Phil Ochs

(1940 - 1976)

After dropping out of Ohio State University, where he had studied journalism, Phil Ochs moved to New York City, publishing lyrics in Broadside and playing music in Greenwich Village clubs. He performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and the next year released his first album, All the News That’s Fit to Sing. “Every newspaper headline,” he once said, “is a potential song.” With Abbie Hoffman and others, he helped to found the Youth International Party, whose members were known as Yippies, in 1968. He hanged himself at the age of thirty-five in 1976.