Jim Bowers
That Man in the Gold Lamé Suit offers a fresh, original, and dynamic examination of Phil Ochs, the often overlooked topical folk singer of the 1960s who wrote the soundtrack to that era’s antiwar movement and so much more. That Man in the Gold Lamé Suit explores who Phil Ochs was as he saw and understood himself to be; how he wanted to see himself; and how he wanted to be seen by others. In presenting this exploration of Phil Ochs, author Jim Bowers delves deep into Ochs’s personality to craft a narrative that allows the singer/songwriter to tell his own story rather than the story others would impose upon him. In letting Ochs tell his own story, Bowers in That Man in the Gold Lamé Suit provides the reader with insights into how Phil Ochs’s search for self came to define who Ochs really was and how it, in turn, shaped his music, his politics, and his relationships with such contemporaries as Bob Dylan.
