Original subtitles

He's now in South America with Jerry Rubin. Any travel status in Chile?

Nothing here, but find out. And locate the operating outpost of Camelot down

there. Check with Central Intelligence.

Read me in on Camelot. Allende's successor.

Didn't know he was due for one so soon.

The Pentagon thinks so. They're upgrading the South American armies, to

be sure.

I was very taken by the idea of Allende, and so I remember I suggested, Phil,

let's go to Chile for two months.

And Phil and I went.

And, you know, Phil was a complex person.

He drank a lot. We got in a lot of fights. We got more fights over the fact

that he would drink than anything else because it's boring for a non-drinker to

go have supper with someone and have them drink a bottle of wine before the

meal begins and then to get very aggressive and weird, you know. And Phil

was amazing because he has this very sensitive side of his personality that's

almost feminine.

And then in a second he'll turn into the most incredible male chauvinist, angry

person, and then he'll go right back to being so sensitive and shy you want to

just embrace him like a little child.

The heaviest thing I ever did in my life was organizing the Chile show. I was

doing a lot of world traveling, and I met Victor Jara, and I told him in

public that on October 11th of this year, Barricade Records' first release

is Victor Jara.

Victor was a folk hero, a folk singer in Chile.

Phil had met him on a trip to Chile that he took with Jerry Rubin several years

earlier.

Tremendously admired his music, loved his music.

Victor was captured right after the coup.

was taken to the stadium and was very severely tortured.

And this really spurred Phil on to doing something in honor of Victor.

About a week before the event, we were losing $18,000.

Sales were terrible, and it was partly because the advertising was very poor.

We spent money on advertising, but there was nothing very sexy. And even with

Salvador Allende, they didn't invite a lot of crowds.

When the rumors started that Dylan was probably going to show up, the garden

saw that. Okay, okay, we can cut the star-fucking-excitement now.

We're here for a political purpose.

We're here for a political purpose.

We're not here to see Bob Dylan.

We're here to see Salvador Allende.

Salvador Allende was overthrown and murdered in a military coup in Chile

headed up by General Augusto Pinochet.

Salvador Allende dared to unleash a torrent of reforms in Chile, including

the nationalization of several of the American-run copper mines.

Now he's slaughtered.

Victor Jara, the most famous folk singer in Chile, who was loved by all the

people in Chile, was tortured to death in the San Diego Stadium.

Ten years ago, we had a semi-military coup right here in the United States

when JFK was killed by a right-wing paramilitary squad.

Well, the same people who were in charge then are still in charge now.

I guess they're just going to keep killing everybody.

surely had a big effect on Phil because he really identified with Allende and I

think that when the coup happened it really motivated Phil and deepened his

very wrong view that life doesn't work because near his death Phil was an

advocate of suicide I mean he advocated suicide and I remember saying to him a

number of times I said Phil do you want generations of young people to remember

you as Phil Oakes the great singer or Phil Oakes the alcoholic who killed

himself because life didn't work out for him

After the Chile concert, Phil was at a loss for really what to do with his

life. At this point, the war was dying.

It was no longer a platform for him on the war.

He had done his Chilean benefit, and he was no longer committed to his music. He

had sort of given up on his music. He wasn't writing. He felt he had lost his

voice. And we all tried to find a place for Phil, to find something that Phil

felt that he could put all his energies in, and he had a lot of energies.

So I started working for Ramsey Clark, setting up concerts around the state,

and I got Phil to do most of them. Each event, it was a little nerve-wracking.

You were never quite sure if Phil was going to make it to the concert and then

if he would make it through the concert, but he did, invariably. And most of the

people that he was performing to were kids in college who had not grown up

listening to Phil. They were listening to heavy rock.

And the passion, which they had not experienced in college, because we had

all grown up with that in the 60s, but it wasn't there in the 70s.

I can see them coming. They're training in the mountains and they speak Chinese

and they spread disease. They want to hurt me.

They want to get me.

They want to break me down.

Oh, and sometime later when I feel a little safer, I'll assassinate

the president and take over the government.

The last time we...

we met was at Max's Kansas City and he was drunk as a skunk there and we were

bloated and everything and a bit burned out I was about to take off I knew I was

going underground very very few people maybe four or five people in the whole

country knew and I was headed to LA and I knew he had an apartment there so I

was going to ask him if I could use his apartment for two weeks while I

recovered from surgery

So I tried to approach him sort of delicately and I said, Phil, I'm going

to go away.

And I didn't say, I didn't come out and say it. And he drifted off and I'd say

something. As soon as he understood, he threw the glass of beer on the floor and

started jumping up and down on the glass. And I didn't exactly think he was

the best person to kind of have in an underground network and everything. It

was kind of a sad image I had of him as I was the last.

you know, image I had of him, I took off a couple weeks later.

always play with that idea of suicide.

You can see it in the songs all the way back to the beginning. There's constant

mentions of suicide throughout.

I know with the last conversations we had, I think the biggest reason was the

fact that Phil felt he no longer belonged. That when Nixon resigned, that

was like the last hate object. That was the last cause.

He lost sight of tomorrow.

He was depressed today, and therefore he'd be depressed tomorrow.

His constant, repeated statement was, oh my God, Denny, what am I going to do?

I'm going to die.

Hey, listen. Bobby says he doesn't want you to come along on the Rolling Thunder

tour. Stay home, Phil.

As you know, this is my final performance.

Once I knew a sage who sang upon the stage.

He told about the world.

I first met Phil in 1975.

I had just came up from Georgia.

He put on a couple of nights of concerts down at Folk City. It was called his

Farewell Performances, which he invited me to sing at that. It was kind of like

my debut in New York. And everyone tried to keep him from drinking during his

first set.

And it went very well, actually.

But by the second set, he had started drinking, and it was pretty much a

disaster. I think many people in the audience were disappointed.

He was having trouble remembering some of the words to his songs, and he was

doing a lot of songs that people didn't want to hear him do. People wanted to

hear Phil do Phil Oak's songs, and he wasn't giving them that. He was

promoting suicide.

He was saying, I want to die. He was telling us that.

But when somebody wants to die, what can you do for that person? He came in one

day, and as far as I know, there was no place in the village that could have

served him. But if he felt that he wanted to have a drink, he would come in

and bang on it.

On the bar and he says Mike they don't want to give him nothing to drink. Give

me a drink So as a rule, I never did refuse him. So that's why many times I

just give him a little watered-down drinks not to make him get too high and

I give him a drink then he wanted another one then he thought I talked

very loud and I said so say you're here you You're supposed to be my but my

buddy

He says, oh, Mike, I'm sorry. He says, but Donna, you're cheaper.

Why you don't want to give him another drink? He started getting very

belligerent. So he sort of cursed me out, and he grabbed him by my shirt, and

he ripped a part of my shirt. I got a little peeve, and I said, Phil, now I'm

going to do the same thing as everybody else did.

You just stay out of here, and don't feel that I'm afraid of you. So I

grabbed him by his arm, and I pushed him right out of the door.

I said, don't come in here, because I said, you...

I've been treating you like a gentleman. I said, but you do not like one now.

So he got through the street here, through the door, and he came back near

the window. The window here was open.

And he looked at me and he says,

Mike Poco, he says, one of these days if I catch you outside.

So I look at him, what?

So he says, he started smiling, he says, I'll buy you a drink.

So as he said that.

I felt so emotional, and I said, the guys are really, you know, some of it,

you know, I can't do nothing. I keep being mean to him on the day.

And a few minutes later, come in and we had a drink together again.

I saw Phil probably in the early winter of 76.

He seemed to be getting much worse, appeared to be like a schizophrenia.

something much more serious than just uh drinking you know it was a much more

deep deep rooted problem oaks was an amateur he never made a good record well

he was also smart to make bad records on purpose so they have their excuse and

they wouldn't kill him but see he knew that if he shouldn't he couldn't become

the beetle because if he ever became the beetle then they would kill him because

he'd be strong he could stop the war but if the war is over so now the real phil

oaks can emerge safely and his name is train he uh claimed to that he

was uh first he was luke train and i think later on he became john train or

vice versa i don't remember he claimed the mafia was after him so train killed

us and he did it painlessly split second he was dead by phil oaks

good riddance still around of course the sale from train he walked around

needing help and everybody saw it and nobody could get him to go for it people

tried there were a lot of people who tried to help him jerry rubin went out

of his way and he was terrific we went to see him one time and he offered to

take phil out to california to a friend of his who was a psychiatrist to have

him stay at the guy's house and let the guy help him free and no charge

Phil turned it down. And Jerry even offered to go with him. He said, if you

don't want to go along, I'll stop what I'm doing in New York and I'll go with

you.

And he said no. And Jerry even got him once as far as the door of Bellevue.

And then he chickened out and he walked away.

Couldn't handle it.

At that time, he was very manic. He was running around New York doing all kinds

of crazy things.

But there was no way to stop him. It was almost like he had a, it sounds crazy,

like a demon in him. He just had to get it out.

He was running like a wild person.

And then all of a sudden, I mean, he was getting thrown out of places and nobody

wanted to talk to him.

Not that I blame the people. I mean, he was in such a crazy way, I wouldn't have

wanted him out of my house at that time because he was acting so irrationally. I

wouldn't have wanted him around the children.

Came up to my place about a month before he died.

And he was in really, really bad shape.

Fell out.

And he was murdered.

And off he went, and that was the last I ever saw him.

I remember the last time I really saw Phil, he was walking down Hudson.

We'd gotten him out of jail that weekend, and he had a hoe for some

reason. He had a hoe and a spade, a great big old long-handled spade.

He was walking down the street, dragging the hoe, and had the spade over his

shoulder.

And he was kind of disheveled. He left his guitar with us that time. It was

five or six months before he picked it up. I was out of the country when he

picked it up.

He needed help, and he had always helped others.

He was hard to help.

But the tragedy is that there wasn't enough compassion of his kind to reach

him when he needed it.

And that's an indictment of...

All of us, I guess.

Finally, when it all blew over and he calmed down, then that's when he came

out to us. And at that point, it was as though the storm was over and the calm

had begun.

And the calm just became too calm.

I don't know if he was ashamed of what he had done, because he claimed that

he'd lost a lot of friends.

But his friends were still around.

The thing he kept repeating in the last conversations was...

that he felt that basically he always stood for a very tasteful career. It was

always like the only way to get results was to do it tastefully, you know, that

protest should never be ugly. In fact, one of my favorite expressions of his

was that in such an ugly time, the true protest is beauty.

And then he thought in the last year that he had become a very ugly,

despicable person. And he felt that he had really ruined everything with that

manic binge. And he felt that he had done things that were the antithesis of

what he had stood for all the years preceding.

But I think the main thing was that he didn't have control over his mind. He

was so depressed that he couldn't come up with a decision.

He had no opinions.

For somebody as opinionated as Phil, that was it.

I was in Woodstock. I think I picked it up in the New York Times, which is, Phil

would have liked that.

I was very shocked. I guess the saddest thing, I missed the guy. I wish he were

here now. He'd have a lot of material to be writing about. He'd have so much fun

writing about all the stuff going on now.

That's the worst part.

I was in Montreal, I guess, in 76, when I heard the news. So I

wrote a song, I wrote a song about it, because they asked me to participate in

the benefit, the memorial.

They were going to have to fill in New York, and I came. I was actually there.

I was scared out of my wits and got all disguised up.

Everybody recognized me, though, and knew it was me, and paid a tribute to

Phil.

Now he's gone, left us here to sing a song. What can I say?

The battle goes on.

I saw him there on Freedom's Trail.

Singing songs and making bail. We walked along through Georgia's mud.

Shouting out a racist grunt.

And left us here to sing a song.

Can't remember it all, you know.

It's all right.

In the green fields of turning, a baby is born.

His cries crease the wind and mingle with the morn.

An assault upon the order, the changing of the guard.

Chosen for a challenge that is hopelessly hard.

But the only single sign is the sighing of the stars.

But to the silence of distance they are sworn.

Then this overflow of life is crushed into a lie.

The devil's soul is ripped apart and tossed into the fire.

A smile of rejection at the nearness of the night.

Truth becomes a tragedy, lifting from the light.

The heavens are horrified, they stagger from the sight.

And the cross is trembling with desire.

They say they can't believe it. It's a sacrilegious shame.

Now who would want to hurt such a hero of the game?

But you know I predicted it. I knew he had to fall.

How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small.

Tell me every detail.

I've got to know.

picture of the pain.

So dance, dance, dance, teach us to be true.

Come dance, dance, dance, cause we love

you.

And the night comes again to the circles that it's

explodes as the falling stars rain. The planets are paralyzed, the mountains are

made, but they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blade.

With the speed of insanity, then he died.

Now, in case there are any doubts about my position in the war,

I've just been informed by KPFK

that the war is not over yet.

So we'll sing it again.

At the risk of being facetious to say sing along, but we better not.

Might look like a party meeting.

After this song, there will be a recruiting sergeant out there.

For those of you that are tired of anti-war songs, here we go again.

I must have killed a million men and now they want me back again.

in song.

Walking down an Alabama road, remembering what the Bible told.

Walking with a letter in his hand, dreaming of another southern land.

Walking down an Alabama road, and he went by the name of William Moore.

Now what are you doing, William Moore?

Why the letter in your hand?

There's only one southern land And he went by the name of William Moore

What price the glory of one man What price the glory of one

man What price the hopes What price the dreams And what price the glory of one

man Remembering what his grandfather

done

For the South in 61 A hundred years have passed by since then Now Moore is

fighting for the South again Remembering what his grandfather done

Remembering the time of World War II And the South

Pacific island that he knew Remembering the young men that he killed And the

praying that the guns of hate be still

Remembering the time in World War II What price the glory of one man

What price the glory of one man What price the hopes What

price the dreams And what price the glory of one man And they shot him

on the Alabama roll Forgot about what the Bible told They shot him

with that letter in his hand

he were a dog and not a man they shot him on the Alabama road

did you say it was a shame when he died did you say he was a fool

because he tried did you wonder who had fired the gun did you know that it was

you that fired the gun did you say it was a shame when he died what price

the glory of one man