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evening longread

Your evening longread: The story of Phil Ochs, the folk singer who could've been as big as Bob Dylan

It’s a coronavirus-free zone as we bring you an interesting longread each evening to take your mind off the news.

EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you an evening longread to enjoy. With the news cycle dominated by the coronavirus situation, we know it can be hard to take your mind off what’s happening.

So we want to bring you an interesting read every weekday evening to help transport you somewhere else.

We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.

The story of Phil Ochs

Folk singer Phil Ochs was a pal of Bob Dylan’s, and also wrote great folk songs. So how come his career never crossed over to mainstream success?

(The Guardian, approx 10 mins reading time)

Unknown to most of the music industry and his fans, Ochs battled undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder. When the revolution that first inspired him to write and sing apparently shattered, Ochs felt he no longer had an artistic or political purpose. He entered into the deepest, darkest depression of his life. By 1969, he was drinking heavily and abusing prescription drugs, worrying his friends and family. He’d recently separated from his wife Alice, with whom he had a young daughter, Meegan, and relocated from New York to Los Angeles with a new girlfriend. 

Read all of the Evening Longreads here>

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