BOB DYLAN AND PHIL OCHS AT DEALEY PLAZA by William E. Kelly
Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan
Bob
Dylan became entwined in the JFK assassination saga early on, when he began to
write political songs like “Masters of War,” took an interest in Cuba and the
Castro Revolution and supported the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), which got
the government to take interest in him, as it did John Lennon and Phil Ochs.
Phil
Ochs was a close friend of Dylan in the Greenwich Village beatnick and folk music scene in the
early sixties, and their mutual respect for Castro and their support for the
FPCC got them involved with the government’s focus on the public support and
power such protest singers were garnering. And the FBI-CIA took operational interest
in the FPCC, specially in New York City, where Oswald got his posters and leaflets and official FPFCC ID.
Phil
Ochs had attended the exclusive Staunton military academy in Virginia with the son
of Barry Goldwater, and was a US Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps
(ROTC) cadet at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where his dormitory roomate Jim Glover, gave him a guitar and taught him how to play. Glover was an
Army ROTC cadet while Ochs was Air Force, the same ROTC unit at the same
college where US Air Force General Curtis LeMay received his first stripes.
Ochs was connected.
Ochs went to Ohio State to study journalism and developed an interest in politics, with a particular interest in the Cuban Revolution of 1959. At Ohio State he met Jim Glover, a fellow student who was a devotee of folk music. Glover introduced Ochs to the music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and The Weavers. Glover taught Ochs how to play guitar, and they debated politics. Ochs began writing newspaper articles, often on radical themes. When the student paper refused to publish some of his more radical articles, he started his own underground newspaper called The Word. His two main interests, politics and music, soon merged, and Ochs began writing topical political songs. Ochs and Glover formed a duet called "The Singing Socialists", later renamed "The Sundowners", but the duo broke up before their first professional performance and Glover went to New York City to become a folksinger.
After
Glover dropped out of school and moved to New York City, marrying another folk
singer, Ochs shortly thereafter joined them. Glover and his wife were the
couple that allowed other folk singers to sleep on their couch, as they are
portrayed in the move, “Inside Llewyn Davis” - which is based loosely by the story
of Dave van Ronk, a star of the Greenwich Village folk scene around the
time of Bob Dylan's arrival there in 1961. Dylan learned a lot from van Ronk.
Glover
and Phil Ochs were also part of that Greenwich Village folk scene, playing the
same clubs and recording together when Dylan showed up on the scene in 1961,
when the government was taking an interest in their activities and began to monitor
the situation. It especially became acute when the folk singers began to
support the Castro revolution in Cuba and lead the protests of the war in Vietnam.
While
Dylan wrote some emphatic protest songs, he said he claimed he wasn’t a protest
singer, but Ochs out did him in writing protest songs about General Walker,
Medgar Evers, and such political songs as, “Draft Dogger Rag,” “Talking
Vietnam:” – “Talking Cuban Crisis” - “Ten Cents a Coup” - “United Fruit” -
“Talkin’ Cuban Crisis” - “Santo Dominigo” - “Joe Hill,” - “I’m Not Marching
Anymore” - “Ballad of Billie Sol” (Estes), - “Christine Keeler” – a women at
the heart of the Profumo affair that involved JFK, “The Thresher” – About the
USS Thresher (SSN-593) a nuclear powered attack submarine that sand by accident
on April 10, 1963, and “Where Were You
in Chicago” – “William Butler Yats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed,”
inspired by the police riot that broke up protests during
the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
I
actually knew Ochs from us being together on Eugene McCarthy’s 18th floor of
the Conrad Hilton Hotel after the Chicago 1968 Democratic Convention had ended,
and I sat on the floor across the hall from him as he played guitar and sang,
shortly before the Chicago cops raided us, tear gassed and arrested us in what a
Presidential Commission would later call a “Police Riot.”
Ochs
also wrote “Crucifiction,” that’s described as: “About the rise and fall of a
hero, and the public's role in creating, destroying, and deifying its heroes.
The song usually is interpreted as an allegory likening the life and
assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy to the career of Jesus,
although the song may refer to other heroes as well.”
According
to Jim Glover, Phil Ochs kept his connection with his Ohio State Air Force ROTC
lieutenant and reported on his activities, especially those involving his
support of Castro and the FPCC in New York, which received written
communications with Oswald and sent him pamphlets and booklets.
Glover
says that on the day of the assassination Phil was in Dallas, at Dealey Plaza,
and that there is a photo of him standing by the Dal-Tex building on Houston
Street, right where he said he was. Phil told Glover he was told to go there
“as a national security observer,” and when he got home later that night, told
his wife that he felt his life was in danger and he had a fear he was going to
die.
Former college roommate Jim Glover says this is Phil Ochs at Dealey Plaza
Ochs
later took on the name of John Train, the name of a real CIA official who
worked out of New York City, whose offices were used by CIA agents to debrief
George deMohrenschildt before he went to Haiti shortly before the
assassination. Train has said he never heard of Phil Ochs or his use of his
name.
Ochs,
while using the John Train pseudonym and persona, hung himself.
DYLAN
AND JFK
Meanwhile,
Bob Dylan was deeply affected by the murder of JFK and often played a classical
LP that he felt appropriate.
When
Dylan received the Thomas Paine Award, he dedicated it to the students who were
traveling to Cuba against US policy, and went out of his way to mention the
assassination of the President, and was booed by the audience when he said he
could sympathize with Oswald – much like music master Leonard Bernstein (who did the music for West Side Story) and was booed
when he said that we know JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy but don’t
want to admit or acknowledge that.
Dylan
told Kurt Loder in a Rolling
Stone Magazine interview that Martin Luther King and the Kennedy
brothers are spiritual icons who planted seeds that are still growing today. “I
don’t know what people’s errors are: nobody’s perfect, for sure,” Dylan said.
But I thought Kennedy, both Kennedys – I just liked them. And I liked Martin
Luther King. I thought those people who were blessed and touched, you know? The
fact that they all went out with bullets doesn’t change nothin’. Because thee
good they do gets planted. And those seeds live on longer than that.”
And in
his autobiographical Chronicals Dylan
recounts how his mother told him she saw JFK when Kennedy visited Hibbing,
Minnesota during a campaign tour, which led Dylan to say that he would have
voted for JFK for just visiting his hometown. Dylan’s mother and father Mr. and
Mrs. Zimmerman, were in the audience when he performed at Carnegie Hall. Dylan
had legally changed his name from Robert A. Zimmerman to Bob Dylan in 1962 and
arranged for his parents to be in the audience for the Carnegie Hall show, a
big step for him to go from playing coffee houses, cafes and nightclubs to
performing solo at Carnegie Hall.
At the
time of the assassination, “Dylan was on his way uptown to see (his manager Al)
Grossman on the afternoon of Friday, November 22, 1963, when John F. Kennedy was
shot in Dallas,” writes Dylan biographer Anthony Scaduto (Bob Dylan, New American Library, p. 186), who quotes Dylan as
telling him, “I watched it at my manager’s office. The next night, Saturday, I
had a concert upstate (New York) in Ithica or Buffalo. There was a really down
feeling in the air. I had to go on stage, I couldn’t cancel. I went to the hall
and to my amazement the hall was filled. Everybody turned out for the concert.”
“The
song I was opening with was ‘The Times They Are a Changing” and I thought, ‘Wow,
how can I open with that song? I’ll get rocks thrown at me. That song was just
too much for the day after the assassination. But I had to sing it. My whole
concert takes off from there.”
“I know
I had no understanding of anything. Something had just gone haywire in the
country and they were applauding that song. And I couldn’t understand why they
were clapping or why I wrote that song even. I couldn’t understand anything.
For me, it was just insane.”
According
to Scaduto, “When he returned to the Village he, (girl fiend) Suze (Rotolo) and Carla sat
and watched the national tragedy through the rest of the weekend and into the
Monday morning funeral. Like so many across the nation, they were engrossed in
the events unfolding before them: the murder of Oswald, the funeral, the
continued replays of the death of Kennedy, the confirmation of a new president,
the widow refusing to change her blood-soaked dress because she wanted the
world to see her husband’s blood, to see what it had done. Through it all Dylan
sat and watched and said little, just feeling the emotion of it. He drank a
little wine, and played Berlioz’s Requiem over and over.”
“I
didn’t feel it any more than anybody else,” Dylan said. “We were all sensitive
to it. The assassination took more of the shape of a happening. I read about
those things happening to Lincoln, to Garfield, and that it could happen in
this day and age was not too far-fetched. It didn’t knock the wind out of me.
Of course, I felt as rotten as everyone else. But if I was more sensitive about
it than anyone else, I would have written a song about it, wouldn’t I? The
whole thing about my reactions to the assassination is overplayed.”
“Yet,
despite Bob’s denial,” says Scaduto, “the murder did have an enormous effect on
him. He signaled that feeling to very close friends, and a couple of weeks
after Kennedy’s death, Dylan gave a disastrous speech that indicated how much
the assassination had troubled him. He went to the grand ballroom of the Hotel
Americana in New York to accept the Tom Paine Award of the Emergency Civil
Liberties Committee for his work in the civil rights campaign.”
Dylan:
“As soon as I get there I feel uptight. I began to drink. I looked down from
the platform and saw a bunch of people who had nothing to do with my kind of
politics. I looked down and I got scared. They were supposed to be on my side,
but I didn’t feel any connection with them. Here were these people who had been
all involved with the left in the Thirties, and now they were supporting civil
rights drives. That’s groovy, but they were giving money out of guilt. I got up
to leave and they followed me and caught me. They told me I had to accept the
award. When I got up to make my speech I couldn’t say anything by that time but
what was passing through my mind.”
As he
put it that night, while reportedly quite drunk: “So, I accept this reward -
not reward, (Laughter) award in behalf of Phillip Luce who led the group to
Cuba which all people should go down to Cuba. I don't see why anybody can't go
to Cuba. I don't see what's going to hurt by going any place. I don't know
what's going to hurt anybody's eyes to see anything. On the other hand, Phillip
is a friend of mine who went to Cuba.”
Dylan
said: “I'll stand up and to get uncompromisable about it, which I have to be to
be honest, I just got to be, as I got to admit that the man who shot President
Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don't know exactly where —what he thought he
was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I too - I saw some of myself in
him. I don't think it would have gone - I don't think it could go that far. But
I got to stand up and say I saw things that he felt, in me - not to go that far
and shoot. (Boos and hisses) You can boo but booing's got nothing to do with
it. It's a - I just a - I've got to tell you, man, it's Bill of Rights is free
speech and I just want to admit that I
accept this Tom Paine Award in behalf of James Forman of the Students
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and on behalf of the people who went to
Cuba.” (Boos and Applause).
From the
toast of the town to being booed and shunned by liberals, Dylan decided to hit
the road, literally, and drove cross country to perform few college dates and
visit a few new places, including New Orleans French Quarter, Oswald’s old
neighborhood, and Dealey Plaza in Dallas where Kennedy was killed.
When
Dylan was looking for Dealey Plaza and the first few Dallas
pedestrians couldn’t direct him to the spot, Dylan was perplexed, and then
finally found a pedestrian who directed them to the site and said, “You mean
where they killed that son-of-a-bitch?”
In Dallas,
as did the Beatles and David Crosby, Dylan went
to Dealey Plaza to see where President Kennedy was killed. The
Beatles ducked in the back of their limo as they drove past the Texas School Book
Depository Building and Grassy Knoll and then retired to their rooms
at the Dallas Cabana Hotel, where some of the witnesses and suspects had
famously stayed on the weekend of the assassination.
Bob
Dylan was impressed by those young American students who went to Cuba to
support the Cuban Revolution despite the legal restrictions imposed by the
government making such travel illegal. Dylan met some of them at a New York
apartment, introduced to them by his girlfriend Suzie Rotolo.
Among
those who Dylan met was Corliss Lamont, leftist radical writer and author of a
pamphlet “Crime Against Cuba” that was distributed by the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee (FPCC), copies of which were handed out by Lee Harvey Oswald in New
Orleans in the summer of 1963.
It has
been alleged that the specific copies in Oswald’s possession were numbered
copies that were in a batch that, according to Lamont’s records, sold and sent
to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Warren Report says Oswald got
Lamont’s pamphlet from the New York City office of the FPCC, which was then
being targeted by the FBI and CIA, as were the students who attempted to break
the travel to Cuba embargo.
When
Castro visited New York, stayed at a Harlem hotel and addressed the United
Nations, CIA-Cuban G-2 Double Agent LICOZY-3 was ostensibly recruited and
identified only as an American student from Philadelphia who went to Mexico
City, and was later terminated as an agent by Phil Agee while he was still a
faithful CIA officer.
Fifteen
years later, when investigators from the House Select Committee on
Assassinations (HSCA) requested specific CIA files, they were given practically
everything they asked for, except the names of the Double-agents in Mexico
City. Based on public records and recently records released under the JFK Act,
some researchers suspect LICOZY-3 to be Steve Kenin, an American student from
Philadelphia who was in New York when Castro was there, went to Cuba, met and was photographed with Fidel Castro and
went to Mexico City.
Kenin and Castro in Cuba
Kenin
also knew Suzie Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend who had introduced Dylan to the pro-Castro
Cuban crowd in New York City, as she attended the same upstate New York summer
camp as Steve Kenin and his twin brother Elliot, both of whom were aspiring
folk musicians. The Kenin brothers owned a music store just around the corner
from Rittenhouse Square.
Some
other curious events stand out from the recently released records, including
reports of Oswald’s sudden and inexplicable appearance handing out FPCC
leaflets in Philadelphia at Rittenhouse Square in the summer of 1963 when the
Quebec to Guantamano March passed through.
The same
marchers had previously marched from Quebec to Moscow in the name of peace and
nuclear disarmament, and passed through Minsk when Oswald lived there, but it’s
not known if they met. A few weeks later, when they got to Washington D.C., one
of the marchers, amateur boxer Ray Robinson got into a fistfight inside a
parked car with former CIA officer Wilcox, who testified before the HSCA that
he handled a secret fund for Oswald when he was stationed in the Marines in
Japan.
After
passing through New York City, where they met with FPCC activists, the marchers
arrived in Philadelphia where they had a rally at Rittenhouse Square when
Oswald was reported to have handed out his leaflets, and just around the corner
from where Steve and Elliot Kenin ran the Guitar Workshop.
Steve
attended Temple University where one of his professors had relocated to Cuba to
teach at Havana University during the revolution, after which he traveled to
Cuba, met and had his picture taken with Castro, and wrote about his
experiences for the Temple student newspaper.
Steve
Kenin also edited the program for the first Philadelphia Folk Festival and did
the same for the Newport Folk Festival the following year when Dylan famously
performed. So Kenin knew Suzie Rotolo from summer camp, personally knew Dylan from Newport,
and named his son Dylan.
Among
the songs Dylan wrote around that time was,
“Goen’ to Acapulco.”
In 1963
Steve Kenin took off on his motorcycle to ride around Mexico and wrote an
article about his adventures for Motorcycle Magazine and visited Acopolco and
Mexico City where he reportedly met Lee Harvey Oswald.
In
Mexico City Steve Kenin stayed at a Quaker hostel “Cassa d’Amego,” which is
owned and supported by Philadelphia Quakers, and he hung out at a Mexican
restaurant near the American embassy that was popular with other Americans,
including Oswald. According to a Mexican lawyer who was there, he last saw
Kenin ride off on his motorcycle with Lee Oswald on the back, heading for the
Cuban embassy to try to get visas to Cuba.
Oswald
did go to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in a failed attempt to get a visa to
Cuba, and at the Cuban embassy he dealt with a Syliva Duran.
Shortly
thereafter two other young Americans in Mexico City also contacted Sylvia Duran
in an attempt to get visas to Cuba, and while there, reportedly attended a
Twist Party at Duran’s apartment, a party also attended by Lee Harvey Oswald. This is the subject of a book, "A Cruel and Shocking Act" by Phil Shennon, who tries to use the Twist Party as a means of falsely linking Oswald and Castro, an active CIA disinformation campaign that continues today (via Shennon, Bob Baer, Gus Russo, Max Holland, et al).
While Shennon didn't learn the identities of the two "gringos" who were also reportedly at the party and were scene with Oswald the next day, I did.
Of
the other two Americans, one was recognized as a movie actor Richard Beymer -
the star of the then popular West Side Story, which includes the music of
Leonard Bernstein, who was also profoundly impacted by JFK’s murder.
Beymer
was accompanied by a friend, the owner of a Manhattan bar that featured live
music who also knew Bob Dylan. Tracked down and questioned about the CIA records
that mention him and the Twist Party, Beymer was quite surprised by the whole
thing, not having been questioned by anyone before.
Yes, he
went to Mexico City and Acapulco in 1963 with his friend, the owner of a
Manhattan bar, and yes, they were young and footloose and fancy free and may
have attended a Twist Party at a private apartment, but no, he didn’t remember
Sylvia Duran or Lee Harvey Oswald. When the CIA's records of Cuban embassy phone intercepts were released under the JFK Act, one of them mentions that Beymer did call and asked specifically for Duran shortly after the assassination, and asked if she was all right, apparently aware she was violently interrogated by the Mexican police. Beymer apparently knew Duran much better than he let on to me.
Beymer's friend,
Bradley Pierce, owned a Manhattan bar, where Dylan and Ochs and other musicians socialized. Pierce became a Catholic priest, Father Brad,
and recalled to me, shortly before he died, that they were in Mexico on November 22, 1963 when the
assassination occurred, and since they were only there for a few weeks they
couldn’t have been in Mexico in late September and early October when Oswald
was there.
As for
Steve Kenin, he doesn't remember Oswald or giving him a
ride to the Cuban Embassy on his motorcycle, though he did try to get a visa to
go back to Cuba, but had probably left Mexico before Oswald arrived.
He is a
bit perplexed however, by what the CIA records say about him and the accounts
of witnesses implicate him with Oswald and Castro, as well as the photo of him
and Castro together that was published in his college paper. It makes one
wonder what would have happened if the story came out shortly after the
assassination, even if it wasn’t true, that Kenin had given Oswald a ride to
the Cuban Embassy and then the photo of him and Castro further connected Oswald
and Castro?
Could
that have been a psyops ploy to link Oswald, Kenin and Castro, and what would
it mean? I still don’t know what it all means.
I think
that the US government intelligence community - there are 17 federal
intelligence agencies, targeted politically leaning folk singers, song writer
and musicians like Dylan, Ochs and John Lennon, as they were considered a
threat to our national security, especially with the massive protests that they
inspired and participated in against the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights.
And
Dylan’s new song only brings these issues back to the table, where we have to
digest and decipher them, at a time of national calamity.
I still
don’t know what it all means, but am trying to figure it out.
If you
can please support JFKCountercoup and this work.
And many
thanks for those who have, both big and small, as you are keeping me going.
