Bob Dylan: Plagiarist?

Perhaps Joni Mitchell was on to something when she trashed Bob Dylan in an interview with the Los Angeles Times last week, using words like “plagiarist,” “fake,” and “deception.”

 

He's been knocking off, for decades. If Woody Guthrie hadn't existed, Dylan's nowhere.

 

I never understood why Dylan is considered this great songwriter. Listen to the words of some of his songs...like "Hurricane" for instance...just plain badness. "We want to pin this triple mur...der on him, he ain't no Gentleman Jim." WTF is that? If he wasn't stealing lyrics maybe he should have been.
When he wrote "Like a Rolling Stone" he must have caught lightning in a bottle. However, I do like Jimi's version better. Live at Winterland...check it out.

 

I remain a fan of his earlier work, but his pre-70s stuff largely dwarfs most of what came later.

 

Then I am not even going to attempt to explain it to you.

 

I buried this on an old Dylan thread, so I'll add it here:

Pretty interesting: Dylan accused of "plagiarizing" some famous photos in his paintings:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/questions-raised-about-dylan-show-at-gagosian/?hpw

 

Busted.

 

I always just assumed this because those were the songs I knew best, but he has incredible songs all throughout his career.

There's no place on radio for them, so they'll never be the "classics" of his early work, but the span of his songwriting career is unmatched by anybody.

Oh, and yeah, he's "borrowed" throughout his entire career.

 

Yeah, "Street Legal" is awesome. So, of course, is "Blood on the Tracks." He was never the cultural force he was in the '60s again, but he certainly kept pumping out a lot of outstanding songs and albums.

 

Keep going. All the way to 2001, at least.

 

"Love and Theft" came out on Sept. 11, 2001. I bought it that day. It felt really weird to do it, but I think I was attempting desperately to do something normal that day.

 

That's the album I was referring to.

I probably didn't hear it for four years. Great album.