Rehearsals For Retirement: Phil Ochs, 1968, and "the death of the American"

Though it killed his career, Rehearsals For Retirement was the most important creative statement Phil Ochs ever made.

Phil Ochs: vocals, guitar, principle songwriter

Bob Rafkin: guitar, bass

Lincoln Mayorga: piano, accordion

Unknown: violin, drums

produced by Larry Marks, with arrangements by Ian Freebairn-Smith

cover by Tom Wilkes

In 1965, folk singer Phil Ochs released his greatest and perhaps only hit, “I Ain’t Marching Anymore.”

At the same time, President Lyndon Johnson started rolling out his Great Society programs. They included Medicaid, expanding food stamps and welfare programs, dispersing federal funds to public schools, and translating advances made by the civil rights movement into law. His foreign policy, though, was – for lack of a better term – off the fucking rails. He buckled down on his predecessor’s foreign policy; ramping up America’s involvement in Vietnam.

Being a topical singer, Phil turned his attention from the civil rights movement to anti-war causes. Sincebecoming friends with Paul Krassner and Jerry Rubin (more on them later,) he knew civil rights and the war tobe intrinsically linked. Rich kids could get out of the draft, but the poor – especially Black men – could not.

Vietnam split the voting left. Young people, many draft-age and in college, saw the US had no business being in Vietnam in the first place. The military doesn’t start wars, it’s the rich men. As Phil sang, “It’s always the old to lead us to the wars/Always the young to fall…” Older voters aligned with the Democrat-controlled executive and legislative branches, who still had that lingering “We’re protecting our great nation from them dirty commies!!” attitude from 1950s McCarthyism. This group heard the music Phil was making and the messages he was preaching and deemed them controversial. Plus, the mainstream didn’t always “get” Phil’s sarcasm. See literally any of his live recordings.

Phil saw Vietnam wasn’t strictly a left-vs.-right issue. Even the politicians who claimed to be on “the people’”sside were complicit. This may seem obvious to us in 2025, even obvious to those in 1970, but this was a radical idea in the early to mid-1960s.

In 1966, Phil peaced out from Elektra Records because they wouldn’t fund his next album. He wanted to break into pop music, but Holzman & Co. just didn’t think he was the right guy to do it. Phil was always torn between his political voice and the allure of mainstream success. Before this, he went on a wild goose chase to headline Carnegie Hall. Which became a “live” album, which contained these liner notes...

Pictured: back cover of Phil Ochs In Concert (1966,) with quotes by Mao Tse-Tung

...which elevated him to “security matter” to the FBI!

He did eventually find a new label and get that album recorded; with A&M, Phil would get to keep his publishing rights. Though it’s considered one of his essential works today, Pleasures of the Harbor was universally panned upon release. Not even his own brother liked it: “I thought side two was unplayable.” But it contained one very important song. On March 2nd, 1967, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy addressed the Senate, proposing an end to the Vietnam War. Phil flew to Washington, DC to meet him. When he asked Phil to play him a song, Phil boldly chose “Crucifixion” – the song about JFK’s assassination.

In hindsight, he chose a pretty good time to move to California...as far as culture goes. Thanks to the backlash from Pat Brown’s handling of the Watts riots, the future second-worst POTUS Ronald Reagan was just elected governor! It makes the state becoming hippie mecca all the more a marvel. Phil, of course, got involved in all the protesting. He took Allen Ginsberg’s idea that simply saying “war is over” will end the war and made it street theater.

Pictured: flyer for the Los Angeles War Is Over demonstration, 6/23/1967

Who took notice of War Is Over? Abbie Hoffman. Enter the Yippies!

From a Life Magazine post-mortem on the Yippies from October 1968: “...there is much to ponder in the yippie with the four-letter word” – of which they used liberally – “painted on his forehead who said, ‘After the napalming of children, nothing is obscene.’”

The Youth International Party was long for the Yippies, not the other way around. Their objective was to show up to the 1968 Democratic National Convention and undermine the nomination process/America as a global superpower through spectacle, mockery, and absurdism.

Basically, the Yippies were a bit. They wanted to fuck with people. They were trolls. But these guys were trolls for a cause.

“...instead of sending out boring form letters or making tedious telephone calls-or, to take it a step further, instead of marching with picket signs...activists should use a kind of street theater that didn't directly come out and say ‘end the war’ or ‘fight poverty’ but instead drew mass media attention through its weirdness...By drawing in the mass media they’d reach an audience that would have never even considered radical politics or a counterculture way of life.”

quoted from: David Farber, Chicago ’68 (1988)

We’ve finally arrived at 1968. The nation is a powder keg in an abandoned warehouse. The divide between young and old is deeper than ever. If you turned up in the wrong neighborhood with long hair, you’d get the shit kicked out of you. If you were Black? Forget about it.

It’s crazy to think that if you had long hair, a beard, and flew an American flag out of the back of your truck, you’d be pinned as a crazy left-winger!

On March 16th, as Phil was in the middle of recording Pleasures of the Harbor’s follow-up, Bobby Kennedy announced he was running for President. On the 31st, President Johnson announced he was no longer seeking re-election. These few days turned the whole election on its head. About a week later, on April 4th, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Cities all over America burst into riots. Dr. King’s death split the civil rights movement in two. Half stayed the course of nonviolence and respectability politics, the other half sought something more militant. Exactly two months later, at a rally celebrating his shock primary win, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. This disenfranchised young and Black voters even further.

Tape From California came out in July. Many say the ’60s were split in half by JFK’s assassination. I’d argue the decade was split in three. Tape is the ’60s before the spring of ’68, Rehearsals For Retirement is the ’60s after.

All this brings us to the 1968 DNC. The favorite candidate is dead. Who’s gonna take on Nixon/Agnew now? Ooh! How about...Hubert Humphrey?

Not to use zoomer lingo in decidedly un-zoomer content, but the Democrats were so cooked!

Allen Ginsberg was there, chanting “om.” The National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, or “the Mobe,” an anti-war activist group much more geared towards the straight folk, were there. Black Panthers were there. Motherfuckers were there. The Students For A Democratic Society were there. And the Yippies were there,trolling the hell out of the DNC. See buying a pig, bringing it into the city, and “nominating” it for President!

Pictured: Yippies with "Pigasus" (photographed by Bettman, 8/23/1968) [via the Washington Post]

Though Phil himself helped orchestrate the piggie stunt, he said the Yippies – paraphrasing here – were trying to take down a tractor with yo-yos. He was right. There was a lot going on in Chicago to begin with: when the Yippies showed up, the electrical workers were on strike, Black drivers of the Chicago Transit Authority werestriking too.

But the Yippes persisted with this thing called the Festival of Life; to oppose what they called “the Convention of Death.” The city refused permits for a sound stage; deterring some of the San Fransisco bands from showing up. Who did have the balls to show? Or, perhaps, the sheer unchecked hubris only five twenty-something-year-old men from Detroit could have?

Pictured: the MC5 performing at the Festival of Life, 8/23/1968

The MC5 set up on a truck bed, ran all their gear through one extension cord hooked up to a hot dog stand, got zooted beyond this mortal plane on very strong hash cookies, and harmonized with the police choppers...

This is about where the ’68 DNC went from Yippie demonstration to one of the worst abuses of state power in modern American history.

After Dr. King’s assassination and the subsequent riots, Chicago mayor Richard Daley issued a “shoot to kill” order to the 12,000 police officers on duty. Any “potential arsonist or agitator” was to be taken out. This was intentionally vague and meant to extend through the DNC. He imposted a city-wide curfew as well. He wanted to keep people safe, even if it meant sacrificing others’ safety to do it – including his own officers. On top of that, there were a combined 11,500 National Guardsmen and Army troops on standby. Daley knew things would be running hot, especially if the crowd was full of undercover agents! As many as one in six “protesters” were federal agents in disguise, intentionally agitating the crowd. Soon, Lincoln Park was surrounded.

Additional protests at Grant Park, “The Loop,” and in the streets were all targeted across several days. Daley sent out officers, vans, dogs, riot gear, a military-grade gassing mechanism hooked up to a garbage truck. There was so much tear gas in the air it was drifting into peoples’ homes and cars, temporarily blinding people. With every night the violence intensified; fueled in part by sleep-deprived officers on duty for overtwelve hours at a time. The night of August 28th on Michigan Avenue was the worst. That’s where most of the infamous accounts come from; including police protecting a soldier as he beat up a medic, then turning on the press photographing it.

In the words of MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson:

“I knew the revolution was over at that moment – I looked over my shoulder, and no one else was there. We were the ones who were gonna get hanged.”

quoted from: Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk (2006 ed.)

One can imagine this is exactly how Phil Ochs felt. He didn’t play the Festival, but he saw it go down. You can see him in the FBI surveillance footage. He was in the city the whole week.

Chicago was “the death of the liberal American,” as he said. He saw people tear gassed, thrown in vans, shot at on the sidewalk. Police playing whack-a-mole with people’s skulls. It was horrifying. And Hubert Humphrey sided with the mayor, only making him less popular with young voters. If you ask me, with that, he handed the 1968 election to Nixon. And no one cared.

“...among those who did, many felt the cops hadn't gone far enough...While the Yippies and other radicals had been creating and recreating their own counterculture, they had alienated the American working class along with Middle America...Nixon – who would ride to victory above the shattered remains of a splintered Democratic Party – called these frightened Americans ‘the Silent Majority.’”

quoted from: Phil Mershon, “Phil Ochs” (Perfect Sound Forever 9/2001)

The DNC and the outcome of the 1968 election fundamentally altered Phil. His strong sense of justice was shaken. He sank into a deep depression. That beautiful faith in the power of music to make real change wassnuffed out; replaced with resentment, cynicism, and rage.

I am fascinated by Phil. A career of contradictions, almosts, not-quites, and what-ifs.

He asserted he wrote for personal expression, but his career was so inextricably linked to the New Left that when the movement fell apart after the DNC, he lost touch with the muse. His politics had him blacklisted and banned for his whole career, but he refused to compromise to be more palatable to mainstream audiences. At the same time, he hired Albert Grossman and Derek Taylor. He spent 40 grand recording Pleasures of the Harbor. He very nearly had a deal with Bob Dylan’s label, Columbia Records, but it fell through when they lowballed him. Phil always sought Dylan’s approval, but got picked on like a little brother; see Bob throwing Phil out of his limo for not liking one of his songs.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Phil that got me curious about Phil. It was Bob. Specifically, reading Bob’s reaction to Phil’s death, as recounted by Bob Spitz; back when I was researching the Rolling Thunder Revue/Desireepisode.

It seems Phil’s absence defines him in a way. It’s odd. At his best times, he was so present. When I read he was tapped for a potential film role, I thought, “Oh yeah, a singer who could act on the side. That makes perfect sense!” He had this inherent charisma. Even on Rehearsals For Retirement, when he’s at his most dejected and bitter, he’s still so damn likeable.

I realize Phil Ochs, this album especially, is an objectively WILD choice for the introduction of capital F Folk on Vinyl Monday. Why the hell did I go in with Rehearsals and not, say, Pleasures of the Harbor. I Ain’t Marching Anymore. Tape From California. Literally ANYTHING but Rehearsals For Fucking Retirement??

Firstly: the music. Right down to the studs, Rehearsals could not have been made in 2025. It’d be a completely different album. It’s so rooted in what happened at Chicago. I heard this and went, “I can’t not write about this.” The themes, though – paranoia, “us vs. them” mentality, normalizing violence – are ever-green.

I also chose Rehearsals for its significance to the year I’ve covered the most on this channel. I believe 1968 wasthe most important year in modern American history; and there’s no better way to understand a place in time than to examine the art it produced.

Which leads me to the third reason: Rehearsals’s relevance to our current times. America's involvement in the Palestinian genocide split the American voting left. The relentless infighting between the young progressives – largely college-age – and older Democrats, cynical Gen X-er centrists, and those who are ignorant to what's been going on in Gaza for the past seventy-odd years played a part in how we got here. Lingering American Islamophobia from GW Bush's "war on terror" (I remember the "freedom fries" days) and legitimate antisemites hiding behind "Free Palestine!" certainly haven't helped the cause.

History doesn’t repeat itself. But it sure does rhyme.

Phil’s strength was that he was a journalist. He loved talking to people, especially those who disagreed with him. He could poke fun at both sides. But on this album, his sense of humor is gone. He’s not playing around. At the very least, Phil the folk singer has come to an end. There are still topical songs as we’ll hear. But in its content, Rehearsals has a bit of an identity crisis. With almost every track switches back and forth, from satire/commentary on the external to his inner thoughts and feelings. His journalistic objectivity is gone.

Rehearsals opens with one of the most out-of-pocket songs of the bunch, Pretty Smart On My Part. It’s funny, but in a way that has you going, “Oh my god, PHIL!”

The narrator is a stereotypical American macho-man, ruled by paranoia and violence. As described in the liner notes, “...imprisoned by his paranoia, and all diseases of his innocent inventions.” This guy hates hippies, the Vietnamese who “talk Chinese and spread disease,” and women. He can run over a hitchhiker and fry “them” just fine. Supports the American government arranging for the assassination of a foreign president and installing a puppet leader. But when an intruder breaks into his home? He leaves his wife for dead! “Sometime later, when I feel a little braver/I’ll go hunting with my rifle when the wild geese are flying/And then/I’m gonna bag one.” Phil’s Greatest Hits LP (notably not a greatest hits LP) is painted as this sudden creative pivot; even I’m guilty of doing so in this review. We hear country and rock trickling in on “Pretty Smart” in the form of an old-school country beat electric guitar. A little Buddy Holly, a little Carl Perkins. Phil harmonizes with himself on the choruses. It’s gorgeous, in spite of the subject matter. Phil had such a distinct, expressive voice; lifted up by that very upward posture. (Why did all folk singers hold their guitars so high? If anyone knows, please enlighten us in the comments.)

The Doll House is a tune Phil wrote during the Tape From California period. It’s scored by pretty music box-like piano; “The ballerina was posed.” There’s lots of obscure imagery in the lyrics; Pirate Jenny dancing for pennies, Tom Sawyer, an Arthurian lady from lake helping him to escape. This all comes into focus on the second-to-last chorus, where Phil does his best 1966 Bob Dylan impression.

Why would he be spoofing '66 Dylan in 1968? Maybe because Phil tried to make his own Blonde On Blonde with Pleasures of the Harbor? Maybe a jab as he remembered how Bob always treated him like his dorky younger brother? “Doll House” is Phil’s really depressing “Desolation Row.” It tells of a magical, idyllic world fleeing like the flowers at his feet. It’s full of pirate-tricksters, the magnificent battle is fought. Phil even name-drops Cinderella, like Bob did in “Desolation Row” – it’s worth noting the fish Phil mentions comes from Asian cultures’ interpretations of the tale.

This corrupted wonderland might just be a brothel. Our narrator seems to be a jester in all this, but having looked behind the curtain of this fairytale land, even he can’t play along anymore. “My costume dropped to the floor/Naked at last, couldn’t fight anymore/And the service was rendered.” “Service was rendered” is very clinical wording; as in a transaction (sex without passion) or a funeral service is up to the listener. Considering the stark cover photo of a headstone Phil commissioned for himself, I’m inclined to believe it’s both. “A poem fell from the wine/Buried in the past, the future was mine/And the present suffered.” Longing for the good old days or picturing a utopian future will have what’s happening right under your nose in your blind spot. The kids in Chicago were so set on the future and the men in power so set on the good-old-days, it made the whole thing blow.

The next track puts a morbid twist on Descartes’ most enduring statement. “I think, therefore I am”? Nah, these dumb Americans aren’t thinking. I Kill Therefore I Am.

It’s closer to a straight rock-and-roll song of the time; acting as an ironic counterpoint to the lyrics. Think “Pretty Smart’”s country bounce. The narrator of this song is an overzealous, bloodthirsty police officer in the streets of Chicago. Specific references to the myriad of ways the protests went wrong can be found throughout the lyrics. “Meet the king of cowboys, he rides a pale pony/He fights the bad boys, brings them to their knees.” I’ve seen others dissecting the possible meaning of this “pale pony,” but it’s probably just a reference to the officers on horses breaking up the crowds. “He patrols the highway from the air,” the guys in the choppers, “he keeps the country safe from long hair...” Or whatever other perceived threat. The Black man doesn’t know his place, the students don’t respect his authority.

“They call me pig although though I’m underpaid/I’ll show those faggots that I’m not afraid!” I don’t know man, kinda sounds like you’re afraid! Fragile masculinity much? “He’s got a gun and he’s a hater/He shoots first, he shoots later” This may be a reference to the lone fatality of the riots; a seventeen-year-old who, when stopped for a curfew violation by the police, pulled a gun on the officers. As Mayor Daley’s “shoot to kill” order was still in effect from the riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination, the officers shot to kill. “I Kill Therefore I Am” revisits the ideas presented in “Pretty Smart;” the macho man exercising his strength over people smaller than him, and those who challenge his authority. He feels it’s his right to do so: “I am the masculine American man/I kill therefore I am.”

William Butler Yeats Visits Chicago and Escapes Unscathed is a morose piano ballad, mourning Lincoln Park. Phil describes what happened there and in the streets as the people fled. It’s arranged like a star-crossed romance; with accordion and violin. Philpaints the scene as fated to go wrong. “I was blessed by a blood-red moon...” Several ancient cultures saw lunar eclipses – or blood moons – as bad omens. It seems Phil has come to the same conclusion Jerry Rubin did:

“Most people are eager to say the pigs flipped out, or that they finally showed their true colors. I disagree, I believe that what happened in Chicago is is a direct result of conspiracies hatched by the Republican party and those who supported Nixon for President, working hand-in-hand with the racist, right-wing John Birchers” (far right-winger lobbyists The John Birch Society) “who control the Chicago Police Department just as they control the police departments in many important cities throughout the country. The Republicans knew that they had to move in a decisive manner or risk the Democrats winning...So someone dreamed up the greedy idea of shocking the American people into fear and hysteria...The situation was made to order for a pig setup. And it worked.”

quoted from: Jerry Rubin, Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution (1970)

“They spread their sheets upon the ground just like a wandering tribe” invokes images of a peaceful protest andtravelers. A lot of the people who turned up for demonstrations in Chicago that week weren’t locals. This is part of why Bloody Wednesday was such pandemonium; people didn’t know where they were going, and quite literally didn’t know what they were walking into. “And the wise men in their Robespierre robes...” Robespierre was the guy in the French Revolution. He cultivated such an environment of persecution and hysteria that eventually he got guillotined! The ultimate example of being taken out by the machine you’ve built; Phil is saying the powers that be will get taken out this same way. “The towers trapped and trembling and the boats were tossed about/When the fog rolled in and the gas rolled out” References the obscene amount of tear gas Chicago police used on protestors. There was so much in the air, it was floating into people’s cars and homes, temporarily blinding people. Here, Phil also likens the New Left to a sinking ship; he’ll do this again in a few tracks.

Where were you in Chicago?

You know, I didn’t see you there.

I didn’t see them crack your head

Or breathe the tear gas air!

Where were you in Chicago,

When the fight was being fought?

Maybe it wasn’t 100% accurate to say Phil’s sense of humor is gone? It might not seem like it from the above lyrics, but “William Butler Yeats’”s hidden track, commonly referred to as Where Were You In Chicago, is the nod-and-wink’s dying breath. Phil undercuts the ballad with this hammy show tune; in which, I swear to god, I hear tap dancing on my vinyl copy!

The punchline? “Where were you in Chicago? Cause I was in Detroit!” The narrator wasn’t there either, he was watching from the sidelines! What a hypocrite!

Closing side one of Rehearsals is My Life. Its arrangement makes it sound like something a pop singer mightdo. There’s strings, flute, light use of brass, and a late 1960s bubblegum-pop radio band; a la the Wrecking Crew. The time change to a swing through the choruses adds to its ironic camp. Our narrator laments the good old white-picket-fence days when it was easier to be naive to what happened to the world: “All the melodies were sweet, and the women were white...” He once believed in “the American Dream” and fell in line with straight life. “My life was once a flag to me/And I waved it and behaved like I was told...” But it seems now he’s been rudely awakened; either from the Dream or from a radical movement seeking to dismantle it. “I was drawn by a dream, I was loved by a lie...” Later, “My life is now a myth to me,” “My life is now a death to me...” This is what happens when you center your whole life around whatever you’re taught by some great big machine. When that ideal doesn’t hold up, you crumble.

The song morphs into a reflection on Phil’s own career and life. In the last verse, he pleas: “Take everything I own, take your tap from my phone/And leave my life alone.” After Phil passed, it was revealed the FBI’s file on him was several inches thick. It wasn’t a file so much as it was a fucking novel.

Side two opens with The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns, a piano ballad about the sinking of the USS Scorpion in May of 1968. Phil wasn’t ready to abandon topical songs just yet. This wasn’t his first song about anAmerican submarine either: he wrote about the Thresher on All The News That’s Fit To Sing.

In the liner notes of a joint Rehearsals/Gunfighter at Carnegie Hall reissue, Richie Unterberger said “The Scorpion Departs” “...put the apocalyptic glumness that hovered over most of RFR in more symbolic terms: certainly it could just be taken as a tale of a ship lost at sea, but it also reflects directionlessness Ochs saw in both the course of America and within his own life.” I think Phil likens death at sea to being the last man standing after the cause was either sabotaged or abandoned as people fled for safety. “Where are my shipmates, have they sunk beneath the sea?” The narrator looks for any sign of life; “Not a trace, not a toothbrush, not a cigarette was seen.” Instead of a quick implosion, Phil gives the crew time to vote and the officers time to drink to better swallow the inevitability of death.

A lot of Rehearsals can be described as “haunting.” This album is heavy and dark like a storm cloud on the horizon. There’s a couple lines, though, that stick out as bleaker than the bleak or just plain tragic. This is the first of my picks:

“Have we left our ladies for the lyrics of a song

That I’m not singing? I’m not singing,

Tell me I’m not singing”

Did we throw it all away for a dream?

With “The phantom ship forever sails the sea,” Phil likens Chicago to the Scorpion and the Scorpion to the Flying Dutchman; a cursed ship, doomed to sail forever. Legend has it if you saw it on the water, your ship was doomed to sink. One wonders if, somewhere in Chicago, the New Left saw the boat on the horizon.

The World Began In Eden and Ended in Los Angeles is, obviously, about Los Angeles; where Phil had recorded his last album and gotten into the whole War Is Over thing. “If you need to beg or steal or borrow/Welcome to Los Angeles,” The postcard-type punchline? “City of tomorrow!” It’s another pop-sounding tune, a much-needed break after the devastation in “The Scorpion Departs.”

Doesn’t Lenny Live Here Anymore has the bones of a country-rock swing. I think Lenny represents Phil or, at the very least, his optimistic spirit, vacating the premises as his depression sank in. “The charade is through, and you can’t seem to run away from you.” If this isn’t a song about Phil himself, Lenny at the very least sings about himself. The lyrics describe depression sinking; specifically, disassociating. “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” Really interesting wording on the razor line, I’m not sure what to make of it.

“The haggard ex-lover of a longtime loser” shows up to draw him out of his cave, but she stands rejectedly as she’s turned away. That “longtime loser” line stings like razor burn. It’s what lead me to believe Lenny’s singing about himself. You are your own worst critic, and your own first bully.

While Lenny was a bit difficult to track, Another Age is a pretty straightforward commentary on the never-ending war machine. Phil said “Another Age” was inspired by meeting a veteran in Hawaii: “There’s a man walking round the island with a snake cane/Picked it up in Thailand from a hurricane/And you know he’s not gonna go there, he’s been one time too long…” America’s involvement in Vietnam was part of a long, long pattern that the older generations have seen time and time again. Same shit, different war. Phil comes to a different conclusion than he did in “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”:

“We were born in a revolution and died in a wasted war, it’s gone that way before.”

No peace, treason, love, or reason to be found here.

I instantly clocked the “it cannot happen here” line; it’s a specific reference to America’s attitude towards Nazi Germany. It’s worth noting here that Phil was part of a long tradition of Jewish activists, along with Yippie co-founders Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. It seems thousands of years of being persecuted naturally lends itself to speaking up for the persecuted. While history doesn’t repeat itself, it’s doomed to be repeated by those who don’t learn it. It can always happen here. Phil’s saying no one listened, and it’s happened here; in reference to Nixon’s election. It’s a chilling observation to look back on in 2025 – as I sit here writing this version of the review, Trump intends to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles to bust up anti-ICE protests. It’s the dawn of another age of another age of another age…

For all Death Of A Rebel’s flaws, author Marc Eliot described the title track beautifully: “a tape left behind to be played in the event the body is never recovered.” On Rehearsals’s closing track, Phil sings Phil Ochs’s own eulogy.

He’s not speaking through any character, any Lenny or doomed ship crew. This is Phil, confessing he is irrevocably changed. His once-vibrant colors left tattered from battle, that triumphant cry of “war is over” replaced by devastating piano and a quivering voice. “The days grow longer for smaller prizes...” Life weighsheavy on him. His old friends don’t recognize him. The heroes have exited stage left, replaced by con men andladies little more than painted china dolls.

The most heartrending lines on the whole album are the bridge:

“Had I known the end would end in laughter, still I’d tell my daughter that it doesn’t matter.”

Phil’s own revolutionary spirit is crushed, or at the very least mortally injured. The world laughs in his face. Even after all the atrocities we’ve heard of through this record, Phil still finds it in himself to ease his little girl’smind. Shielding your child from the real world so she can be an innocent just a little bit longer. Ultimate selflessness. That’s a father’s love for his daughter – the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Rehearsals For Retirement” is a beautiful performance by Phil with a beautiful melody. I’d be replaying this song over and over if it didn’t threaten to scoop my heart out with a bayonet.

Over and over, I’ve talked about how 1968 in music was the crash back down to earth after rock-and-roll’s psychedelic romp. Rehearsals was perhaps the hardest fall. Released in May of 1969, it was critically and commercially ignored. You gotta think about what was going on at that time in music. Dylan finally returned the month before, with his country turn Nashville Skyline. Sly and the Family Stone had America getting funky, and The 5th Dimension asserted this was the dawning of the age of Aquarius. A young Canadian female singer-songwriter named Joni Mitchell was on the rise. The Who finally released Tommy after a year of hype. The hype for this new supergroup Eric Clapton was in was insane. Also on the supergroup front, Crosby, Stills, & Nashare about to debut and pretty immediately be hailed as the American Beatles. There just wasn’t the space for an old-school topical song singer and a whole album about an event everybody would rather just forget. A&M pulled Rehearsals after a month due to abysmal sales. The rest of Phil’s tour was cancelled after people wouldn’t stop shouting out requests for other songs during the Rehearsals songs. After this, Phil pivoted away protest songs and folk altogether. “God help the troubadour who tried to be a star.” This failure haunted him.

In a sick, sad way, the ’68 DNC worked. It was the beginning of the war falling out of favor with the public. TheKent State massacre in 1970 flipped a lot of the straight people. John and Yoko, a freaking Beatle and his artist wife, said “war is over if you want it.” And Nixon was (eventually) exposed as a crook. I know the visualversion of this review will get suppressed in the YouTube algorithm. The Google algorithm will shove this down in the search results as well, I’m sure.

But I don’t care. Folk’s purpose is to hold a mirror to us; to make us viscerally uncomfortable until we buckle down and make real change. Rehearsals For Retirement emphasizes the “viscerally uncomfortable” part of that mission statement. This is the darkest album I’ve ever covered, and probably ever will. It’s such a gory scene, I admittedly flinch. We’re listening to an unfixable break. A man’s belief that music can change the world, that people are inherently good, crumbles. The ’68 DNC was a turning point for America and Phil knew it. It was a sweeping loss of innocence across the ’60s counterculture. We could not go back. All the chaos, violence, and abuse of power Phil saw that week wrote this album. In his eyes, it was over. The bad guys won. “This then is the death of the American.” The kids tried to use yo-yos to take down a tractor, and the tractor won.

I wish this album didn’t age as well as it has. Again, the summer of 1968 absolutely wrote Rehearsals, but it’s a little...familiar in 2025. People are lost, disillusioned, and suspicious of each other, wondering what the hell comes next. So where do we go from here? What lessons can we carry forward? What did Phil Ochs the folk singer die for?

It’s so cheesy to quote “There is nothing to fear but fear itself,” and I tried to avoid it at all costs. But it’s true. This country is ruled by fear of “the other,” whether that’s Black people or queer people or people running around in silly red hats. Don’t forget the rest of that quote though: “There is nothing to fear but fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” It may have killed his career, but I feel Rehearsals was the most important creative statement Phil made. As heidentifies in these songs, the men in office are ruled by fear of the other, too. They use chaos and confusion to pull sneaky shit, and they get off on hurting the little guy. If we keep exposing them as the weirdos they are, it will diminish their power. The egos will cannibalize each other and defeat themselves. It’s happening right now – as I filmed this episode, Mango Mussolini and his dearie Apartheid Clyde were having a very public, very messy breakup on social media!

It’s up to us, though, not to repeat the mistakes that got us here, in 1968 and in 2025. We can’t bury our heads in the sand; holding up silly little signs and wearing performative pink shirts. I can’t help but wonder what Phil would’ve thought of the hypocrisy of the modern Democratic party. We can’t sit around on our hands for the next few years like those congressmen are now. That’s also how we got here! We have to put in work, even if we don’t get to enjoy the flowers from seeds we sowed. I think a lot of my fellow Zoomers still have that lesson to learn. That’s why our activism fails! That and we’re so bad at talking to each other. Phil loved talking to people, it’s why he was able to make the music he did.

I think the lesson my generation is learning now is carrying on the revolutionary spirit, even after the dream is dead. This might be my bleary-eyed hippie optimism talking, but I’ve been alive long enough to see that, no matter how dire things look, the pendulum always swings back.

Phil Ochs the folkie did not die in vain. "Tell me, was it worth it all?"

Personal favorites: “Pretty Smart on My Part,” “The Doll House,” “William Butler Yeats()”/“Where Were You In Chicago,” “The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns,” “Rehearsals For Retirement”

– AD ☆

Watch the full episode above!

Alexander, Shana. “The Loony Humor of The Yippies.” Life Magazine, 10/25/1968. https://books.google.com/books?id=8VMEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Bowser, Kenneth, dir. Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune. First Run Features, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvZn9C_z6Y0&list=WL&index=62&t=5690s

Eliot, Marc. Death of A Rebel: A Biography of Phil Ochs. London: Omnibus Press, 1990. https://archive.org/details/philochsdeathofr0000elio/page/124/mode/1up

Farber, David. Chicago '68. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

McCain, Gillian, and Legs McNeil. Please Kill Me: An Oral History of Punk. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Mershon, Phil. “Phil Ochs.” Perfect Sound Forever, 9/2001. https://www.furious.com/perfect/philochs.html

Rubin, Jerry. Do It! Scenarios of the Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. https://archive.org/details/doitscenariosofr0000jerr

Schumacher, Michael. There But For Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs. New York: Hyperion, 1996. https://archive.org/details/therebutforfortu0000schu

Shafer, Ronald G. “A folk singer, a pig nominee and a tumultuous Chicago Dem. convention.” The Washington Post, 8/18/2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2024/08/18/1968-democratic-convention-chicago-phil-ochs/

Unterberger, Richie. “Liner Notes for Phil Ochs’s Rehearsals For Retirement/Gunfight at Carnegie Hall.” as part of Two Classic Albums By Phil Ochs. Collectors’ Choice Music, 2000. http://www.richieunterberger.com/gunfight.html