Phil was of his time, and so some of his songs don't resonate today -- in his early work he aspired to be a musical daily newspaper of the fight for REAL (not Bush-erstatz) freedom and democracy, and like a newspaper, some of them were very much for the day.

But a good many of his other songs resonate tremendously now, as we make all the mistakes we made then, America having forgotten the wisdom it learned the hard way -- in part through what he showed us -- in the 1970s.

He knew what he was talking about. He'd been to military school, and knew what true defense of your country means, and what it doesn't mean.

To my mind, the big point is how fresh and true many of his topical songs are for us today, as we struggle through Vietnam All Over Again. A hell of a writer, and if he was not a subtle singer, the times he sang for were pretty crude too, the lines drawn, as they are now, in stark relief.

After his political period Phil reinvented himself, mostly without commercial success. I will never forget his "Pleasures of the Harbor," and there are the songs of his gold lame period too. He's like many another singer who battered against the doors of pop and lost -- a tragic figure, who should, as someone said above, have been welcomed with open arms and should still be singing new songs about Iraq for us today.

Phil's much underrated, unfairly forgotten -- and he has a lot to say to us right here, right now, in the waning days of 2005, as our attempts at empire fall apart.

May he long be heard and enjoyed.

Bob