It probably seemed like a gloomy joke when Phil Ochs put an image of his own tombstone on the cover of his 1969 album Rehearsal for Retirement with an inscription that read: “Born El Paso, Texas; Died Chicago, IL, 1968.”
Certainly, Ochs didn’t perish. Nor was he one of the hundreds of anti-war protesters hurt in the ensuing melees with police and the National Guard that week. What he and many of his peers in the New Left instead suffered was a kind of spiritual death.
Many of his songs, as one might expect, take direct aim at reactionary conservatives and the architects of the Vietnam war: “We’ve got too much money we’re looking for toys. And guns will be guns and boys will be boys. But we’ll gladly pay for all we destroy. ‘Cause we’re the Cops of the World, boys,” he sang on “Cops of the World.”
Ochs and several other Yippies traveled to various farms in the Chicago area before the convention to pick out what Yippie Judy Gumbo, in her 2008 recollection of 1968, called “the largest, smelliest, most repulsive hog we could find.” The 145-pound black-and-white pig, dubbed , was taken to the Chicago Center for a press conference on August 23. Five Yippies were taken to jail at the press conference as they were taking out of the truck—including Rubin and Ochs, while the presidential hog hopeful was taken to the Chicago Humane Society. All humans were released after posting a $25 bond.
Ochs believed his peers didn’t see the DNC protests as a “worthwhile project.”
In 1968, $10 was a lot of money. Phil stops and talks directly to the guy, explaining why he is opposed to the war. The Guardsman starts to smile, and even lowers his rifle a little bit, very appreciative that a celebrity like Phil is speaking to him like a real person.
A public poll taken two months later found that more people thought the police had used too little force rather than too much, 25 to 19 percent. Many Chicagoans were also on Daley’s side, a fact that disturbed Ochs.
