loreena McKennit created a much better melody, and setting, for this poem.

  • I saw him sing this at Scarborough College during the October Crisis and he sang it as "Trudeau's men came marching".

    He wanted to stop the concert for awhile and have a political discussion which would have been fun but the organizers said no.

  • @canadianheadhunter wow that gives me a chill does a bootleg exist, or even the lyrics?

  • @thegnomeidentity - The lyrics are the same as the poem except that he substituted Trudeau's Men for King George's Men. After the show, I asked him what's with Phil Ochs Greatest Hits. He said he's going back to his roots.

    I saw him once or twice at the Riverboat too and my friend saw him at Massey Hall in '65. Then, about 3 yrs ago we saw that young guy from Vancouver do a one-man play about Phil Ochs. It was fantastic.

  • Oh my..I can see him now. How lucky we were, tho little we knew it then how short a time he'd be with us.

  • I'll come to thee by moonlight...I came back on here just to listen to Phil - thanks to You Tube.  I know Dylan must come on here to listen to his old friends.

  • Phil had more influence on 1960's folk music that anyone else. He even had a nice voice, if you get my meaning!!!! There will always be some of us that will never forget! We miss you! Thank you for the time you gave us!

  • Phil, you were one of a kind...

    thanks for the Gaslight and the Second Fret

  • I did some folk singing in my youth & always liked/admired him. Wish he was still around today to help us make some sense of this often confusing world.

  • caralho q da hora...

  • A poet with a guitar, never heard him when he was alive :(

  • Great song Phil. Celia is coming to free you from your prison cell. Man you are handsome. Phil , I know your dead, but can you get someone to put up some of your really great songs that need to be heard.

  • Admittedly it was odd, but years ago when my kids were little this was one of their favorite bedtime songs that I'd sing to them. It was a captivating story with memorable musical hooks. To this day I miss Phil Ochs and his intelligence, passion and compassion.

  • Phil Ochs was the greatest. I had the privilege of seeing him sing live back in the late 1960s/early 70s. I always preferred him to Dylan. I did a bit of folk singing myself and Phil was definitely my hero and inspiration. He is sadly missed.

  • Phil Ochs is eternal.

  • @philochs

    Could you give me a little more information? Is everything you mention on the DVD? Do you have any footage of Phil alone?

  • We had a local folksinger in a suburb of Detroit (back in the 60's) who sang this song. His name is Ron Coden, who sang at the "Raven Gallery." Ron sang with a great deal more emotion, but Phil's voice is quite lovely. Thought I'd never hear this song again. Thanks. 10+ stars!

  • Love You Phil.

  • This song ends the first side of Phil's brilliant album "I ain't marching any more". He credits Alfred Noyes as the poet in the liner notes.

  • i have been looking for this version for the longest.

  • I first heard Phil Ochs when I was a teenager, just a couple of years after he died. I read comments here by people who saw him performing live and envy them, and wish all the more that Phil had found his way to the other side of the Lonesome Valley and stayed with us for awhile longer.

  • Albert, are you out there. Remember Phil and his gold jacket at the Electric Company. BC

  • Phil Ochs must rate among the great of the 60/70's musician/poets. The Highwayman remains one of my favourite PO recordings and this post is the very first time I've ever seen him performing. So, double, double thanks for posting.

  • Thanks for this footage!

  • After thirty years we still miss him, and we need him more than ever.

  • Phil Ochs is greatly missed. Words by Sir Alfred Noyes. This is beauty in every sense of the word.

  • Comment removed

  • I thought it was Noyes - guess I'll have to google it. Anyway, we know for sure it's Phil Ochs right?

  • Only Phil could hit those sweet notes with such grace and feeling.. what a singer and also a social activist... he give a generation hope and enlightightent in doing so of the some of the youth were informed not to go and shed their blood in foreign fields for old mens imperial dreams... Phil may not have changed the world ...but he changed many peoples view of the world forever.....

  • Amen to all of that! I consider myself one of the people he changed for the better. Just wish I had seen him in person - I did see many of the singers from that time including dylan, baez, van ronk, patrick sky and many others but somehow I missed Phil to my everlasting regret!

  • @margarita6022

    Noyes, yes

  • No it was a poem by Alfred Noyes

  • @IrishandFolkmusic Your right ... wish i was around as a young man to see Phil in concert....

  • @malachy1847

    No, it was Noyes--

  • I don't know how you found this, but thank you so much!

  • Hey Phil...

    You were the best,,,,,,

    Carol and Sue

  • A beautiful interpretation of a beautiful song from a special talent. Thanks for letting us share in this.

  • très beau!

  • such a beautiful revision of the original poem, not many songwriters like this guy - now or ever. even dylan said he could never touch ochs.

  • Fabulous. I teach this in my poetry unit with my 7th graders. They love it. Loreena Mc Kinnett does a marvelous job with this as well.

    Thanks for posting this.

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