Joni Mitchell made some inflammatory comments regarding Bob Dylan in a recent interview with the LA Times: “Bob is not authentic at all: He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.”
Juli Weiner at Vanity Fair suggests that Mitchell's comments might stem from some discoveries that I made regarding Dylan's use of material from the poet Henry Timrod on his album Modern Times.
The plagiarism portion of Mitchell's comment doesn't interest me that much, but I am intrigued by the notion of Dylan and deception that she brings up. Much of Dylan's recent work does involve elements of deception, much in the same way that the work of Penn & Teller or Ricky Jay is about deception. Dylan has been engaging in puzzles and games and false surfaces and things that are not exactly what they seem. It is not something to put down, it is something to celebrate and marvel at. It is a major aspect of his work. One place that he does this extensively is in his memoir Chronicles: Volume One.
One puzzle, a hidden commentary of sorts, that Dylan has incorporated into Chronicles: Volume One is, in part, about Joni Mitchell. In the book Dylan writes this about the recording of his album Oh Mercy -
Chronicles: Volume One, p. 216:
I wasn't sure that we had recorded any historical tunes like what he had wanted, but I was thinking that we might have gotten close with these last two. "Man in the Long Black Coat" was the real facts. In some kind of weird way, I thought of it as my '" Walk the Line," a song I'd always considered to be up there at the top, one of the most mysterious and revolutionary of all time, a song that makes an attack on your most vulnerable spots, sharp words from a master.
==
The phrase "mysterious and revolutionary" is the key to a puzzle. It is not a commonly used phrase, if you hunt you will not find that many examples. When I narrowed down the examples of usage of that phrase in conjunction with songwriting I was left with only one other person who had used it, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. It turns up in a biography of Joni Mitchell. I believe that Dylan chose it specifically. Here is the passage in context:
Joni Mitchell: Shadows and Light by Karen O'Brien, p. 128:
Each 'relationship' song is held up to the light, scrutinized, examined for clues and hidden secrets, energized by a reluctance to accept mystery, to accept that it's good to be puzzled sometimes, that it's a gift not to be presented with the transparently obvious time and time again, because in that space created by not knowing, we can imagine, we can relate, we can endow work with the value, if any, that it holds for us. Significant writing uses mystery, abstraction, subtlety and skill to enable us to do that. As the writer and critic Susan Sontag observed, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art and the world: 'To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of "meanings"'.
In the coming years, Mitchell would express her frustration at the often wildly inaccurate theories about her lyrics and their subjects, theories that destroy the listener's ability to make the song their own. Michael Stipe of REM has articulated the same frustration:
I really don't want to reveal anything about a character
or a song because I can remember, as a teenager, a
record falling into my lap, and how magical and mys-
terious and revolutionary and unbelievably life-altering
even one song on a record like that can be. I would hate
to diminish or be unfaithful to that notion. Plus, I main-
tain that my take, my interpretation of what my songs are
about, is, in the whole world, the least important take. I
wrote them but that does not give me some divine insight
into their meaning.
The best possible response, however, to the question "What are your songs about?" was vintage 60s Bob Dylan: "Oh, some are about four minutes, some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve," he replied.
==
I laughed out loud when I first found this, it is a very clever joke. Karen O'Brien has credited Dylan as having the best possible response to people's reluctance to accept the mystery of songs and Dylan deflects, using the words of Michael Stipe in response. That the passage that drew Dylan's eye also includes mention of "clues and hidden secrets" makes it even more rich. For attempting to be the Sherlock Holmes of the old, weird America I was rewarded with an example of Dylan's wonderful humor and a poke in the eye for playing detective at the same time.
I am sure that some would dismiss these three words as mere coincidence, but I think that this is no coincidence. Dylan's entire memoir is structured in this manner, from cover to cover. To try open the minds of those who may say "nay" to my theory I present something else that Dylan has done in the very same sentence. Dylan ends the sentence by calling "I Walk the Line," "a song that makes an attack on your most vulnerable spots, sharp words from a master."
I present that tail end of the sentence in question is clearly lifted from the work of Jack London.
White Fang:
White Fang was in a rage, wickedly making his attack on the most vulnerable spot. From the shoulder to wrist of the crossed arms, the coat sleeve, blue flannel shirt and undershirt were ripped in rags, while the arms themselves were terribly slashed and streaming blood.
All this the two men saw in an instant. The next instant Weedon Scott had White Fang by the throat and was dragging him clear. White Fang struggled and snarled, but made no attempt to bite, while he quickly quieted down at a sharp word from the master.
==
I've written an article for New Haven Review that should be published soon that explores many of Dylan's other puzzles, including his extensive use of the work of Jack London throughout Chronicles: Volume One.
When it comes to this approach to composition Dylan is in good company, James Joyce once wrote, "I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man for that seems to me a harsh but not unjust description." When the full range of Dylan's scissors and paste work is revealed I believe that there will need to be a complete reevaluation of his memoir.
Joni Mitchell's comments regarding Dylan's authenticity brought to mind a 1939 Billboard article that Nick Tosches included in his book Country. It points out that, "synthetic hillbillies are as a rule more desirable in a night club than the real ones." The article begins with this wonderful passage: "Real hillbillies rarely have good night club acts, says Meyer Horowitz, who ought to know. Jewish and Italian hillbillies usually outshine all others on showmanship, he says."
Authenticity has been out for more than seventy years. Synthetic scissors and paste hillbillies with a sense of showmanship are in - and I'll take Dylan's night over Mitchell's day every time.
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You're on to something, so keep it up.
ReplyDeleteGreat line at the end of this "I'll take Dylan's night over Mitchell's day every time." Love it!
ReplyDeleteThe work of art that deals most directly with deception is Renaldo and Clara. The very first scene shows Dylan in a plastic mask that reveals but also deceives the viewer. "You can almost think that you're seein double." A real masterpiece! But not many people were 'right there with it' when he painted it.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting hypothesis, but I'm not entirely convinced. But as the first responder notes, you might be "on to something"...
ReplyDeleteBut be careful; taking a phrase like "mysterious and revolutionary" out of context, and seeking similar examples of their usage is a fool's game that dates back to the 1960's, kind of like acid: sometimes is will reveal a truth, but usually it will just disorient and confuse and mislead.
Take Stipe's quote, for example... He didn't say "mysterious and revolutionary", he said "magical and mysterious and revolutionary and unbelievably life-altering", which doesn't quite carry the same gravitas as Dylan's more abbreviated remark. Did Dylan read a semi-obscure Stipe quote and deem it worthwhile to encrypt onto one of his own albums?
Dylan, like most articulate and erudite speakers, tends to avoid speaking in cliches. They make up descriptives on the fly, carefully but instantaneously choosing the most appropriate word. This is why there's not a lot of uses of "mysterious and revolutionary" on the internet; Dylan was trying to explain Cash's song and choosing two succinct words to describe it. I can see both words being taken separately to describe "I Walk the Line". It could indeed be called "mysterious"; it really didn't resemble anything else out at the time (Cash was an innovator like Dylan), kinda rockabilly, but not really. Kinda country, but not really. A unique and bold vocal that stood out from anyone else. What exactly was it?
It was also "revolutionary"; it seems on the surface to be so straight as to be square, but under the surface there is an edgy, threatening undercurrent to it. The song defined Cash in an instant, thus it helped to define the future of rock and roll. It probably had a profound influence on Dylan when he heard it the first time. It influenced a lot of people, even non-musicians.
Another possibility to consider is that he obviously has been reading a lot over the last few decades, if not his whole life. There was that flap a few years back about many elements of "Love and Theft" being lifted or paraphrased from a Japanese Samurai novel. I think it is likely that Dylan would have read Jack London. Sometimes when we read a particularly inspiring piece of literature, phrases stay with us. "attack on the most vulnerable spot" and "sharp word from the master" are both phrases I've heard used in other contexts, and are the type of lines that might stick in your head if you read them somewhere. Dylan could have been unconsciously invoking London, or repeating similar phrases he had heard in a different context, or speaking off the cuff and creating his own coincidental rewording of these ideas.
We also need to consider the underlying message here. Why would he be invoking Stipe or Jack London? You present a plausible way of reading it, but also a random one. Is Dylan really trying to make a point with cryptographs? To whom? Puzzle enthusiasts?
Again, this leads us down the muddy 60's path of over-reading lyrics, which is what Stipe is cautioning against. Maybe that's the joke? ;-)
This is an excellent blog post, and I hope you continue to explore your hypothesis; I'm not saying you're wrong about it, I'm just not convinced you're right. It makes for good reading though, so keep it up.
Joni is just pissed off at BOB. He one covered her song - and impoved it - and that got her head to inflate.
ReplyDeleteNow HE says his favourite song writer is John Prine (and rightly so - JP is light years better than Joni) ... and she is just plain jealous... and she takes it out on the Grand Master of song writing.
HE is more humble calling himself "A song and dance man". Who made her judge ????
So let me plagiarise: "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
OK. You feel scorned. But it still is a cheap shot Joni. Why sink so low ????
IT'S A COMPLIMENT JONI... I'd hazard to guess most singer/songwriters would be flattered being compared to Bob. Joni probably hears comments like, "the female Bob Dylan" a lot and that is probably irratating after a while as she is brilliant, original, and innovative. Her works should be celebrated without to need to bring up Bob. Fair enough. It is the very fact that Bob researches the subjects he sings about and reads a lot that adds substance to his songs. In an interview in Guitar magazine he wrote that he likes to take phrases and twist them around to get a different spin - so he admits as much. The title to the album LOVE AND THEFT as implies that art is lifted. I think all great artists stand on the shoulders of their influences. Dylan has so many musicaly and literary influences - this in part makes his music interesting. Lighten up Joni - some of your works are great but your comments about Bob make you seem petty.
ReplyDeletehey Scott, this is really great stuff. i look forward to reading that piece. i love the idea of Dylan making obscure references (tributes) throughout Chronicles as he gives explicit homages at the same time.
ReplyDeleteJohn K., you make a lot of great points, but in reference to who Dylan would be making these obscure references, cryptographs and puzzles for, i would say it is for himself. he's been doing it the entire time we've known him.
I think it probably cracks him up, but is also inspiring to him. like an outlaw he walks this line of homage/tribute and theft. and while some stuff is being figured out, i think Scott is right, that we are looking at the tip of the iceburg with him. in a sense, Mitchell is right, but if she is serious about her remarks she is missing the humor and the point. AND she is not acknowledging the love Dylan has for those he references. it's not like he is oblivious to the fact that when things are discovered they shine light on those who her references. take his cover albums and liner notes. he makes a very convincing case that he truly believes in songs (and art) and wants to play his part to make sure they live. that said, the fact that so few of his hidden references have been found, has got to give him a kick and inspiration. Scott's right to key into the deception aspect of this. for my take, not only is this stuff real funny, as in hilarious. and, he really has been doing this his entire career. and as much as he has "hidden" things he has clearly been forthright in his acknowledgements at the same time. these puzzles are just fun. whatever it is, is an amazing gift that doesn't feel like a Led Zeppelin theft, not that they didn't have love too. it's something different. maybe he kind of summed it up best when he titled an album "LOve and Theft." which is pretty funny that he is saying that. i wonder if once everything is finally unraveled many years from now, we will also see how he was telling us what he was doing the entire time he did (even though we didn't get it). then, we can laugh in amazement with him, for the gag was great we are better for it.
interesting work...turn your study also to films...like "F for fake" by Orson Wells (one that Mr. Dylan himself suggested in a Theme Time Radio Hour)
ReplyDeleteMr. Dylan is maybe as frustrated that we don't seem to get it that he indirectly, but pretty boldly, plays songs, clips and more in his radio show that elude to borrowings - he wants us to get these; and he seems to want us to take in the whole original works.
In the end it's like finding a needle in a haystack - well, just burn the haystack.
Oooops - was that just plagiarism? who said that again? "What was it you wanted?"
Interesting information. I think the whole thing about Bob and Joni is probably just some 'market adjustment' that was inevitable - Dylan has been doing this stuff forever, and the reverence that people have for him has always been so high, that's it's not realistic. He's been given god-like status - there's Bob and then there's everyone else. So some degree of backlash had to happen. I personally think that his so called plagiarism isn't that - he steals like a jazzman or a blues man... there's no rules in those musical forms to exclude freely borrowing from other sources. Dylan's just more clever at it than most. What disappoints me though, is that he's carried the practice over into Chronicles. When you're lifting lines from novelists, that's something different. There's no history or practice of it, if you do use something by another writer, you acknowledge it within the story or novel. I was one of the few people who was less than impressed by Chronicles. I found it to be very inconsistent in voice, and when these marvelous sentences came out of nowhere, in the midst of some pretty unremarkable ones, I was jarred. I put it down to sloppy editing, maybe he didn't allow it to be touched. But it may be worse than that, it may be that we find that all the good lines are stolen. And as a fiction and prose writer, that troubles me. Literature ain't the same as the blues. I'm not saying one's better, I'm just saying the rules are different.
ReplyDeleteWill, the world of literature is full of allusions and references to other works. I don't even know how to imagine books without them. If Dylan is lifting entire sentences, that would be bizarre. But he's not. He's using phrases for their power in evocation and allusion. If you don't catch the Jack London reference, then that's OK. It's still a great couple of lines to describe a Johnny Cash song. But if you do catch the Jack London reference then you get all the feelings that this evokes. London plays with the mythos of man in the wilderness and what sorts of primal nature that draws out of him. Dylan is talking about a similar thing with the Cash song. It's timeless, it's mysterious, it hits you in a primal way. Dylan's always talking about stuff like that.
ReplyDeleteBooks aren't published full of footnotes. After scholars and critics read them for a while and dig up all the allusions the author included to other works - including all the familiar phrases from famous literature - then the footnotes are added to the scholarly editions and we can all read their source work and try to piece together their thought process. Then you slip into the over-reading issue that we've been discussing, but it is great fun and insightful too. One day someone will do that with Chronicles and it will be chock full of footnotes.
Finally, I don't think we have to worry that all the best lines are lifted. Dylan has proven himself to be good at coming up with great lines for decades now. I don't think it was sloppy editing either. I think he wanted it to read in many places as if he was casually talking. You can hear his voice, or at least his performer's voice, in the prose.
Scott, I have been following your work on Dylan for quite some time and find it fascinating. Far from being a grubby attempt at outing a 'plagiarist,' I find it greatly illuminates Dylan's work and provides real insight into what is a remarkable artistic method. Two questions: is it your contention/suspicion that 'Chronicles' was composed entirely in collage-like fashion? And do you have any plans to extend your work into a full-blown critique of late-period Dylan? I for one hope you do.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous
ReplyDeleteYou aren't masked, are you? Well, see, now there's a reference to Dylan, but it isn't stealing a line. In literature, of course there are countless references and cross pollination of stories and plots. Shakespeare took most of his plays from other sources, at the least took bits of things from other stories and plays and incorporated them into his plays. There were a million Raymond Carver copyists in the 80's. Authors may put in allusions to other works as homage or as reference points or to make them richer, but what Dylan did in Chronicles is something different, which was steal sentences or phrases he liked and splice them into his book. This practice is accepted in the blues and in song, but it's really not accepted in literature, unless, in quoting another book, you nod to that book, or make some indication that you're quoting something. A character could, for instance, quote from another work and not say where it was from, but it's there as a quote, and the game is to figure out where the quote came from. Dylan is stealing images he likes and putting them into his book. Now, authors may see an image another author uses and rewrite it, recast it in another way, built on it, extend it etc. But Dylan's really just cutting and pasting here, and that does constitute plagiarism, in my book. it's slight, but it it was journalism and he was dong a bio of someone else, he'd be fired and shut-out of journalism. Luckily, he's writing about himself, so he can't get in trouble, but it's still very gray area, to my mind. All of the rest, in the songs, that's fine, that's how he works, it's a time honored tradition. This is something different.
Is this thing jinxed? I wrote a post; glad I'd only been typing 10 mins max, but it mysteriously got SELECTed ALL and vanished. This was as a result of trying to rectify the fact that it refused to let me treat it like a word processor, inserting some words further back. It wouldn't allow the characters, PLUS it then insisted on inserting a gap I couldn't remove. Like a bloody-minded dog trying to lick my hand when I don't like having my hand licked, instead of biting my hand in a strop it nuked the post.
ReplyDeleteCut and paste indeed. Scott, nuke this in a couple of days but leave it here for now as a kind of propitiatory sacrifice to expiate my Old Testament-like wrath against this interface?
About marvelling at Dylan's effort in lacing Chronicles with London & Nabokov refs etc whilst also marvelling at why it took so long: well he doesn't use computer/wp. Or so people on the web have tended to think. Scrawling/ using a typewriter (like he did in 60s) would drive me berserk. But if Dylan had a typewriter back then, he could well have a pc now. I mean, can you buy typewriters any more? And why wouldn't Dylan, for whom money is no object (while much of his unnecessary income relies on hardup bobcats forking out for travel and accommodation too), NOT have a pc? And who has a pc without a web connection? Someone out of work maybe. Jakob would certainly be wired up. So although Dylan would love us to think he is too busy and doesn't care, he could easily read blogs like this. He called a critic who reads this blog a jerk, so he must have read his work. In fact when the third vol came out in 2000 I was salivating as I had been hoping for this for years. I went straight to You're a Big Girl Now to see if there was any acknowledgement of this.
ReplyDeleteWhen you bite off more than you can chew you gotta pay the penalty
Somebody’s got to tell the tale, I guess it must be ...
Intertextuality indeed. And there's loads more of it. In fact, undiscovered Dylan sources wrote lines about Dylan's critics before those critics were writing about Dylan or even born. But Dylan is like that.
Now it could be Dylan who has bitten off more than he can chew. I wrote a post yesterday, the second nuked one, on logic distortion/moving goalposts by these people on here and quoted critics who claim interpretation reduces. This is not true; it only reduces if it is wrong interpretation or Webermanesque non sequitur along the lines of: 'I am extremely angry with Dylan for having let us down by not being a left-wing anarchist, so I will reading Nazism and anti-semitism into the lyrics to get back at him while masquerading as a scholar ahead of my time'.
Up to Bob; down to Michael: textual intercoarse. Love & Theft: this is not just about words. With the web now in every bobcat's home, the textually transmitted virus has gone global. And, of coarse, when it is DARK NOW, the virus will have gone/go totally global. Why? Because it will only have just begun.
ReplyDelete'Nobody does what I do, maybe in a hundred years when I'm dead and gone ... ' (To Mick Brown, 1984, interestingly at the very time Dylan had very recently written some 'embarrassing fourth-grade schoolboy attempts at poetry')
I'm going to name the most major, to my less-than-omniscient knowledge, 'undiscovered' source for/influence on Dylan:
ReplyDeleteA Stranger Nobody Sees ...
Starting to get the picture? 'I'm a stranger here, and no one sees me. Except you'. I had wondered a few years ago if it was possible Dylan was referring to that stranger when he had sung, 'You're the one that reaches me, you're the one that I admire ... ' Not necessarily, but these are in any case the sorts of games Dylan plays.
No one has ever read that person? Of course not, ie they have. But at least 3 factors have to coincide:
i) the reader be into Dylan;
ii) the reader be reading that author and be somewhat into him/her;
iii) the reader have a glimpse-shovel mentality or good memory or preferably both, meaning s/he doesn't scream Judas! at a new possible insight;
Scott is not, or was not in the first instance, going round like a bloodhound of London. But being interested in the songwriting craft, rather like Dylan, once he spotted a couple of coincidences ... I mean, why did Confessions of a Stonewaller shoot up in sales by 20,000 after that EFL teacher in Japan nipped it in the bud? Because people wanted to find more.
Gonna break the roof in—set fire to the place as a parting gift
Did Junichi Saga have the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in mind when he wrote that? I doubt it. He's gonna baptize Bob with fire so he can sin no more. His repentance is plain, Jan. Standing by God's river his soul is beginning to shake. He's got more than a lifetime to spend loving ... Who? Women who give him the creeps?
Masquered Anonymous
I've looked at Dylan plagiarism from both sides now
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I was staying at someone's house, a former Dylan nut who seemed to have invited me down under a Dylan pretext so as to try to convert me to Catholicism. Not a chance. But I mentioned I had been reading a Dylan book recently published; I mentioned it because she started going on about the name Dylan and how it means the sea in Welsh, and how she had once sent in an article on it to a Dylan mag and never had a reply. Well, I said this book covered that. Her response? 'The baaaaastards, they take the material and just use it without acknowledgement'. I said, 'Steady on, this guy is not one of the Dylan mag editors and is himself into Dylan Thomas, so I don't think he has ripped you off. Anyway, Robert Graves covered this in The White Goddess which was published around the 1940s.'
Having said that, I don't trust Dylan mag editors. Especially ones that don't pay yet expect you to pay for their mag ...
Joni was long TANGLED UP IN BLUE & tight enough with Bobby from the late '60s through the '90s to share many a stage with him, and not because he needed her to further HIS career.
ReplyDeleteMitchell also toured with Dylan & FRIENDS (including Joan Baez, about whom she's also made derogatory comments) on his celebrated & ballyhooed ROLLING THUNDER TOUR in '75-'76. Moreoever, without a nod from Bob, it's doubtful she would have been invited to take part in THE LAST WALTZ, the legendary concert filmed by Martin Scorsese as a tribute to THE BAND who backed Dylan throughout the '60s.
Ms Mitchell's never been shy about covering Dylan's songs, including IT'S ALL OVER NOW, BABY BLUE. Likewise, Bobby must have thought enough of her to include an image of her iconic BIG YELLOW TAXI in his biographical Theme Hour logo.
Hope Joni soon gets back on her meds. After all, everybody must get stoned. ;)
From BLUE, Joni's 1971 lonely ballad to someone she calls "BLUE." Hmmmm
BLUE, songs are like tattoos
You know I've been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Hey BLUE, there is a song for you
Ink on a pin
Underneath the skin
An empty space to fill in
Well there're so many sinking now
You've got to keep thinking
You can make it thru these waves
Acid, booze, and ass
Needles, guns, and grass
Lots of laughs, lots of laughs
Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
Well I don't think so
But I'm gonna take a look around it though
BLUE, I love you
BLUE, here is a shell for you
Inside you'll HEAR a sigh
A foggy lullaby
There is your song from me
joni and bob are the greatest songwriters of all time. I can't think of another who compares. It's how they create and run lyrics together that is so ingenious. I wish I had that gift.
ReplyDelete