Death of a Rebel

Although his record albums never were bestsellers and there were times when he was more greatly appreciated in Canada and Britain than at home, the late Philip David Ochs was one of the few American folksingers, aside from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, who wrote and performed his own songs. This singing journalist's earliest ballads--championing civil rights, pacifism and revolution and attacking unemployment, the struggle for power and American foreign policy--dealt with the romance of politics; the later ones celebrated the politics of romance. Fascinated by night, death, drowning, James Dean and Elvis Presley, alcoholic, narcissistic, violent Ochs was only 36 when, after surviving a period of dual personality, he hanged himself in 1976. Eliot's ( Rockonomics ) sympathetic, powerful biography first appeared in paperback in 1979. Now brought back to print in cloth, it contains an epilogue that updates information on Ochs's family and friends and discusses the FBI's 13-year active surveillance of the singer. Photos not seen by PW. (Oct.)