Phil Ochs

Phil Ochs – The War Is Over

(inclusa nell’album “Tape From California”, A&M, 1968)

While Bob Dylan is universally credited as the greatest folksinger of all time, not many people know the name of Phil Ochs. Even Lady Gaga, during the 2016 Democratic Convention, got a lukewarm response when she asked the audience if anyone knew who the Texan songwriter was, before performing her version of “The War Is Over“.

There's nothing surprising about this gap in knowledge, nor should anyone be blamed for it: Phil only recorded for eleven years before choosing to end his own life. The decade in which he was active was marked by a grueling, bloody war and by the explosion of civil rights movements striving to break down old social barriers. And right in the middle of these battles, Phil Ochs tried to make a difference with his guitar and his razor-sharp musical journalism.

Ochs's songs weren't merely part of those changes, they were the voice of them: a nasal tenor that reflected all the innocence and faith in the future held by that generation. One of those voices that convinces you that yes, maybe music really can change the world. Unfortunately for him, Phil Ochs never saw the results of his battles; he died by his own hand, believing his life and his songs had been for nothing. It's a suicide that says a lot about a man who knew no compromise, even as he remained convinced he could achieve fame by pushing ideas so radical: in his final years he even went so far as to invent the evil alter-ego John Butler Train and dress up as a cross between Elvis and Che Guevara, just to spread his poetic/political vision. But neither John Butler Train nor Phil Ochs were ever going to work for the record industry; his music was too openly partisan, too lucid, too sarcastic. Where Dylan hid behind metaphor and figures of speech, Ochs narrated what he saw around him with no filter: whether it was an execution in the electric chair (“Iron Lady”), the murder of Kitty Genovese (“Outside Of A Small Circle Of Friends”) or rampant racism (“Here’s To The State Of Mississippi”), his approach to music was that of a reporter who never missed the grim detail.

Before the age of television and mass media, the folksinger was often a traveling newspaper spreading stories through his music. Americans have a desperate need to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song.

(Phil Ochs)

During the first part of his musical career – both with Jim Glover in the duo the Singing Socialists, and as a solo artist – his songs often sounded more like left-wing newspaper articles set to music than protest songs. Bob Dylan himself, once he'd been anointed a success, once kicked him out of his car, telling him: “You're not a folk singer, Phil, you're just a journalist”. It should be said, however, that Ochs took this description as a compliment, proud to present himself as a singin' journalist. If that hadn't been the case, his 1964 debut album wouldn't have been titled “All The News That’s Fit To Sing”.

But Phil Ochs, beyond being a singing journalist, was above all a committed activist. As Abbie Hoffman recalls in the documentary “There But Fortune”: “If there was any chance to sing for a cause he believed in, Phil Ochs was there”. Many of his songs, as you might expect, were aimed directly at heads of state and men in power, laying bare their every hypocrisy. Just a few months after the Têt Offensive, Ochs released a song with a title that seemed sarcastic on its face: “The War Is Over”. A phrase that would later inspire John Lennon to make it his own trademark, though things didn't turn out quite as well for poor Phil.

The idea for the song came from a poem by Allen Ginsberg (“Wichita Vortex Sutra”), in which the poet declared, of his own will, the end of the war (“I lift my voice aloud,/ make Mantra of American language now,/ I here declare the end of the War!”). Ochs first used this idea to write a piece of civil-disobedience journalism for the Village Voice and the LA Free Press in 1967 (“Have You Heard? The War Is Over!”), then took things a step further with his song, backing the single's release with a series of protest rallies (the “VD Days”). Flyers bearing the illustrious signature of Ron Cobb were also circulated to promote the events. These facts show us how Ochs's intentions were far more concrete than Lennon's: while the ex-Beatle turned the idea into the quintessential Christmas single, the Texan songwriter's version was a genuine anti-war declaration.

Written in his classic alliterative meter, the song cunningly draws on American patriotic values only to call them into question; in that sense, Bob Thompson's arrangement mockingly nods to the two national marches “National Emblem” and “The Stars And Stripes Forever”. Yet the entire composition can be boiled down to a single line: “You are only what you believe”. A philosophy as simple as it is powerful, not unlike Boris Vian's “Le Déserteur”, if you consider the widespread sense of powerlessness felt by the American people, forced to fight a war they hadn't chosen and didn't support. The moment ordinary citizens themselves declare, from the ground up, that the war is over, it means the war truly has ended, since there are no more troops left to send to the front, nor fingers left to pull a trigger.

If “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” stood – in Phil Ochs's own words – “on the line between pacifism and treason”, in “The War Is Over” that line is decisively crossed in favor of a collective conscientious objection. There's no more room for metaphor: the imagery grows ever more brutal as his vision reaches its end, when in the final verse the songwriter foresees the horrors awaiting veterans once they return home, where no glory awaits them. To underscore this bleak note, the fanfare nods to Ochs's great classic (“I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore”) in the song's final seconds. 

So do your duty, boys, and enlist with pride

serve your country in its suicide

find the flags, so you can wave a goodbye

but just before the end, it's also worth trying betrayal

this country is too young to die.

I declare that the war is over

it's over, it's over!

One-legged veterans will salute the dawn

whistling marches while they mow the lawn

and the gargoyles do nothing but stand there grieving

the gypsy fortune-teller told me we'd be deceived

you are only what you believe in.

And I believe that the war is over,

it's over, it's over!

When the song was first performed live on June 23, 1967, it sparked a heated protest in Los Angeles that didn't end in the constructive way Ochs had hoped. What began as a peaceful ceremony was turned by the police into an episode of urban guerrilla warfare. The incident that permanently shattered Phil's optimistic outlook, however, took place in Chicago. A close friend of activist Jerry Rubin, Ochs had traveled to Chicago to play at the Festival Of Life, the event staged in opposition to the Democratic Convention. The group of Yippies then had a brilliant idea: to put forward their own candidate. Phil Ochs, Stew Albert and Jerry Rubin thus found an Illinois farmer willing to sell them a large pig for just twenty dollars; since Phil was the only one with money, the honor of the purchase fell to him. On August 23, 1968, they held a press conference outside Chicago's Civic Center to announce the presidential campaign of “Pigasus”.

On the evening of August 25, 7,500 demonstrators poured into the city, many of them gathering in Lincoln Park. The police, acting on the orders of Mayor Richard Daley, greeted them with batons and tear gas. An unjustified and unprecedented act of violence, which inspired Graham Nash to write the song “Chicago”. But even though “the whole world was watching” (as the crowd chanted in front of the cameras), the majority remained silent, and there was none of the outrage that Ochs had expected. In fact, according to polls, a large percentage even backed the violent response of the armed forces. 

Frightened by the prospect of an ever more obedient and inept populace, the singer-songwriter gradually began to drift away from the journalistic approach of his music. At the time, many probably found it a grim sketch to see the cover Ochs designed for his “Rehearsal For Retirement” – featuring his own tombstone reading: “Born in El Paso, Texas, in 1940; died in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968” – but something inside him truly did die that day. 

The night of the clashes, Ochs had invited Pete Seeger, Paul Simon and many others to play, but he was the only folk singer who actually performed (among the few brave souls were also MC5). With him on stage, many young people started applauding and then burned their draft cards when Phil urged everyone to commit "treason". The singer-songwriter also tried to get the young National Guardsmen involved, without success, and for the first time in his life Ochs felt he had no power to change people's minds. He left Chicago disillusioned with the idea that the system could be fixed. He would return a year later to testify at the trial of the "Chicago Eight", charged with conspiracy against the state. He himself was not convicted, but from then on the FBI stepped up its surveillance.

In the seven years between his anti-war declaration and the war's actual end (April 30, 1975), Phil Ochs became a paranoid, alcoholic man, prey to a depression that would never let go of him. His vocal cords were permanently damaged by the attack he suffered in Tanzania, when he was strangled while walking along a beach. Perhaps that is also why the most representative version of "The War Is Over" is not the martial, baroque one found on the album "Tape From California", but the acoustic performance he gave live at Central Park during the event of the same name, which Phil Ochs sang in a faltering voice on May 11, 1975, before more than 100,000 people. At that point the war had, realistically, come to an end, following the chaotic fall of Saigon. By a cruel twist of fate, however, only a few months later Phil's own battle would also come to an end – in defeat – as he took his own life at his sister's home.

Silent Soldiers on a silver screen

Framed in fantasies and dragged in dream

Unpaid actors of the mystery

The mad director knows that freedom will not make you free

And what’s this got to do with me

I declare the war is over

It's over, it's over

Drums are drizzling on a grain of sand

Fading rhythms of a fading land

Prove your courage in the proud parade

Trust your leaders where mistakes are almost never made

And they’re afraid that I’m afraid

I’m afraid the war is over

It's over, it's over

Angry artists painting angry signs

Use their vision just to blind the blind

Poisoned players of a grizzly game

One is guilty and the other gets the point to blame

Pardon me if I refrain

I declare the war is over

It's over, it's over

So do your duty, boys, and join with pride

Serve your country in her suicide

Find the flags so you can wave goodbye

But just before the end even treason might be worth a try

This country is too young to die

I declare the war is over

It's over, it's over

One-legged veterans will greet the dawn

And they’re whistling marches as they mow the lawn

And the gargoyles only sit and grieve

The gypsy fortune teller told me that we’d been deceived

You only are what you believe

I believe the war is over

It's over, it's over

Recommended reading:

Francesca Ferreri – When I'm Gone. Phil Ochs e l'utopia della speranza (Pacini, 2014)

Michael Schumacher – There But Fortune: The Life Of Phil Ochs (Hyperion, 1997)

Pat Thomas – Did It! From Yippie To Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, An American Revolutionary (Fantagraphics Books, 2017)

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27/03/2026