Ochs' influences included Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Bob Gibson, Faron Young, and Merle Haggard.

His best-known songs include "I Ain't Marching Anymore", "When I'm Gone", "Changes", "Crucifixion", "Draft Dodger Rag", "Love Me, I'm a Liberal", "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", "Power and the Glory", "There but for Fortune", and "The War Is Over".

[19] He especially liked big screen heroes (John Wayne[17] and Audie Murphy[20]) and later developed an interest in movie rebels (Marlon Brando and James Dean).

[22] Unhappy after his first quarter, 18-year-old Ochs took a leave of absence and went to Florida, where was jailed for two weeks for sleeping on a park bench in Miami, an incident he would later recall: Somewhere during the course of those fifteen days I decided to become a writer.

When the student paper refused to publish some of his more radical articles, he started his own underground newspaper called The Word, as well as writing for the satire magazine, The Sundial, with fellow classmate R.L.

[28] Ochs continued at Ohio State into his senior year, but was bitterly disappointed at not being appointed editor-in-chief of the college newspaper, and dropped out in his last quarter without graduating.

[29] In the early 1960s, there was a folk music rebirth in this country with the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan.

[31] He emerged as an unpolished but passionate vocalist who wrote pointed songs about current events: war, civil rights, labor struggles and other topics.

"[53] In 1962, Ochs married Alice Skinner, who was pregnant with their daughter Meegan, in a City Hall ceremony with Jim Glover as best man and Jean Ray as bridesmaid, and witnessed by Dylan's girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo.

While describing Ochs as "unquestionably a nice guy", he went on to say, "too bad his voice shows an effective range of about half an octave [and] his guitar playing would not suffer much if his right hand were webbed."

119 on Billboard's national "Hot Prospect" listing before being pulled from some radio stations because of its lyrics, which included "smoking marijuana is more fun than drinking beer".

Other topical songs of this period include "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death outside of her New York City apartment building while dozens of her neighbors reportedly ignored her cries for help, and "William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed", about the despair he felt in the aftermath of the Chicago 1968 Democratic National Convention police riot.

[79] Ochs was writing more personal songs as well, such as "Crucifixion", in which he compared the deaths of Jesus Christ and assassinated President John F. Kennedy as part of a "cycle of sacrifice" in which people build up heroes and then celebrate their destruction; "Chords of Fame", a warning against the dangers and corruption of fame; "Pleasures of the Harbor", a lyrical portrait of a lonely sailor seeking human connection far from home; and "Boy in Ohio", a plaintive look back at Ochs's childhood in Columbus.

And I think it would make a very interesting double feature to show a good old Wayne movie like, say, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon with The Green Berets.

[83]Ochs was involved in the creation of the Youth International Party, known as the Yippies, along with Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, Stew Albert, and Paul Krassner.

[84] At the same time, Ochs actively supported Eugene McCarthy's more mainstream bid for the 1968 Democratic nomination for President, a position at odds with the more radical Yippie point of view.

[90][91] The events of 1968 – the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and of Robert F. Kennedy weeks later, the Chicago police riot, and the election of Richard Nixon – left Ochs feeling disillusioned and depressed.

[80][96] Ochs went on tour wearing the gold suit, backed by a rock band, singing his own material along with medleys of songs by Buddy Holly, Elvis, and Merle Haggard.

On this particular evening, Peller recorded Ochs singing 10 songs, 5 of them new and intended for an album that "would be an unflinching narrative of his psychosis over the past year"[126] which went by the working title of Duels in the Sun.

[131] Congresswoman Bella Abzug (Democrat from New York), an outspoken anti-war activist who had appeared at the 1975 "War is Over" rally, entered this statement into the Congressional Record on April 29, 1976: Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, a young folksinger whose music personified the protest mood of the 1960s took his own life.

Phil Ochs's poetic pronouncements were part of a larger effort to galvanize his generation into taking action to prevent war, racism, and poverty.

"My affection [for Ochs] no doubt prejudiced me, so it is worth [noting] that many observers who care more for folk music than I do remember both his compositions and his vibrato tenor as close to the peak of the genre.

[151] Ochs's songs have been covered by scores of performers, including Joan Baez, Bastro, Cher, Judy Collins, John Denver,[142] Ani DiFranco, Ronnie Gilbert,[142] John Wesley Harding, Henry Cow, Jason & the Scorchers,[152] Jim and Jean, Jeannie Lewis,[153] Gordon Lightfoot,[142] Melanie, Christy Moore,[154] Morrissey, Pete Seeger, They Might Be Giants, Eddie Vedder, and the Weakerthans.

: The Songs of Phil Ochs, a two-CD set of 28 covers by artists that includes Billy Bragg, John Gorka, Nanci Griffith, Arlo Guthrie, Magpie, Tom Paxton, and Peter Yarrow.

[157] The liner notes indicate that all record company profits from the sale of the set were to be divided between the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and Sing Out!

[160][161] Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon, on their album Prairie Home Invasion, recorded a version of "Love Me, I'm a Liberal" with lyrics updated to the Clinton era.

[165] During their performance on VH1 Storytellers, Pearl Jam covered "Here's to the State of Mississippi" with updated lyrics to include Jerry Falwell, Dick Cheney, John Roberts, Alberto Gonzales, and George W.

[166] In 2002, with the agreement of Ochs's sister Sonny, Richard Thompson added an extra verse to "I Ain't Marching Anymore" to reflect recent American foreign policy.

[183] The punk band Squirrel Bait cited Ochs as a major creative influence in the liner notes of their 1986 album Skag Heaven, and cover his "Tape From California".

[189] The American hardcore punk supergroup Hesitation Wounds wrote a song called "P. Ochs (The Death of a Rebel)", which appeared on their self-titled debut EP in 2013.