The Mirror and the Scene

There is constant twittering about Bob Dylan and Plagiarism and I've often found myself on both sides of the argument, at first on the wrong side, until I come to my senses that is. 

There is a link somewhere on the expectingrain.com forum for Classic Interviews Vol.3 which cover the periods 78 to 81. In one of the 1981 interviews, Dylan explicitly talks of how European and particularly UK audiences appreciate his material, specifically his older material because they are inately familiar with the Scottish/Irish/English Ballad form.

He then goes on to state openly that many of his early songs are taken from those ballads. He lists Masters of War, The Times They Are A' Changin, Girl From The North Country... Of this we all know already, and there are many more significant songs we could add to Dylan's list.

Clearly Dylan has always used the folk process as a way of creating new works of Art. I think if you're as good as Dylan is it's possible to do this legitimately and thoroughly. He has taken the process and moved into the realms of both the popular and the obscure songs in his work and of course into painting and writing non-fiction (or is it fiction?) in Chroincles Vol I. There is no question that Chronicles was a delicately researched project as Scott Warmuth knows. A book "meticulously fabricated, with one surface concealing another, from cover to cover".

I write songs myself but have never adopted Dylan's process consciously as such, however I'd imagine that if I did I would probably benefit as much as my work would because I would become inspired simply by being immersed in it. I would find something new and interesting to say from existing threads. "Sewing new dresses out of old cloth", as he said in Floater, which again was said by someone else in another context altogether.

Unconsciously of course anyone who is in the business of being creative will find they have been influenced, or because of a measured amount of experience, been transported to a new place with which to write and contemplate and will therefore in some way have borrowed inocculuously. In all cases this is growth. It only becomes plagiarism to me when the person commiting the plagiarism has no deeper knowledge of the area they're plagiarising, nor any true artistic intent. In other words sheer laziness and dishonesty. We can certainly vouch for Dylan's artistic intent, we merely need to look at his body of work.

Clearly his immersion in these materials and his exposure to many different things fed into this 'wellspring of creativity' he spoke of (60 Minuted interview in 2004) which created those unique songs that he says he wrote unconsciously, Mr Tambourine Man, Its Alright Ma, Gates of Eden, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands and so on. Of course by 1967 or 68 he claims the lights went out and he had to learn 'consciously to do what I had done unconsciously', giving Blood on the Tracks as his first successful proclamation of this new process. (This very process Dylan embarks on is in some ways covered in my favourite Jean Luc Goddard film Le Mepris, which is a self-conscious film of layers concealing layers.)

So Dylan's education and sensitivity, which must have exploded when he arrived in NYC in 1961, and his use of other sources along the way is the main reason we have Bob Dylan. Without it, he's not there, he's gone to borrow from his lost unfinished Basement Tapes gem I'm Not There. In effect, its those little threads that make us all who we are, new dresses from old cloth, or atomically stardust. Plagiarised, if you like, from the universe.