Almost all of “Rehearsals for Retirement” was written within two weeks. Phil hurried to get A&M to book studio time for him. The result: a masterpiece. "40 Phil Ochs fans can’t be wrong." Well, 20,000 did buy it, but that was an alarmingly small number as far as the record label was concerned.
Yes, as the “50th anniversary” of various albums and bands has produced new product, a “Rock Hall of Fame” vote, or front page tributes, few celebrate Phil, beyond that small circle of discerning critics and friends.
At the time, Phil’s new album, even with the tombstone cover, was considered just another record. It got a few decent reviews and within a surprisingly short time, was remaindered. He played the songs from the new album at a triumphant (non-Gold suit) show at Carnegie Hall, April 11, 1969. At various venues, he explained that this new release was a concept album.
He said the songs were “about the new paranoia, police brutality, the escape into drugs, Chicago itself, people coming to the West - another escape route - thoughts of suicide, thoughts of revolution, and then finally pulling back and saying all this has been our rehearsals for retirement.”
Despite this swirl of emotions on this, his strongest album, it was treated with indifference, pressed in small quantity, and remaindered within months, left for dollar-bin purchases at best. Phil cut short the tour that was supporting the album. He still hoped that at least his small circle of friends would understand that this was his best album. He and Judy Henske had both had been signed to Elektra. Together, they went over to see Elektra producer Paul Rothschild. They accidentally crashed an afternoon party Paul was throwing. Phil had a copy of “Rehearsals,” and went to the stereo to put the record on, hoping for some approval from his former boss.
Rothschild slipped away, pulled a switch, and the lights all went out. He announced that there was a power failure. He turned to Phil and said, “I guess you can’t play your album.”
We still play that album to this day. It endures. Despite the tombstone cover, Phil would return to Chicago for the trial, and it was Old Phil on the witness stand, being fed straight lines by William Kunstler. Kunstler would re-enact it all at the memorial for Phil at the Felt Forum, and got big laughs. Phil’s creativity didn’t stop; he arranged the Allende concert, and got excited about opening a bar called Che. He would offer a new album that would contain “No More Songs.” But for many, “Rehearsals for Retirement” is where it ended.
50 years later, it is still here for us. It offers a wide range of emotions. There are songs of despair and songs of defiance. Though the album contains melancholy waltzes (“The Doll House,” “Doesn’t Lenny Live Here Anymore”) it also rocks out (“I Kill Therefore I am,” “Another Age”). The songs move us to this day. The political tunes are still fresh, because in this country, nothing has changed. You can almost hear Donald Trump doing something horrible and declaring to a cheering throng, “Pretty Smart On My Part.”
Aside from the morbid album cover, “Rehearsals” differs from Phil’s other A&M albums in NOT having the usual long songs of narcotic monotony. Like an hour train ride that has some nice scenery, or like chewing a stick of gum that still manages to retain flavor, Phil’s ardent fans didn’t lose patience with “Joe Hill,’ (7:18) “Jim Dean,” (5:05) “When in Rome” (13:13) or “I’ve Had Her” (8:03). Real fans treated these epic songs as tolerantly as Dylan fans did “Joey” on the “Desire” album. Most of the time, the voyage was worth it, certainly on “Pleasures of the Harbor” (8:05), “The Party” (7:57) and “Crucifixion” (8:45).
This album has only one song clocking in at over five minutes: “Doesn’t Lenny Live Here Anymore.” The album’s shorter tracks didn’t prevent critics from either ignoring the album entirely, or giving it short shrift. Veteran critic-brat Robert Christgau, the guy who “graded” records like a pissy school teacher, offered up a one-liner run-on sentence:
“The arrangements, which Phil is no longer allowed to do, are excellent and work for his voice; contains some predictable bummers but two great flashes, "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns" and "Another Age." B.”
Contemporary reviewers, knowing the tragic back story of the album, have been more generous. But again, only a few have bothered. Richie Unterberger:
“Rehearsals for Retirement might have been a prophetic title for an album by a major singer-songwriter who, after the 1969 release of this LP, would write and record barely any first-rate compositions, and would soon cease writing songs altogether…Phil Ochs’ writing, singing, and verve remained sharp and vital…”
“…The decrease of risk-taking with the arrangements…guaranteed a consistency of tone that each of those earlier (A&M) LPs lacked. Although Lincoln Mayorga contributed classical-flavored piano (as he had on Pleasures of the Harbor and Tapes from California), he and Phil were also joined by guitarist-bassist Bob Rafkin, who had a more conventional rock orientation than either of his colleagues.”
Although most consider “Rehearsals” an album of disillusion and depression, there are flashes of Phil’s topical songwriting (“Scorpion Departs…”) and tracks so angry and rocking, they’ve been covered my modern punk groups and could easily make a convincing argument for Rock Hall of Fame honors: “Pretty Smart on My Part” and “Another Age.” (Let’s add that Phil’s more conventional songs, “Changes” and “There But for Fortune” have been covered by a wide variety of rock stars, from Cher to Neil Young and back).
Phil would produce one more album of original material, the wryly titled “Greatest Hits,” which would feature “No More Songs.” But this one remains, for many, his greatest success. Biographer Michael Schumacher: “Rehearsals for Retirement is one of the most harrowing recordings ever issued in pop music, as unflinchingly honest as John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band or Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night.”
1. PRETTY SMART ON MY PART.
Phil comes out blazing with rockabilly music and a war of words. The dark humor here goes from tongue in cheek to a full tongue-sticking-out raspberry as he exposes the violence that is so much a part of American culture, in its movies and in the reality of what both cops and soldiers were doing to innocent people.
The small circle of friends was used to this by now. A new song? Anti-war? About “White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land” or something? About Civil Rights violations? What’s it this time?
“Remind us of our social responsibility,” Dave Van Ronk shouted to Phil, during a freewheeling (ie, drunk) evening of new song-trading on NYC’s WBAI radio. Dave cackled, “That was a cheap shot,” but it was still a shot, as both he and another guest Patrick Sky were not known for topical songs.
Phil just tuned up and remarked, “Social responsibilities, ay? After that cheap sexual digression, we’re gonna do a song about American sexual paranoia.”
He then strummed “Pretty Smart on My Part,” and each outrageous, sadistic punchline brought chuckles from the small studio audiencce. Yes, even “and then I’m gonna whip her.” In fact, “we’ll assassinate the president and take over the government” got some applause. How many guys besides Phil Ochs would dare offer a line like that?
The line had a weird twist to it, since the lunatic he was portraying in this song was much more likely to be an Ed Gein and commit sexual torture in some rural Mid-American farm house, than a Yippie trying to change the status quo by political violence.
The song was covered by the punk-rock group Bastro. As a rage from violence-for-the-sake-of-violence hard rockers, who bang drums and shout instead of sing, Phil’s message is trivialized by the band’s pro-wrestling glee in being offensive.
Bob Morley’s “Orange Blossom Special” version chugs along quite happily; the guy might as well be covering Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” Covering a song because you like singing it, is not the same as being driven to it to express a new way of presenting it. Morley’s a bland vocalist. Phil has sometimes been underrated as a singer. When you hear some of the cover versions on him out there, you can appreciate the deceptive ease with which he could add irony, humor or pathos.
A horrifyingly inept take comes from somebody named Harlan. I’ll give him credit for sounding like an utter cretin who could molest a woman, but his arrangement is more clumsy than clever, his singing is off key and as he slips to each new chord his guitar squeaks like a seasick hamster. I know, you HAVE to hear it for yourself. Go over to YouTube and cringe.
2. THE DOLL HOUSE
“The Doll House” remains, like so many a psychedelic-tinged song, an enchanting enigma. Especially confusing is why he performed a chorus mimicking Bob Dylan. Joan Baez did this once as well (covering “Simple Twist of Fate” on her “Diamonds and Rust” album, about 2.22 in). Are Dylan imitations by his pals supposed to be good-natured parody, or something more?
One theory here is that Phil’s intentionally showing he can out-Bob his rival in viewing the world through the prism of jewels and binoculars. It could be a quick aside, saying in essence, “If Bob was singing this, you’d all buy it and spend a month trying to figure out this latest bit of genius.”
My own outre theory is he may have wanted to include Bob as another customer in the doll (whore) house. The message: “I’m not alone in tossing around bizarre imagery and symbolism. Look who I brought with me, and he’s just as knocked out and loaded as I am. We are massive poets, who also taken massive mind-expanding drugs and hipping you to what we see.”
Phil certainly had his share of hookers and drugs. One prostitute gave him a social disease in Chile and when he wasn’t attracting groupies in Australia he had a friend point him to the red-light district brothels. If a night wasn’t spent on stage, or enjoying pleasures of hookers, he was sometimes over-doing alcohol or taking mescaline or mushrooms. The use of the latter certainly would explain lyrics far more obscure than anything in the pages of Yeats.
The important thing with dream lyrics that veer in and out of reality, is that they engage the listener and create provocative images. It’s something Keith Reid did well on “Whiter Shade,” and Lennon with “Lucy in the Sky.” Phil sings these lines as if they’re not strange at all:
Lost in the valley of dolls
Fell from the path, it was nobody's fault
That I was alone
Time dripped from the trees
Leapt through a land
I fell to my knees before the throne
And the crown was covered jewels, sparkling schools
The beautiful fauns
The magnificent battle was fought
And Cinderella's soldier fish was caught
Sure. Perfectly understandable. Not.
Any Poetry 101 professor would cringe and cross out “Time dripped from the trees,” but maybe not if the line was about a hallucination caused by scooping up a tab of acid or a combo of pills (dolls does have the twin meaning of whores and of pills). The stanzas give way to this recurring chorus:
And the lady from the lake
Who helped me to escape
Led me to myself at last
Though I danced with the dolls in the doll house
“The lady from the lake,” who might be ghostly, or drowned, at least gave Phil “something” before she turned her whiter shade of pale. Maybe it was love, the kind of love you don’t get when you’ve screwed whores (or, more poetically “danced with the dolls in the doll house.”)
The flower fled from my feet
Tom Sawyer voice through the hole of the key
Landed so gently
Castles cover the cave
I had no choice, the visions were brave
And the phantoms were friendly
And Pirate Jenny was dancing for pennies
The knucklebones tossed in a spin
There were silver songs on her skin
And she wasn't caring when the ship came in
The whore Phil’s chosen finally appears and performs:
My costume dropped to the floor
Naked at last, I couldn't fight any-more
And the service was rendered
Unlike the hooker in “Pleasures of the Harbor,” this one doesn’t seem to be providing comfort to a lonely sailor, but to somebody completely stoned. The lyrics that follow, return to bizarre images that are, if not part of a nightmare landscape, part of a Dali-surreal one. The doll in this doll house has only performed a function on the body, and not the much more troubled mind.
3. I KILL THEREFORE I AM
A companion piece to “Pretty Smart on My Part” (and played back to back by Phil at the April 1969 Carnegie Hall concert), Phil applies the bludgeon to the famous line, “I think therefore I am.” Who is thinking anymore?
The “Pretty Smart” guy marries a woman and then whips her. This guy is just as prone to sudden violence:
“I don’t like the students now. They don’t have no respect. They don’t like to work now. I think I’ll wring their neck.”
Phil Phans know that one of his recurring themes is trouble in paradise; the false nirvana. The hero President is shot. The move Westward from the ugly city becomes its own trap. And here, the song opens with what seems to be the arrival of a life hero, but instead, he’s riding a symbol of destruction:
“Meet the King of Cowboys. He rides a pale pony.”
That line in Revelation 6:8:
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him…”
Unlike Dylan albums of this same era, Ochs albums were loaded with quite an array of arrangements and bits of offbeat production genius. The opening of this gallop finds the German-Jewish Phil Ochs as authentic in his Old West music as the German-Jewish Elmer Bernstein (who wrote “The Magnificent Seven” theme song). Only Bernstein did not have lyrics for his epic, and Phil did.
Phil’s lyrics tellus how often we appoint a savior who turns out to be powerful and corrupt. This authority figure doesn’t provide safety for all of the people all of the time:
“He patrols the highways from the air. He keeps the country safe from long hair.”
Phil knows that anyone from a cowboy sheriff to a cop in Chicago can single out people for less than fair treatment, and there’s always an excuse for it:
“I am the masculine American man. I kill therefore I am.”
Sometimes in concert he changed it to “I am the 20th Century Man.”
You can hear this (and the audience’s spontaneous applause on “we’ve got the police force, they’re the ones that break the law) on this YouTube clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmQUQrdiDA The Rabid Surf Dogs covered Phil’s song with surf guitar, rudimentary drums and the usual unschooled new wave style of yelp. Nice to know that some Millennials want to vent about Fascism instead of sit around playing Minecraft video games.
PS, adventurers, I have deliberately avoided the “I’m turning my camcorder on, sitting back in my chair, and fucking up a Phil Ochs song” YouTube assholes. Proceed at your OWN risk for those cover versions, and beware, a lot of “cookie monster” punk vocalists who’ve titled a song “I Kill Therefore I Am,” just to get a vicarious thrill out of acting demonic.
4. WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS VISITS LINCOLN PARK AND ESCAPES UNSCATHED
During a WBAI broadcast, Phil mentioned one of his favorite poets:
“I was over there in England…I woke up in a strange house and started talking to this girl, and reading poetry all morning. Reading William Butler Yeats….While driving back (to London) it was like being visited by the muse. I was very much artistically aroused by Yeats…so I got this idea for a song, from the aesthetic in the air…”
No, he didn’t start singing THIS song. He started singing “The Song of My Returning.”
THIS song, would come later…on an album where Phil impersonated quite a few people, including a paranoid masculine-American man and an equally crazed “pretty smart” sadist out to “get” a variety of people before they “got” him. So why not also assume the persona (or ghost) of William Butler Yeats? How many out there would recognize a photo of Yeats?
Phil Phans might probably recall that when, in the depths of anger and despair, Phil assumed a new identity in real life, it was John BUTLER Train.
The only full-length song on the album that actually references the trauma of Chicago, it is surprisingly gentle, a beautiful ballad that tends to romanticize the scene of the attack on hippies who came to Lincoln Park and “spread their sheets upon the ground just like a wandering tribe. And the wise men walked in their Robespierre robes…” Yes, hippies did dress like Jesus, and probably a few of the more affluent ones could afford a regal-looking robe of some kind, rather than terry cloth from Marshall Field’s.
One of Phil’s friends scoffed that darkness sets but doesn’t turn. A sunset isn’t called a sunturn, after all. But “Lincoln Park, the dark was turning, turning” is purely poetic. So is the notion of being “blessed by a blood red moon.” Is that a blessing, in reality? Phil’s poetic gaffes are plentiful if one wants to get technical. In “Crucifixion” for example, “mountains are amazed.” No, any high school teacher would sigh, mountains are NOT capable of being amazed.
Romantic poets and composers often explore the theme of “the death of the maiden,” and here, the story opens with “I spied a fair young maiden and a flame was in her eyes. And on her face lay the steel blue skies…” A reflection on a corpse?
The song’s end: “I searched in vain for she stayed behind…” soon followed by “she lies in stone.” Yeats was 30 years dead when Phil wrote the song. It’s an irony, perhaps, that Yeats actually did visit Chicago a few times. The last time was in March of 1920. He told a gathering that he was experimenting with a new art form: “I am trying to create a form of poetical drama played by one company, all of whom could ride in one taxicab and carry their stage property on the roof.”
Yeats expert Geoffrey Johnson on Phil’s song: “Except for the contemporary references, the lyrics—which invoked a blood-red moon, a fair young maiden, and trembling towers—might have sprung directly from Yeats’s ‘Celtic Twilight.’”
As he did with Poe and with Noyes, it’s possible that Phil may have gotten around to adding music for lyrics by Yeats. You can imagine him playing piano to such lines from “Celtic Twilight” as these:
“Time drops in decay
Like a candle burnt out.
And the mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;
But, kindly old rout
Of the fire-born moods,
You pass not away.”
Pat Wictor, a veteran of many a Phil Ochs song night, offers a capable version on his album “This is Absolutely Real: Visions and Versions of Phil Ochs.” He’s one of those guys who does try to add something new to his arrangements, which can include altering a few notes and adding his own sensibilities. Here, there’s an odd jazz undercurrent, and…that IS a vibraphone isn’t it? All of this makes the song way too pretty for some tastes, but it deserves points for originality.
5. WHERE WERE YOU IN CHICAGO
If you check the “Rehearsals” lp, you won’t find this song listed.
As was typical for Phil, this schizy mood-ruiner shakes up the space between the exquisite “Yeats” ballad and the even more aching “My Life.” But that’s part of what Ochs did. Wicked humor elbowed horrific lyrics and jaunty melodies sometimes accompanied songs about women being stabbed.
Slipped in, much as “Her Majesty” was tossed onto “Abbey Road,” this neglected half-minute nugget is a pretty good joke. It deflates Phil’s own stance as a SJW (Social Justice Warrior). Finger pointing is fine, but point it at yourself sometimes. And Phil does. The punchline:
“Where were you in Chicago, when the fight was being fought? Where were you in Chicago, when I was in Detroit!”
Michael Schumacher in “There But for Fortune” declared that the album had “virtually no humor in the songs,” but this is pretty humorous.
The song was actually covered by the repulsively named trio “Kind of Like Spitting.” Not exactly inept, the nasal boys aren’t the most polished or interesting of vocalists. Some of us do collect most everything on Phil and always welcome people who care enough to join in. The Spitters offered an entire (but short) album of Ochs songs, with the snotty title “Learn the Songs of Phil Ochs” (as if you haven’t heard of the man) but the effort has earned them a very, very small circle of friends.
On the original “Rehearsals” album, Phil’s little joke leads into…
6. MY LIFE
I defer to “Death of a Rebel” and Marc Eliot on this one: “The song is a Platter-ish “My Prayer”-type ditty…Phil’s reflection on his career, his hopes, his dreams…Thousands of strings were behind him. Lincoln Mayorga’s wrenching piano accompaniment drove Phil to squeeze the song from the very depths of his despair. He left Side One with what was, simply, the greatest performance of his life.”
7. THE SCORPION DEPARTS BUT NEVER RETURNS
Marc Eliot again: “If “My Life” was Phil’s greatest performance, “The Scorpion Departs” was his greatest song. It began with a bit of musical journlism from the pen of the old Phil Ochs, the story of the disappearance of the nuclear submarine…the sailor is safe, aboard ship, away from the horror of the land, the terror of pursuit. But wait. Something is wrong. The ship is sinking…his journey is over, he is dying. It is the creative Death of Phil Ochs, the moment of realization preceding the moment of expiration. I’m not dying, I’m not dying. Tell me I’m not dying…”
Unlike many a marine disaster, the demise of the Scorpion was NOT big news when it happened, and Phil probably knew the depressing reason: nobody could be sure whether it was sunk by the Russians or by a careless accident. Phil doesn’t hazard a guess on the cause of the disaster, just the tragedy of it: the entire crew lost.
Back in February of 1969, all Phil had to go on was a nebulous government statement: "The certain cause of the loss of the Scorpion cannot be ascertained.” Years later, Lt. Lauren Chatmas, a Navy spokeswoman, affirmed: "The disappearance of USS Scorpion is one of the greatest non-wartime tragedies in our Navy's history. We remain deeply saddened by the loss of the 99 sailors, and we honor their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their families. We remember and pay tribute to their courage, their service to our country and their commitment to duty."
Most people with a background on government politics and in law, understand why sometimes a mystery is left to remain unsolved. Had the Navy thoroughly investigated the incident and found human error, 99 families may have demanded millions in compensation. Had the Navy admitted that a Russian sub had attacked the ship, it could have led to war.
Long after Phil died, documents were unsealed and various authors attempted to get to the bottom of why The Scorpion ended up at the bottom.
“All Hands Down” by Kenneth Sewell and Jerome Preisler and another book, “Scorpion Down” by Ed Offley theorize that The Scorpion got into a battle with a Russian sub and lost. It’s possible that the Russian sub fired a torpedo to “scare off” The Scorpion, but it hit the target. Another theory is that this was a deliberate lethal attack launched by the Russians in retaliation for the sinking of Soviet submarine K-129 on March 7, 1968.
It’s also possible some kind of operational flaw sent the mighty ship downward, where it broke up due to the intense pressure of being so far under water. Some don’t discount human error; a torpedo accidentally backfiring, or even firing and then sensing no other target in the area, looping back on the hulking ship.
Phil’s song makes a reference to a “bubble ball.” Scientists could not determine for sure about the lack of a “bubble pulse” noise on the existing recording, one that usually can be heard when there’s an explosion underwater. Was it “hydrogen build-up” that caused the problem? The noises picked up from the distressed ship are apparently inconclusive, like the recordings where people hear more than 3 shots fired in Dallas at President Kennedy.
The Scorpion’s last routine call was May 21st 1968. All was well, and the ship, south of the Azores, was on schedule to return to its port in Norfolk, Virginia in six days. On May 27th, 1968. It was raining. Several family members stood and waited to greet their sailors home from the sea. They continued to wait. Where was The Scorpion?
WHERE WAS THE SCORPION? After a week had passed, on June 5th, the Navy declared the ship “presumed lost.” June turned to July. July to August. August to September. The families waited. And waited.
On Halloween eve, October 31, 1968, The Scorpion was finally detected, resting under 10,000 feet of water 400 miles southwest of the Azores. Photographs taken of the wreck were eerie, alien, but gave no clue as to what happened.
“The Scorpion” was not America’s only famous nuclear submarine. The other was “The Thresher.” It sank on April 10, 1963, during testing off the Massachusetts coast. All 129 aboard were killed. This incident was also the subject of a Phil Ochs song, more straight reporting than the eerie ballad about The Scorpion:
“On a cold Wednesday morn
They put her her out to sea
When the waves they were nine feet high.
And they dove beneath the waves
And they dove to their graves
And they never said a last goodbye.
And its deeper and deeper
And deeper they dove
Just to see what their ship could stand.
But the hull gave a moan
And the hull gave a groan
And they plunged to the deepest darkest sand.
When Phil wrote the song, there were those aching lines about how nothing of the humanity was to be seen. Not a cigarette. Not a toothbrush.
In 2011, the wreckage was explored. A few objects were found. Not much.
With some eerie sound effects of machine malfunction, twisted violins and funereal brass, Vic Chesnutt covers the song, taking nearly eight minutes to offer his haunting audio-movie about the ghost ship. The wheelchair-bound singer-songerwiter was, like Phil, a suicide (November 12, 1964 – December 25, 2009).
Most anyone who covers an Ochs song deserves some kind of praise, but the Bob and Carole Pegg version of “Scorpion” is pretty annoying. Bob’s fey, precisely enunciating voice might better be suited to traditional sea chanteys or faux-archaic “songs from the wood” by Ian Anderson. The singing is just too hearty for such a dark, elegiac ballad.
8. THE WORLD BEGAN IN EDEN AND ENDED IN LOS ANGELES
A relative to “Tape from California,” this one declares, “If you have to beg or steal or borrow….welcome to Los Angeles, city of tomorrow!” Anyone really thinking that this is Phil’s advertisement for the promised land is mistaken. Or to quote the title of a Randy Newman album, “Trouble in Paradise.”
‘So this is where the Renaissance has led you. And we will be the only ones who know. So take a drive and breathe the air of ashes. That is, if you need a place to go.”
With mitten-like slaps at the piano, a drum beat that could’ve been on a Gary Puckett song, and the puckery blasts from the Los Angeles if not Tijuana brass (some wondered if A&M co-owner Herb Alpert was on this toot), this song moves at a true Top 40 pop clip. If the lyrics weren’t so sarcastic, and instead sang about going “up up and away” in a beautiful balloon, who knows, this one could’ve been a hit, if not for Phil, than as covered by Spanky & Our Gang or The Fifth Dimension.
9. DOESN’t LENNY LIVE HERE ANYMORE
On first listen, given the era in which Phil was working, one might assume that the song is about Lenny Bruce. William Ruhlmann, in his review for the ALLMUSIC website, flat out states: “ The plaintive "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore" concerns the drug overdose death of comedian Lenny Bruce.”
The death of “comedian Lenny Bruce” was part of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Silent Night” news broadcast segment, but I’m not sure if Phil or even Paul Simon ever actually met Lenny, as opposed to listening to the records. I know Phil met Mort Sahl. I got that first-hand from Mort. Lenny…Phil admired him, most definitely, and somehow managed to get a jacket once worn by the legend himself. Phil is wearing the Lenny Bruce jacket on the cover of ‘Pleasures of the Harbor.’
In Michael Schumacher’s book, there’s an anecdote about Dylan, circa 1971, playing a “Lenny Bruce” song for Phil. Dylanologists aren’t so sure. First off, Bob’s song “Lenny Bruce” didn’t turn up for another decade, and Bob almost always recorded his new songs as soon as he wrote them. 1971 was around the time Bob was singing about George Jackson, and appearing at George Harrison’s “Concert for Bangla Desh.” It’s possible Bob played a song that Phil (or somebody) thought was about Lenny Bruce. Lenny was having a resurgence of popularity thanks to “LENNY” (starring Cliff Gorman) on Broadway, and the re-issue of several albums full of taped material too edgy to have been issued when Lenny was still around.
Phil did reference the comedian in “The Harder They Fall,” singing: “Mother Goose is on the loose, stealing lines from Lenny Bruce.”
“Doesn’t Lenny Live Here Anymore,” which along with “The Doll House” was not written during Phil’s two-week burst of energy, may have been written around the time Lenny died, August 3, 1966. Could there be a subconscious link? Not really, as the “haggard ex-lover” who actually did come to Phil’s door, was asking specifically for a guy named Lenny.
Ben Edmonds, writing the “track by track” notes for “Fantasies and Farewells,” sets the record straight. The song “was based on a real person. Phil had rented an apartment in the Village, and people kept coming by to inquire about the previous tenant. After this had happened often enough, Phil began to acquire a picture of the guy, whose story of heartbreak, loneliness, and suicide this song tells. With those themes it was a natural fit when the “Rehearsasl for Retirement album needed one more song.”
As Phil sometimes did, the song wavers into obscurity, touching on some of his favorite symbols…the flow of time, the secrets of whores, and the undercurrent of violence that is part of everyday life:
“The moon, she shines too soon and simply sadly
You loved your love so much that you'd strangle her gladly
And it's all so slow
Time has ceased to flow
And the whistling whore knows something you don't know…”
Somehow, the scene shifts from a Greenwich Village apartment to what might be an adobe hut in a border town, and the weird ritual masochism of razor blade blood-letting:
“The fat official smiles at the pass on the border
And the hungry broom makes sure that the room is in order
You pull the shade
All the beds are made
As your lips caress the razor of the blade
Of the blade
With Phil, sometimes the melody saves the obscurity of the lyrics, and sometimes the oddness of the lyrics adds enough spice to keep a monotonous melody from losing flavor. Phil, rarely praised for the nuances of his singing, makes the most of the song’s title. You can hear him in your mind, can’t you? “Doesn’t Lenny live here anymore? Are you sure?”
It’s odd to think that Phil chose “Doesn’t Lenny Live Here Anymore” and “The Doll House” from apparently a dozen or more songs that he’d yet to record on an album. When that entire posthumous “Toast to Those that Are Gone” album appeared, I wondered where these songs had been stashed, and why Phil hadn’t even performed them in concert. If Phil needed an extra song or two for the “Rehearsals” album, “The Trial” would’ve been a natural. It’s not only political, and about injustice, but has Phil’s Bosch-nightmare imagery: “Order in the court
People ready for the sport
They squirm and squeak and lick their beaks
And grease their feathers down
10. ANOTHER AGE
In between his usual nervous tuning and re-tuning Phil, in live performance, introduced “Another Age” this way:
“Racing between mysticism and revolution, as we all do these days…if God were a computer, undoubtedly he’d blow up the world. Which would be the answer. If not, it would have to come through a political revolution, unfortunately. In the hopes of saving the world, here’s a modern American revolutionary song.”
The chords are menacingly minor, the same was “That’s The Way It’s Gonna Be.” While that song is actually optimistic, “Another Age” is not:
The younger boys are drowning in a shallow sea
The night belongs to snipers in palm trees
And their sabres flashed like lightning
In the charge of the last brigade
They must have been afraid
….Pray for the aged it's the dawn of another age
Of another age
This “other” age Phil sings about is not going to be any less violent than the previous one. The rockin’ tempo propels this song along so well, one can almost feel some positive energy. But some lines are bitter in blurring the line between good and evil:
“Thomas Paine and Jesse James are old friends.”
Did Phil believe, as Warren Zevon did, that Jesse James was a hero, and therefore Paine and James had something in common? The song has another stark set of contrasting truths:
“Soldiers have their sorrow, the wretched have their rage.” Neither side survives unscathed. Phil finds humanity in seemingly soulless soldiers and points out that helpless victims may actually rise up in rage (and could be as combative as any soldiers).
A lot is going on here.
Propelled by another great Ochs melody, you can’t help thinking “the dawn of another age” has to mean utopia and not dystopia. But you’ll likely be wrong. Still, if you’re tapping your toe to the beat here, things can’t be all bad, can they?
For someone less prolific than Ochs, “Soldiers Have their Sorrow” would’ve been a separate song, and three minutes of somber symbolism. Phil had too much going on his head for that. He was spilling it all out in a fury, as Dylan often did. A poem fails if it sacrifices logic or structure, but not a rock song.
The song was covered by The Shrubs in a well-meaning punk take. As in, “hey, we found a song by this Ochs guy, but without his quirky Orbison-esque bell-like voice and folkie guitar, and sung angry, it’s…relevant, man.” There's an appropriate video on YouTube for it, with the usual images of police brutality and racial tumult. But really, any guy wearing a clown red-nose deserves to be smacked.
The snarly-surly delivery and the cliche of siren-like two-note guitar and thrashing drums reflects the chaos of our age, but the beauty (literally) in Phil Ochs songs and in his smooth, totally UN-punk vibrato, is how gracefully he makes people aware of gracelessness and insensitivity.
John Wesley Harding adds this non-hit on his amusingly titled “Greatest Other People’s Hits.” Talk about fails, Wes’s cover was posted to YouTube on May 17, 2018, and in a year, has gotten less than 70 views. Damn! That’s almost as lousy as the number of hits my songs have gotten! And I’m not out there playing small clubs.
Phans of Phil know of Kim and Reggie Harris. They’ve covered some Ochs songs on albums, and some tunes appear via live performance on YouTube. “Another Age” is one of the latter. Reggie sings lead and he might recall the Belafonte coffee house days when guys stood up and did a “Sing Out!” with sincerity and a strong charisma. In the video you can see Sonny Ochs looking on approvingly.
11. REHEARSALS FOR RETIREMENT
Ben Edmonds’ simple album notes appraisal on this one: “A song of personal surrender, a public admission of defeat.” I think that line could just as easily be applied to “No More Songs.”
Mark Kemp (liner notes for the “Farewells & Fantasies” CD set): “Despite its difficulty - or perhaps because of it - Rehearsals remains Phil’s strongest, most ambitious album. It is impossible to listen to songs such as “Scorpion,” “My Life” or the title track without identifying with the despair Ochs must have felt las he recorded them. It’s an experience that is at once deeply satisfying and horribly morose.”
Marc Eliot called it “a tape left behind to be played in the event the body is never recovered; a chilling finale to the album and the trilogy. With Lincoln Mayorga’s weeping piano underneath, Phil’s voice sweetly wilted to a fragile moan…he sang in memory of himself.”
The song is so personal, one couldn’t imagine anyone covering it, but yes, it’s been covered by a variety of earnest and sorrowful singers. They lack Phil’s moan and despair, and of course, the back story. Paul Middleton is adequate but his voice is not very expressive, while Marc Eitzel at least tries to offer some downer futility to his arrangement and his voice has a trace of weary haggardness to it.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Phil Ochs had a schizy (but not schizoid) quality to his work. Some horrific lyric might be mated to a beautiful melody. A song that’s basically serious might veer into vaudeville (“Draft Dodger Rag” obviously, but also “Miranda”). Patriotic arrangements can battle against anti-war sentiments (the 45 rpm version of “War is Over”). There can be something humorous in something hideous (“Small Circle of Friends”). Like laughter at a slasher movie, there’s unexpected giggles in a song as gruesome as “Pretty Smart On My Part.”
Musically, Phil matured at A&M to create songs that showed uneasy alliances between folk music and classical, or between country and rock. His singing, which may seem to reflect the urban sensibilities of Greenwich Village, just as Dylan’s brutal “Like a Rolling Stone” does, also shows his country roots as well. If Dylan’s twang at the time had a dash of Woody Guthrie, Phil’s plaintive wail recalls his beloved Faron Young, if not a classic country artist such as Hank Williams.
Country songwriter and singer Curly Putman titled his last album “Write ‘em Sad, Sing ‘em Lonesome.” Putman was doing that all through his career, and so was Phil. It’s probably never been more obvious, yet subtly hidden, than on “Rehearsals for Retirement.” Some songs have a country wail to them that could almost be part of Orbison country. On this track, the woe comes out full on: “Had I known the end would end in laughter.” That’s moanin’ the blues, before the sweet resignation of “I tell my daughter it doesn’t matter.” Also schizy is the very notion that one of the saddest of Phil’s songs implies any kind of laughter at the end, and that his obvious pain “doesn’t matter.”
One of the things that is fascinating, if subtle, in Phil’s work, is his tendency to mix genres and metaphors. “The lights are cold again they dance below me.” Your first thought is that lights have to be hot to flicker like flames, and dance. He sings “cold again” from his broken country heart, but “they dance below me” from the soul of the folk balladeer. Later, there’s the country cowboy imagery: “I take my colors from the stable,” but then there’s the more Elizabethan-folk sensibility of “They lie in tatters by the tournament.” Likewise, “farewell my fancy” is more British than it is El Paso, Texas, the proud birthplace listed on that tombstone.
One hardly thinks of “Rehearsals of Retirement” as a country album, but there’s an element here. It’s also a concept album, an album of ballads, a work of folk-rock, and simply an album by Phil Ochs. A famous quote: “I’m not a comedian, I’m Lenny Bruce.” And in the end, he was not a folkie, a protest singer, a country star, a gold-suit rockabilly, an oldies act, a rocker…he was all of that. He was Phil Ochs.
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