Broadside Magazine's 1964 Critique of Dylan Revisited

In a 1964 issue of the now-defunct Broadside magazine, U.S. folk music critic Paul Wolfe provided U.S. topical and protest folk music fans with the following interesting historical take on the early days of Bob Dylan's post-1964 artistic direction:

"The Newport Folk Festival of 1964 formed an important milestone in the resurgence of topical music. It brought many of the younger performers into first contact with large segments of the folk music world; it proved that topical music, when delivered with artistry and sincerity, can be heartily appreciated by a wide and diverse audience; it outlined many of the goals toward which the various writers must strive.

"But the Festival’s most significant achievement was specific and twofold: it marked the emergence of Phil Ochs as the most important voice in the movement, simultaneous with the renunciation of topical music by its major prophet, Bob Dylan. It was the latter event that proved most surprising.

"Dylan’s `defection' into higher forms of art was predicted. His preference for free-verse, uninhibited poetry over topical songs has been apparent for quite a while; his dissatisfaction with concert tours and adulating fans is also no secret. But his new songs, as performed at Newport, surprised everyone, leaving the majority of the audience annoyed, some even disgusted, and, in general, scratching its collective head in disbelief. The art that had, in the past, produced towering works of power and importance, had, seemingly, degenerated into confusion and innocuousness. `Your new songs seem to be all inner-directed, inner-probing, and self-conscious,' wrote Irwin Silber, editor of SING OUT!, in an open letter to Dylan. `You seem to be relating to a handful of cronies behind the scenes rather than to the rest of us out front.'

"And this disappointment in his new songs was heightened by their juxtaposition, on the stage of Newport, with the eloquent musical force of Phil Ochs. While Dylan was telling his perennial, anonymous girl friend, `All I really wanna do is, baby, be friends with you,' Ochs was informing the leaders of the government, `I ain’t marchin’ anymore!' While Dylan sang `It Ain’t Me, Babe,' and, in the guise of rejecting a persistent female, told his thousands of worshipers to look elsewhere for someone to walk on water, Ochs took the time to denounce the labor unions for their betrayal of the civil rights movement; in `Links On The Chain'—Ochs’ supreme artistic achievement—and perhaps the most important topical song of the year—he calls upon the `ranks of labor' to ponder their own `struggles of before' and tell, ironically, which side they now are on in the Negro struggle for equality.

"There, the difference between the two performers became manifest; meaning vs. innocuousness, sincerity vs. utter disregard for the tastes of the audience, idealistic principle vs. self-conscious egotism. And even in his attempts at seriousness Dylan was bewildering. `Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man,' while underlain by a beautiful poetic idea, must be termed a failure; somehow, a forced monotony of rhymes seemed much more effective in `Only A Pawn In Their Game.' And in his other song, `Chimes of Freedom,' the bewilderment is raised to the highest degree. In this incredible jumble of confused, obscure images piled atop one another, Dylan traces the pursuit for higher forms of freedom, spanning a human lifetime, encompassing all of human life. This probing journey through anguish begins `far between sundown’s finish and midnight’s broken toe' and ends, some eight grueling minutes later, with the chimes of freedom flashing `for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe.' The fallacy inherent in the concept of chimes flashing is annoyingly obvious. It is also obvious that Dylan was too enmeshed in his own ego and seeming adoration of words (no matter how meaningless his combinations of these words renders them) to consider the absurdity of treating a subject of such scope in a song. As Irwin Silber said, the Dylan we once knew, the author of `With God On Our Side' and `Hattie Carroll,' `never wasted our precious time.' `Chimes of Freedom' brings to mind once again the fable of the Emperor’s new clothes; and a short story entitled `Face In The Crowd' by Budd Schulberg (it was made into a noted movie). The protagonist of that story is a hillbilly singer who, through publicity, slick management and an overpowering ego, rises to such heights of stardom and popularity he thinks he can get away with anything on the public. The tragedy is that he cannot, and, in the end, is ruined.

"Does Bob himself give a concrete reason for the emergence of the `new' Dylan? One might be found in the song `My Back Pages' in his latest album Another Side of Bob Dylan. It is an intensely honest, revealing self-portrait, indeed a brutal denunciation of the `old' Dylan. It characterizes the latter as a deceived, impotent `musketeer' whose main stimuli to action were confusion and immaturity, rather than a fiery poetic spirit reacting to the injustice he saw all around him. Thus a seeming disillusionment with both himself and the ideals he fought for looms as a factor.

"Other forces shaping his new posture include his own artistic drives and capabilities (which are indeed considerable) running headlong into the limitations of the musical form. As Phil Ochs said in the 1964 Newport brochure: `I think he’s slowly drifting away from song-writing because he feels limited by the form. More and more of his work will probably come out in poetry and free verse, and I would not be surprised if he stopped singing altogether, considering the over-adulation of his fans and the lack of understanding of audiences that identify with him.' Indeed there are reports not only that he is working on a book of his own poetry but that he plans to start up a poetry magazine (further Dylan artistic endeavors include a motion picture, which Dylan has written, is directing, and stars in himself). These varied artistic projects imply his abandonment of topical song writing; an artist must express himself through the most effective mediums at his command. But they do not explain his new songs; nor, if he is discontented with singing, why he continues to give concerts; or why he is still cutting records. Contradictions have followed Bob Dylan from the time his folk-singing career began. Now, seemingly at the end of it, they have yet to be dissipated.

"The paths of Bob Dylan bear extreme relevance to the course of today’s topical songwriting. For instance, take Phil Ochs. His career is still evolving and expanding, but considering what has happened to Bob, an inevitable question arises concerning Phil: will he follow in the footsteps of his predecessor? Will Phil too eventually be disillusioned, or in some way become discontented, with his personal messages of protest, and abandon them? Only time—of course—can tell. But an analysis of the facts renders this unlikely. The difference between Ochs and Dylan, both as artists and personalities, are striking. Ochs is much more deeply committed to the broadside tradition. To news and politically-oriented songs, most of which are focused on specific events and do not range into the wide scope of human events and variegated problems that characterize so many of Dylan’s most famous works. In addition, Dylan has undergone repeated metamorphosis as a performer; each of his four albums differs radically from the others. This has not been so with Ochs, whose second L-P (by Elektra) plainly will be a continuation of the work foundationed by his first (Ochs’ 2nd L-P is scheduled for release in January 1965). Quite to the contrary, Phil’s basic melody and lyric patterns have remained constant from the very beginning; indeed many of his first songs, notably `William Worthy' and his talking analysis of Cuba and Viet Nam, occupy important positions in his current repertoire. Thus, the constant change of character and outlook, the reluctance to stay in one `bag' of song-writing for an extended period of time, that have engendered Dylan’s renunciation of topical music, are not evidenced in Ochs. Nevertheless, the influences of Dylan have found their way into several of Ochs’ new songs. In `In The Heat Of The Summer' and `The Hills of West Virginia,' Ochs has attempted to subtlety and poetry where before he used power and irony. Thus, those two songs differ artistically from all his previous ones; indeed in the first song, dealing with the recent riots in various Negro ghettos, he goes so far as to abandon rhyme scheme altogether. It is a novel artistic experiment; but, unfortunately, this first attempt at poetry-in-song is unsuccessful. `In The Heat Of The Summer' emerges as little more than an exercise. But in `The Hills Of West Virginia,' some reflections during an automobile trip, Phil’s simple, unpretentious, easy-flowing imagery, encased in what could be his most beautiful melody, weave a sharp and colorful tapestry of observation. It is certainly one of his best songs and proves Ochs doesn’t have to protest to be good. It also proves that one can absorb the good influences of Dylan without being affected by the non-artistic sides of the latter’s enigmatic career.


"Many talented people today are writing topical songs. But, to me, Phil Ochs stands virtually alone in his field; very few writers are very close to him in quality and productivity. This is a happy fact for topical music. However, the cash registers are ringing in his ears more and more; legions of adulating fans and his identity as a `celebrity' grow larger as time goes by. Thus, one final question must be posed in connection with the path of Phil Ochs, hence the path of topical music. Can he overcome the pressures, the lures, the rewards and the egotism attached to being a celebrity? Can he maintain a sincerity of principle despite material prosperity? It is evident that he will continue writing protest songs; the question now is whether he will continue meaning them. For Phil Ochs, on whom the future of topical music rides, `these are the days of decision.'” 
--Paul Wolfe
(Broadside magazine--issue 53/1964) 

Matt Jones' `Remembering Brother Kirk' Obituary Article From 1986 Revisited

U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter and Movement activist F.D. Kirkpatrick in 1960's

Following U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter and Civil Rights Movement activist Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick's death on August 16, 1986, the also now-deceased 1960's Freedom Singers group member and late 20th and early 21st-century U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter and Movement activist, Matt Jones, wrote the following obituary, titled "Remembering Brother Kirk,"  (which first appeared in issue #176 of the now-defunct Broadside topical folk song magazine). 
"Reverend Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick or `Brother Kirk,' as he was affectionately called, was a major contributor to folk music in the 60s and an outspoken advocate of freedom and justice in America and abroad. Kirk was born in Haynesville, Louisiana on August 12, 1933, the first son of Rev. and Mrs. John L. Kirkpatrick. Before he became a minister, Kirk's father was a tenant farmer for a wicked landowner named Crump. After Kirk's mother died during childbirth, the landowner immediately confiscated the property and ordered them off the farm. `He took everything. We had no place to go,' Kirk said. The pain and anguish in his face made his account so vivid that it seemed as if it had just happened. `I was just a lad of a boy at the time,' Kirk told me. However, that incident was a major contributing force in the development of Kirk's fighting spirit, which we knew so well.

"In 1955, Kirk became an All-American fullback at Grambling College and later played professional football for the Kansas City Chiefs. As a pro-football player, Kirk found that all the positions of power and leadership were held by the whites. `It was our tenant farm all over again,' said Kirk. The burning desire to free himself and his people from injustice was constantly in his mind.

"Kirk was ordained by the Church of Christ in God in Jonesboro, Louisiana in 1964. He formed the Deacons for Defense, which defended the lives and homes of Jonesboro citizens on many occasions. This experience led him to join Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1967, at Dr. King's request, Kirk came to New York to organize the Poor People's March on Washington, which aimed to unite poor whites, blacks, Indians [Native Americans], Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans.

"I first met Kirk in 1968 at the home of Gordon Friesen and Sis Cunningham, where both Kirk and I were living. Gordon and Sis are the founders and creators of this very magazine, BROADSIDE. Hearing Kirk sing freedom songs reminded me of my experiences as the director of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers. I was overjoyed to know that the work was being continued. When Kirk and I met we became brothers immediately. We sang together and had the opportunity of watching Sis and Gordon, the most important collectors of topical songs in the 1960s and 70s do their work.

"Brother Kirk spread the philosophy of Dr. King throughout the East Coast and, as an outgrowth of his work, the `Hey Brother Coffeehouse' was formed at St. Gregory's Church in Manhattan. Here, hundreds of folksingers sharpened their talents and developed their political consciousness under Kirk's direction.

"He was also a leading force in the fight for justice for the Palestinian people and for the oppressed in Northern Ireland. In recent years, he dedicated his life to working with the homeless in New York City and in Philadelphia. He was also editor-in-chief of the Many Races Cultural Foundation's newsletter, The Freedom Press.

"Brother Kirk died on Saturday morning, August 16, 1986, in New York City, after a brief illness. He had turned 53-years old on August 12. Kirk had five daughters: Camilla, Alfreda, Brunella, Freddy (deceased) of Grambling, Louisiana and Sojourner Christy Damio-Kirkpatrick of New York City.

"On Monday, August 25, 1986, people gathered at St. Gregory's Church from around the country to pay tribute to Brother Kirk: Palestinians, Jews, Irish, Blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, the homeless and the elderly. They were all there. From Pete Seeger to Mother Clark. They were all there. Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) and Bernadette Devlin McAlisky could not come, but sent telegrams. Kirk was my right arm. I loved him. We dreamed the same dreams and fought the same fight. I felt obligated to give this tribute to Kirk. It was a great celebration and tribute to his life and work.

"Brother Kirk is dead, but his spirit lives on in each of us. He never compromised his principles, regardless of the consequences. He fought for freedom and justice at every turn. `We are all significant on God's keyboard,' was his statement to the world. He believed in humankind and never allowed anyone to denigrate any one branch. He worked for the rights of the least powerful of his comrades: the Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland and in the U.K.; the Palestinians, who have been persecuted and are now scattered all over the world; the homeless and hungry Americans who live in the alleys and gutters of our country; the freedom fighters of Soweto who now rise from the ashes of apartheid; the Native Americans who are a constant reminder of our government's most heinous crime--the extermination of a race of people for the gain of land." 

Freedm Singer-U.S. protest folk singer-songwriter-Movement organizer Matt Jones

How Commercialism Affected 1960's Protest Folk Song Writers

In his 1965 book, Freedom In The Air: Song Movements of the Sixties, Broadside magazine Contributing Editor Josh Dunson indicated how the commercialism of the U.S. corporate media conglomerates' hip capitalist music industry subsidiaries apparently affected the artistic and political direction of 1960's protest folk and topical song writers, by writing the following:

"The years 1963-1964 proved in the breakthrough of `Blowin' in the Wind' that a great deal of money was to be made from songs of the protest movements. The fact that freedom songs and topical songs were, and to some extent still are, highly profitable, had a dual effect. It circulated the songs over a large area, but at the same time the meaning of many of the songs was toned down to suit the managers, agents and disc jockeys. As Barbara Dane said exaggeratedly: `Just like people who are not in love write love songs, now topical songs are the big thing, so people who don't particularly care about freedom are writing freedom songs.'

"There is some truth in this statement, especially in the case of commercial song writers. The difference in approach between the freedom singer who has risked his or her life while singing and the producer who sees a potential profit in these songs is too great to be ignored. Situations are not necessarily black and white, but the clash between the topical singer and the Artist and Repertoire man exists and is real...

"This situation...is more disastrous when in topical songs a singer who is writing essentially to express himself is swamped with `success.' Irwin Silber maintains this is essentially what interfered with Bob Dylan's growth as a song writer. With hundreds of kids wildly following him down the street for autographs, he could no longer remain an observer. Instead he became an idol, to be observed and followed. I think this explains a great deal, but even more cogent is the fact that there seemed to be no real alternative in the directions to which he turned for help. If there is nowhere to go, the only place left is one's self, and that is where Bob Dylan and his songs are now. Many of them are good, but not one of them measures up in breadth or beauty of form to his earlier writing...

"Song writers who are constantly traveling on tour to various folk-song night clubs and coffee houses are always in danger of thinking entirely in terms of their profession. They tend to lose contact with the movements and the emotional identification that inspired them to write songs during the years they lived in New York's slums..."

Revisiting Broadside Magazine's February 1962 Issue Cover

Gordon Friesen's `The Strange Death of Phil Ochs' `Broadside' Magazine Article of 1976 Revisited

         

(In the October-December 1976 issue of the now-defunct Broadside: the topical song magazine,” a founder and longtime editor of that non-profit folk music publication who died in 1996, Gordon Friesen, provided U.S. music fans with the following interesting alternative take on the 1960s topical and anti-war protest folk singer-songwriter Phil Ochs’s strange death to that presented in the 2011 documentary film about Phil Ochs, There But For Fortune, which was later broadcast in January 2012 on the PBS series, American Masters)

"It is indicative of the depth of the brainwashing to which the American people have been systematically subjected that too many of them accept Phil Ochs’ death as a not too uncommon breakdown of a personality. But the accumulated facts raise more than a suspicion that a plot existed leading to his deliberate destruction. Let us look at some of these facts which would impel the reactionary, fascist-type U.S. imperialists to reach the decision that Phil Ochs must die.

"The brainwashing of the people by the U.S. ruling class has created a tendency by artists, especially dissident songwriters, to underestimate the ferocious measures the ruling class will employ to destroy them. We know that the Wobbly balladeer Joe Hill was framed and executed by a firing squad (Phil knew this and even wrote a song expressing his admiration of Joe Hill). The woman radical songwriters, Fannie Sellins and Ella May Wiggins, were shot to death by police. Aunt Molly Jackson and her fellow songwriting relatives, Jim Garland and Sara Ogden, were forced to flee for their lives from the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal fields.

"A fascist vigilante mob, aided by N.Y. State and local police, tried to murder Paul Robeson at Peekskill. He was finally silenced and driven into exile by the U.S. government. Even Woody Guthrie stated in print he was under surveillance by what he called the F-B-Eyes. Many Pete Seeger concerts were picketed by John Birchers handing out inflammatory leaflets urging at least by implication, violence against him. In 1940 the Oklahoma Red Dust Players were raided and scattered to the winds.

"One can conclude that Phil Ochs was an even greater threat than these to the U.S. imperialists. In his early songs he defended Castro Cuba and the Vietnamese liberation fighters against the imperialistic designs of Washington. His songs became more and more pointed. “White Boots Marching In A Yellow Land”, “Santo Domingo”, “United Fruit” (where he approves of “young men going to the mountains to learn the way of the rifle” instead of slaving at pitiful wages for the American exploiters). But it was “Cops Of The World” with such lines as “here’s a kick in the ass, boys”, and “clean your johns with your flag” because “we’re the cops of the world”, and “Ringing Of Revolution” where he looks forward to the destruction of the last vestiges of the desperate decaying ruling class by the exploited masses, which really stuck like a bone in the throat of the U.S. imperialists.

"A special threat was the wide circulation of Phil’s songs abroad. Books containing materials about him and his work were published in Spain, France, and other countries. The Spanish book reprinted “Cops Of The World” for its example of an Ochs song and the author likened Phil’s guitar to a machine gun. The first edition sold out so quickly, mainly to students, that the Franco regime did not have time to suppress it, as it did any further reprintings. Individuals and groups sang his songs in Japan, Scandinavia, Holland, W. Germany and many other countries.

"It was naïve on Phil’s part to think when he undertook several jaunts in the early seventies to foreign nations that he would be treated like an ordinary tourist. He was met at two South American airports by police who arrested him, jailed him overnight and deported him the next day. From recent revelations it becomes obvious that the local authorities were acting under orders from the C.I.A. He was welcomed only in Chile where he sang together with Victor Jara, the popular Chilean peoples’ singer (Jara was destroyed in a bestial fashion when the C.I.A.-Ford-Kissinger sponsored Chilean fascists overthrew Allende in 1973. The police smashed Victor’s hands with their rifle butts, gave him his guitar and taunted “Now play and sing.” Then they murdered him).

"When Phil tried to visit his ancestral Scotland the London police intercepted him and put him on a plane back to the United States. He got off at Dublin. Here communications between the C.I.A. and the Irish authorities seemed to have lagged, for Phil was allowed to stay all of two days in Dublin before being deported to New York.

"On an African trip he was set upon by three thugs who paid special attention to crushing his voice box. Again the participation of the C.I.A. seemed unmistakably obvious. He came home barely able to croak and could never again sing like in the old days.

"Meantime the activities and programs of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. were slowly coming to light through hearings in Washington and books by former agents who could no longer endure the inhumanity of these secret organizations—their assassination plots, poison dart-guns, drugs to induce incoherency, burglaries, arming foreign fascists to overthrow their democratic governments, the use of informants and disrupters, spreading of lies, clawing through personal mail, bugging telephones, planting listening devices in citizens’ cars. And so far this seems only the tip of the iceberg.

"The F.B.I. even had an elaborate program designed to induce dissidents to commit suicide. They confessed they had tried it on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In this instance they failed. But who knows in which cases they have succeeded. In 1965 another Broadside songwriter “committed suicide.” He was Peter La Farge, adopted son of Oliver La Farge, first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature—the book was “Laughing Boy,” a sympathetic treatment of the Navajo Indians. The F.B.I. took an interest in Peter and began hounding him when he organized FAIR (Federation for American Indian Rights). Several months before he died, the F.B.I. raided his New York apartment at midnight. They scattered and tore up his papers; they put handcuffs on him and dragged him to Bellevue in his pajamas. They put pressure on Bellevue to declare him insane, but Bellevue could find nothing wrong and turned him loose.

"When Phil came back to New York last summer [in 1975] he was still full of plans. He was arranging to go to a place in New Jersey for a six-weeks “drying out” period under supervision by medical experts. Then he planned to set up what he called Barricade House, where he would issue a newspaper, record protest singers and make films. He already had the building picked out in SoHo.

"People ask us what motivation would the F.B.I.-C.I.A. have in wanting to see Phil dead when he could no longer sing or write. We answer that this was their motivation: Phil still had tremendous organizing ability, as witness his organizing the Chilean benefit. Barricade House would have been a great threat to the ruling class. We can visualize the F.B.I. doing one of their infamous psychological profiles on Phil Ochs. They asked the computer, what is his greatest weakness? The computer spat back: ALCOHOL! The next step of the F.B.I. is to assign agents to exploit this weakness in their intended victim; I would be very suspicious of the “friends” who attached themselves to Phil and kept plying him with alcoholic drinks.

"I am afraid we didn’t take to seriously Phil’s daily insistence that the C.I.A. and F.B.I., and later with the collaboration of Mafia hit men, were out to murder him. He sought a place to hide and tried to hire a bodyguard; he carried an iron bar, a big scissors and other means with which to defend his life.

"Where did these threats come from? What really happened? Perhaps some commission five or ten years from now will bring out the true details of how Phil Ochs met his strange death. We should finally learn how the great song-poem “Crucifixion” became a personal prophesy of the fate of its author. 

--Gordon Friesen (Broadside, 10-12/76/issue 133)

Broadside magazine co-editors Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen