The War Is Over(1968)
By Phil Ochs
Album: The War Is Over: The Best Of Phil Ochs
Born: El Paso, Texas 1940
Phil Ochs committed suicide, at age 35, in the spring of 1976.
Like so many young people who came of age in the '60s, Ochs believed that while America embodied the ideals of freedom and compassion, darker forces were at work challenging those concepts. The fantasy world of the '50s was dead; people who were not even of voting age were being forced to fight an unpopular war in Southeast Asia; racism was tearing apart the South.
*Ochs' moral standards may have been impossibly high and improbably naive, but as an individual, Ochs' impact on music and activism has been far greater than he would have ever dreamed.
The turning point for Ochs came during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago,
where angry students and other antiwar activists were literally beaten down by authorities during demonstrations against the conflict in Vietnam
Ochs was severely affected by the police brutality in Chicago and by the defeat of the new left in general.
He lost all hope for the future of his beloved country, he had reached a point where he had simply lost all inspiration.
Ochs spent his final autumn in an alcoholic fog, wandering about New York City in a near-homeless state.
He had changed his identity, resigned to his belief that the moral, compassionate Phil Ochs of his youth had died along with his ideals.
*Excerpt of article by Mark Kemp, Music News Editor, Rolling Stone, New York, 1996
Lyrics:
Silent Soldiers on a silver screen
Framed in fantasies and dragged in dream
Unpaid actors of the mystery
The mad director knows that freedom will not make you free
And what's this got to do with me
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
Drums are drizzling on a grain of sand
Fading rhythms of a fading land
Prove your courage in the proud parade
Trust your leaders where mistakes are almost never made
And they're afraid that I'm afraid
I'm afraid the war is over
It's over, it's over
Angry artists painting angry signs
Use their vision just to blind the blind
Poisoned players of a grizzly game
One is guilty and the other gets the point to blame
Pardon me if I refrain
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
So do your duty, boys, and join with pride
Serve your country in her suicide
Find the flags so you can wave goodbye
But just before the end even treason might be worth a try
This country is to young to die
I declare the war is over
It's over, it's over
One-legged veterans will greet the dawn
And they're whistling marches as they mow the lawn
And the gargoyles only sit and grieve
The gypsy fortune teller told me that we'd been deceived
You only are what you believe
I believe the war is over
It's over, it's over
