This is a hard-to-read book about a hard-to-understand life.

Not, I hasten to add, that there is any problem with the way it is written. I'm surprised that it was reissued, but not because of the writing. It's just that Phil Ochs has been dead for more than forty years, and his surviving fans would generally be in their sixties or older. Ochs himself, who was born in 1940, would be in his late seventies as of when I write this.

He obviously didn't even come close to reaching that age. Not surprising. He blazed like a wood fire doused with gasoline -- and burned out just as fast. A childhood marked by wildly shifting interests gave way to a young adulthood of songwriting and political activity gave way to disillusionment and fatigue and then depression and loss of interest in life and personality changes and, finally, suicide.

It's really difficult to read the late chapters, which will probably leave you wondering, "Why didn't someone do something?" Or, at minimum, "Why did anyone put up with him for so long?" -- in the early Seventies, Ochs had gone from an earnest protest singer to a guy who didn't write songs but who did get drunk all the time and went around carrying hammers and lead pipes and randomly attacking people. He couldn't handle his emotions, and he couldn't handle his money, but somehow, he mostly stayed out of both prisons and psychiatric hospitals. I find this hard to believe -- there was plenty of basis for involuntary commitment.

Whether it would have helped is another question. Everyone seems to agree that Ochs had bipolar disorder, and like all psychiatric illnesses, treatment was in its infancy in the 1970s. Lithium, the first (and still generally the best) mood stabilizer, had been approved in 1970, but a lot of psychiatrists weren't using it yet -- and Ochs, because he never lost his freedom, apparently refused to take whatever medications were given him anyway.

I must admit, though, that I think there is more to the story. There was a darkness in Ochs that can't be explained just by bipolar disorder (although I accept that he almost certainly had that). Even before he went downhill, there was an anger in him -- an anger that he wasn't recognized, wasn't accepted, that he wasn't able to change things. It's just that, in his early years, some of that energy was productive, and powered his songs. But the truth is, few of his songs have lasted. Even though he was one of the most prolific of Sixties songwriters, his music has aged much more than that of, say, his friend and contemporary Tom Paxton -- who wrote protest songs also, but was willing to write other material as well.

Ochs was an enigma to the end. What could he have done had things gone a little differently? Possibly he could have been brilliant. But possibly he would have found another way to flame out. This book, though often brutally honest, doesn't really give us a way to know.

I was left wanting to read more. But also not sure that I was strong enough to try. ( )