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The Sad End of the First Elvis Impersonator

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"I just can't keep up with Phil," Dylan said of his sometime friend in the mid-1960s. "And he's getting better and better and better."

In 1965, Phil certainly seemed star-bound. He was 25 years old and had sold out Carnegie Hall. He wrote the hit "There But For Fortune" for Joan Baez, and for every oppressed person of the earth, he had a musical battle cry.

Memories of Pigasus

You could only imagine the reaction when a man with credibility as an anti-war activist returned to Carnegie Hall in gold lamé to talk and sing about revolution. The jeering began nearly as soon as he stepped on the stage.

"Many friends tried to talk him out of it," said Michael Ochs, Phil's brother-manager. "I told him the audience wouldn't get what you're doing."

But Phil Ochs was losing hope in democracy. Thousands of flag-draped coffins were returning from Vietnam. Sit-ins, teach-ins, bed-ins and other tactics were getting nowhere. Worse still was the ever-increasing violence between police and protesters.

Ochs was no stranger to political theater. He bought the pig that the YIPPY protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago declared their candidate for president. The political swine was dubbed "Pigasus."

But the Chicago rally ended tragically. Watching police kick and beat protesters through clouds of tear gas sent Phil into a depressive spiral. He lost his ambition to write, sank into seclusion, and openly talked of suicide.

Then, in early 1969, Phil saw Elvis in Las Vegas, performing his old hits like an uncaged animal. The King was just reviving the stage act. Ochs was thunderstruck. He needed the man who fused black and white music together to unite and save America.

If middle America — Elvis country — could get behind the anti-war movement, then real change was possible.

Of course, the real Elvis would have nothing to do with hippies. So Ochs would wear the king's clothing, play the King's songs, mix them with his own message-oriented songs, as well as other rock and country hits, to find a new common ground for America.

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