Blogs by Flo Fitzpatrick
The "Making" of Remake the Song
10/17/2025 7:15:36 AM
Remake the Song:
This one was inspired by Phil Ochs, protest singer (1941-1976). But before I get into the where, why, and when…a confession. I am a music binge listener. Not in the way someone binge watches Seasons 1 through 24 of Midsomer Murders. Mine is more obsession with listening to one singer or piece of music to the exclusion of everything else, for weeks.
As an example, for the last month I’ve been on an “Aida” kick…the Broadway version; not Verdi.I workout to the soundtrack. I listen to it while answering emails or on Facebook or doing research for my next book. I sing to it when driving…which has to be a Cappella because I have no radio/CD player in my car. (Long story about battery draining and electrical glitches and not one bit relevant to the topic.)
Back to Mr. Ochs. In the spring of 2014, I was working for a company that investigated businesses for clients looking to do business with those businesses and wanting to know about Fair Practice violations. All online; working from home. My job was primarily doing tons of research and creating reporting on my findings, noting any red flags. One can get a little crazy doing that ten hours a day. Bring in the music.
At the time I was binge listening to all of Phil Ochs’ music from his earliest to last recordings. And of course, being the nutty researcher I am, I had to find out everything I could about Ochs, beginning with a basic biography. Found a wonderful documentary about his life called "There But For Fortune". Both book and DVD.
That life was pretty heartbreaking. He was bi-polar and primarily self-medicating with booze, which was edging him toward total schizophrenia. This brilliant composer, whose songs I firmly believe helped put an end to the Vietnam War and open many eyes and hearts to the realities of racism, took his own life on April 9, 1976. He was 35 years old. There were (still are) many people who believed he was murdered by the CIA who made his death look like suicide. Either way, it was a tragedy. I listened to my favorite composition of his, “No More Songs”, until my dog was ready to cut the power to my CD player.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaN68xBvck4 (Live version).
Reading about his life (and death) my romantic brain naturally kicked in. I found myself asking, “What if there was a way to go back in time and save this beautiful soul?” Unfortunately, there was no feasible or practical answer.
Fast forward to fall of 2023. The Wild Rose Press was set to release my time travel "Paris Nocturne" in March of 2024 and I needed a follow-up. I wasn’t binge listening to Ochs at that point, but still had several favorites of his bookmarked on my computer and pulled them up often. With a very divisive election looming in November, I kept wishing Phil Ochs was around to compose a few more biting tunes about politics. Still an impossibility given the realities of life and death (at least as we know them now!) But what I could do was create a heroine who could go back in time in an attempt to save the life of a singer as committed to the ideals of peace and justice as Ochs. A man who may have committed suicide…or may have been murdered.
The idea would work as the next installment in the Fiona Belle time travel series. But it lacked that something extra that could hopefully make it special, which is when advice from one of my acting teachers began pounding in my head. “Always pick the most dramatic choice for the character; not the simplest or most obvious.” The most dramatic choice needed to be even more outrageous than the concept of time traveling or somehow pack a more emotional wallop.
First, I retrieved the name, Shiloh Meridian, that I’d discarded for Paris Nocturne, thinking that Shiloh had a perfect “Seventies” vibe to it.
And I decided to begin the story with Shiloh as a 70 year old woman in 2025, who reverts to being age 20 in 1975 (thanks to Fiona Belle). Shiloh would be “youthened.”
(No spoilers…it happens in Chapter One 🙂)
It took me a while to get the folk singer’s name and I’m still not sure where Marcus Kennedy came from. But I wanted to be sure Marcus was in no way a clone or a caricature of Phil Ochs. The things the two men had in common was a fervent desire to oppose war, racism, and injustice, primarily through the use of their music. Totally different looks, personalities, and approaches to living.
Then I added the kicker…what I hoped would be a truly dramatic choice. Something very bad would have to happen to Shiloh in 1975. Something that would force her to choose between staying in 1975, never being able to be a professional dancer AND not knowing if Marcus would live or die... or returning to a nice life in 2025 without having changed anything in the past, with no memory of ever meeting him.
(Again, no spoilers…it’s even in the blurb 🙂 )
Finally, I needed a title. Again turning to Phil Ochs for inspiration, I listened to his paradoxically beautiful song about the horrific riots in 1968 at the Chicago Democratic convention, entitled, “William Butler Yeats Visits Lincoln Park and Escapes Unscathed.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qq4KTbiOd4
It was as if Phil’s spirit was guiding me. An untitled poem in “The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats” (1908) jumped out at me with a “this is it!” when I read the lines, “The friends that have it I do wrong, whenever I remake a song, should know what issue is at stake, it is myself that I remake.”
And I had Remake the Song.
Remake the Song https://bit.ly/43ktKNC
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