Now, I’m not actually disagreeing with this, but it is the first time I’ve heard the accusation. I like Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin very much, but freely admit I have no taste and know nothing about music, so… there you are.
Anyway, I found a website that purports to have on display and cross-cited each and every incident of plagiarism in Dylan’s lyrics, but of the dozen examples I clicked through, they’ve all been things like: The Deer Hunter: heavily themed on Russian Roulette
Plagarized lyrics: The only game he could play was Russian roulette
and the incidental use of phrases like “tomorrow is another day”, “it’s not a house… it’s a home” and “I hope you die”. Color me underwhelmed.
Again, I’m not looking for an argument, but so far haven’t seen anything I’d even remotely view as plagiarism. Someone want to help me out, here?
Led Zeppelin cribbed a lot of lines from older songs. But I’ve never heard any similar accusations against Dylan. The usual complaint about Dylan is that he’s just stringing together nonsense which people then assume has a hidden deep inner meaning.
You can probably find several threads here about Led Zeppelin’s taking tunes, both from blues players and contemporaries, altering them and not acknowledging the originals until many years later, if at all. They are notorious for it. I don’t think even their true fans would spend much time disputing the claim. Claims, very much in the plural.
Dylan is a different case. There have been a few accusations of thievery over the years, but nothing I’m familiar with convinces me.
Never heard the Dylan one, but the Zep one is well known and valid- just google Led Zeppelin theives and you’ll get several sites- there are even entire complilation albums dedicated to those songs that “inspired” Zep. And then go to youtube and listen to the opening of “Taurus” by Spirit and think where have you heard it before, and note Zep toured with Spirit when they played “Taurus” years before Stairway.
But Zep’s is still the greatest, they just aren’t innovators- Elvis never wrote a song in his life, and he’s still pretty good.
A kid from New Jersey once claimed that he had written Blowin’ in the Wind and performed it at a school function a year before Dylan recorded it, and that Dylan either stole or bought the song from him. In actuality, the student did perform the song a year before Dylan recorded it, but the song- with full attribution to Dylan- had been allowed by Dylan to appear in a folk song magazine before he recorded it, which is where the student found it. Snopes has the story.
“Masters of War is a song by Bob Dylan, written in 1963 and released on the album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. It is an adaptation, with new words by Dylan, of Nottamun Town [4]. As with many of the major songs Dylan composed at this time, he often adapted or “borrowed” melodies from traditional songs. On this occasion however, he had borrowed an arrangement by veteran folksinger Jean Ritchie. The arrangement of ‘Nottanum Town’, unknown to Dylan, had been in her family for generations. Ritchie wanted an acknowledgement on the writing credit. This however was not to be the case, as Dylan’s lawyers payed her $5,000 to settle and agree not to make any more claims.[1]”
Dylan drew heavily on the style of Woodie Guthrie for his phrasing and his subject matter. Similar themes are going to evoke similar images, so the coincidental use of similar lyrics is to be expected. It would be like saying “oh, baby” used by one rock star is plagarizing another rock star’s hard work. Honkey. . . please.
The only accusations I have heard were against Love and Theft and Modern Times. The main problem with Modern Times appears to be that he covered a few folk songs, or at least “borrowed” the melodies, without giving proper credit. I think the whole thing is bullshit, myself. Folk Musicians have been doing that sort of thing for hundreds of years. I think we seem to be confusing an album with a College Term paper.
Love and Theft is where it gets kind of complicated. Apparently Dylan stole a few lines from the Japanese book “Confessions of a Yazuka” and put them in his songs. The guy that wrote the book said he was fine with it, if I recall.
Give the guy a break, I say. The man has probably written over a thousand songs and released around 30 albums of original material.
Dylan nicked tons of traditional songs in his early days. The tune of “Bob Dylan’s Dream” is “Lord Franklin.” And speaking of lords, “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” owes more than a little both musically and lyrically to “Lord Randall.” And yes, “Masters of War” is “Nottamun Town.” And as Neon Madman (great handle!) points out, Time Out of Mind was full of nicks from the Harry Smith collection. So what? They’re public domain tunes. Yes, Dylan did incur some bad feelings with other folkies (like Dave Van Ronk) about borrowing their arrangements, though I’d never heard about his having to pay out for the “Nottamun Town.” Who else pays Jean Ritchie for doing “Nottamun Town”? I bet Fairport Convention didn’t, and their version has the same tune.
I remember reading that the tune to “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” was stolen from a contemporary songwriter, but I don’t remember the details.
The fuss over Love and Theft was ridiculous. Dylan didn’t steal anything there; he salted the album with numerous references to the book as a sort of joke or puzzle. It must have been mind-blowing for anyone who was familiar with the album to read the book and discover all the familiar turns of phrase.
I think my post should be considered in the tone of the thread it was written in. But on Modern Times, he plays a song that is Muddy Waters’ Trouble No More. The music is the same, and the chorus is Muddy’s song is “But, someday baby, you ain’t gonna trouble poor me anymore.” Dylan’s chorus is “Someday baby, you ain’t gonna worry po’ me any more.”
I don’t mean to focus on the picayune stuff and I don’t think I mistake allusions for plagiarism. Saying he ripped off The Deer Hunter by writing about Russian roulette is stupid; by that standard there is no such thing as inspiration or coincidence, there’s only plagiarism. But the example above strikes me as plagiarism. I admit I’m not really a Dylan fan so I could be looking at this with a jaundiced eye.
Musicians have been doing this forever, I make no bones about that. But the standard today is that you have to credit people, and for my taste, I’ve heard too many people say “He doesn’t have to do that, he’s Bob Dylan.” That’s the really bothersome part - and while Dylan did get some press coverage for allusions/whatevers to another poet on the same album, I think a lesser light in the rock world would have been treated differently. I saw people give Dylan a pass while saying the Red Hot Chili Peppers ripped off one of Tom Petty’s songs, and the resemblance there was really faint. And I’m not talking about anybody on this site, by the way.
And a lot of folks have used the music from this traditional song…
I do seem to remember hearing once that Dylan bought a song from someone down on their luck, including the authorship, and so he put his name on something he never wrote. :dubious: Anyone else hear of this? For some reason Jerry Jeff Walker’s name comes to mind, but I may just be conflating a few stories.
Zep, on the other hand, borrowed lyrics and in some cases entire songs from bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson. Dixon sued them successfully over it. I don’t think that comment needs to be modified at all. They did sometimes credit people they were covering, but [del]a lot of the time[/del] (okay, I’ll be fair) on some notable occasions, they didn’t.
ETA: I originally said “old bluesmen,” but Wolf and Dixon were alive at the time Zep recorded songs that were theirs.
The part that they have in common is basically just one note repeated over and over in a similar rhythm. The “Look out kid, it’s something you did” part is not borrowed from Berry.
I don’t think the Stones ever outright took credit for “Love in Vain,” although they’ve gotten closer and closer over the years. On the LP pressing of Let It Bleed, it was credited to Woody Payne, the name under which the song was copyrighted. (This credit was dropped from the first CD pressing, which was obviously accidental.) A year later, on Get Yer Ya-Yas Out, it was credited as “Traditional, arr. Jagger & Richard.” Much later, when another live version appeared on Stripped, they dropped the “traditional” attribution and just said “Adaptation and new words M. Jagger & K. Richards.”