The originality and creativity of Bob Dylan, and the issue of copyright

 

By Tony Attwood

Think of Dylan in the early days of his work and surely for most of us our minds will be drawn to “Don’t think twice, it’s all right” and “Blowin’ in the wind”.

It is widely commented that both songs have a certain amount of borrowed material within them.  Using Wikipedia as a source we find the comment that “Blowin'” is based on the 19th century African American spiritual “No more auction blow for me”.  This has appeared in many different forms, including a version by Bob himself.

“Don’t think twice” has an original tune but it is suggested in Wikipedia that the theme may have been taken from a passage in Woody Gutherie’s autobiography, Bound for Glory, “in which Guthrie compared his political sensibility to newspapers blowing in the winds of New York City streets and alleys.”

Now these two points can give rise to questions about Dylan’s originality in his work.  Is he in fact often borrowing from the work of others?  And if he is, does it matter?

The question of Bob and creativity is one that we have considered many, many times on this site – but I am back with the subject today because of my continuing attempts to understand the essence of Heylin’s work “The Double Life of Bob Dylan” and his seeming reluctance to deal with the notion of creativity.  Indeed the index alone to volume two of “The Double Life” runs to over 40 pages and contains something like 3,400 entries – but no entry at all for “creativity” or “creative” or any word related to that subject.

Personally, I can’t see how one could consider Dylan’s work without considering the notion of creativity, and where his ideas and songs come from.  And I would have thought that is an especially interesting point in Heylin’s case because he spends so much time discussing Dylan’s life outside the world of creating and performing songs.  One might assume he would spend a bit of time thinking how Dylan’s life experiences affect his creative works, and how his creative mind works, in the sense of how the songs come to Dylan.  Indeed it would be interesting to know how Dylan’s approach to songwriting might vary from the approaches of other songwriters specifically, and other creative people in general.

Tucked away within this issue is the question of the use by Dylan of other people’s materials in his songs that I noted above.   Does that matter?  Does it reduce the value of Dylan’s work?  Should it be mentioned in the credits?  These again seem to me to be topics of far more interest, than many of those issues that are contained in the book.

But it is still interesting to pause for a moment and ask if Bob’s use of traditional songs in the formation of some of his compositions, should affect our judgement of his work.  Put another way, does it matter if Bob has lifted a melody or a set of lyrics from traditional songs?

Legally the answer is no: traditional songs are not in copyright and so can be used as one wishes.  In the UK the copyright on a song runs through the songwriter’s life and for 70 years after that.  Traditional songs of which the authorship is of course unknown are not covered by copyright.

In the United States works published before 1929 are deemed in the public domain.  But for works published between 1929 and 1977 the length of copyright control is varies and this is all a bit more complex for me, as a non-American and non-lawyer.  For work first published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on several factors but my reading is that in terms of Dylan’s work, virtually all if not all of his compositions will remain his copyright for either 120 years from its creation or 95 years from first publication – so really in practice I don’t think Bob has much to worry about.  But my grandchildren, should they wish to, will be able to record at least the earlier songs without paying any royalties.

But for now, if you want to perform or record a Dylan song, legally you have to pay him, although I don’t think his lawyers are likely to come after you just for singing “Don’t think twice” in a folk club.

But this is really just a side-issue compared to the main question of creativity – which is a word that can cause difficulties when people try to define it.  We can mostly agree that it has to do with doing or thinking of something that has not been thought of or done before, and in this regard we might say that the idea of taking “No More Auction Block” and turning it into a modern song is itself a creative act.   But this again raises issue, is taking someone else’s work or idea and using it in a new way, truly creative?  Or should the words like “creative” and “creativity” be reserved for something that is completely new?

And this in itself raises a further problem because we are, all of us, influenced daily by the world around us: how can we ever say we have had an original thought or idea when we can’t possibly recall each thing that we have seen or heard in the past?

Of course, we might argue that deliberately sitting down and listening to someone else’s composition and then manipulating it somewhat to create a new (but related) work, is not an example of either originality or creativity.  But since we have many of us heard thousands of songs, perhaps tens of thousands of songs, if we subconsciously recall a song or part of a song and start using that in a composition, does that mean our new work is not creative in the fullest sense?

It all seems a bit of a tangle, and certainly in the UK where I reside, there have been a number of legal cases in which a composer of a song has accused another composer of writing a new song which is so similar to the earlier work that it constitutes breach of copyright.  If you want one famous example you might think of the case of “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison which was very similar to “He’s So Fine,” written by Ronnie Mack, and which had been a hit for the Chiffons back in 1963.

The case went to court in 1976 and George Harrison was found guilty of “subconscious plagiarism” and had to pay around £1.25m or $1.6m to the publisher of “He’s so Fine”.   Harrison is quoted later as having said that the case was about “bitching between copyright people and their greed and jealousy.”  Perhaps not his best line ever.

Dylan and his publishers have also been sued over copyright infringement in the case of “Dignity” in which James Damiano claimed that Dylan had copied various elements of Damiano’s works and pasted them together to generate “Dignity.”

Now I am not a lawyer and I may have got some of this wrong, so if that is the case please do excuse me and indeed correct me if you have further information, but basically I think in this case the plaintiff lost his case and appeal that “Dignity” contained snippets of Damino’s work.  More than that the court then ordered that by making details of the case known the plaintiff had breached a court order which were deemed confidential by the court and not to be revealed beyond the court.  The plaintiff was found guilty of contempt.

As for me, coming back to “Dignity” after several years of not listening it, I still love the song.

If you are interested in the sort of issues raised here you might also like to take a peek at articles such as…

• Why does Bob Dylan write songs?
• ‘If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important… I don’t have to know what a song means.” Dylan reveals his approach to composition.  
• Does it matter if Bob Dylan copies other people’s words and melodies?
• On the criticism that Bob Dylan’s Nobel lecture was in part lifted from elsewhere
• Why can’t Bob Dylan appreciate which are his best compositions?

And in related arenas, especially if you have some spare time over the forthcoming holiday period we can also offer

• How Bob Dylan writes songs: 1 – The types of song
• How Bob Dylan writes songs: 2 – The origins of Dylan’s approach and style
• How Dylan writes songs: 3: “”I didn’t think I was doing anything different.”
• A classification of Dylan’s songs