The LATEST Dylan plagiarism panic

My friend John, from his perch atop the uTopian TurtleTop, has already weighed in on the sturm and drang over the revelation that some lyrics on Dylan's latest album are strikingly close to lines penned by an obscure Confederate poet. And I can't help but think, "Am I watching a rerun?" Three years ago, precisely the same hoopla was generated by the discovery that significant snippets of Dylan's cannily titled "Love and Theft" (nudge! wink!) were cribbed from a similarly obscure Japanese novel.

John does a great job of summarizing what Suzanne Vega writes in a New York Times Op-Ed piece as follows:

Suzanne Vega got it right in this terrific op-ed in Sunday’s “New York Times”: stealing lines is not part of the “folk process,” but there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you acknowledge what you’re doing, which Dylan will never do, because, as Vega says, he’s never pretended to be a nice guy. Explaining things is bad for mystique, and Dylan has always been about maintaining mystique.

Because John and Suzanne Vega are both accomplised composers with records under their belts (here's John's . . . record, not belt), I should probably defer to them on the point that John underscores here: appropriation = fine, lack of acknowledgement = not so much. BUT, I think that standard requires too much of composers (by which I mean writers and artists of all stripes) who may engage in the time-honored practice of leaving breadcrumb trails (sometimes interspersed with bits of red herring) that point toward their sources, and trusting the audience to sort it all out.

That's what Thornton Wilder did with "The Skin of Our Teeth" and he got savaged for it. Now it's Dylan's turn.

The bottom line for me is that Dylan's use of these snippets is NOT "plagiaristic" in that his use of the borrowed material is 1) limited; and 2) heavily transformative; and 3) (and perhaps most importantly) does not reflect a willful attempt to conceal the original author and thereby take credit for another's work.

GOOD University plagiarism policies have language that speaks to the "passing off" of another's work as one's own as the central element of plagiarism. Let's stipulate, up front, that Dylan is no dummy. Let's recognize, further, that he is probably aware that a) his lyrics are perhaps the most scrutinized of any English-language composer now living; and b) there is such a thing as Google.

So what, exactly, is Dylan doing when he embeds an easily-traced phrase or fourteen in the lyrics of his latest record?

It might be the case the Dylan is an unconscious magpie, who inadvertently coughs up a borrowed phrase from whatever he's reading as he sits down to write a song, but I think it far more likely that his use of the snippets is a knowing form of artistic play. While Dylan recasts the phrases he uses, the language is distinctive enough that those in the know will spot the borrowings. In the software industry, the term "easter egg" is used to describe a pleasant little surprise embedded within the architecture of a game or application. Clever users get a little something extra when they decode or uncover the location of the "easter egg." Dylan's borrowings are like easter eggs, in that they offer a direct answer to a question the Dylan routinely declined to answer (or at least answer seriously) in interviews, namely: "Who are your influences?"

While Dylan has always been cagey about describing his process and how he is influenced, in these plagiarism panics he offers a winking acknowledgment of his debts. And let's observe further, that by playing the game the way he plays it, Dylan cleverly shines a great big spotlight on the works he borrows from.

Today Amazon lists "Poems of Henry Timrod with Memoir and Portrait" at 12,360 on its sales chart. For purposes of comparison, Dylan's own "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" -- a work of comparitively recent vintage -- is at 60,230. And I'm sure a month ago sales of the Timrod text were MUCH lower.

Amazon has cannily linked the Timrod book to "Modern Times" ina "Better Together" promotion. And here's the text of the sole Amazon review of Timrod's book:

(FIVE STARS) Don't look for Dylan here, look only for Timrod's poetry, September 17, 2006
Reviewer: Rex Chickeneater "Rex Chickeneater" (Armenia) - See all my reviews
After all the noise about Dylan's supposed borrowing from Timrod, I thought I'd give him a look. What one discovers is thoughtful and colorful poetry of a 19th century man. No more, no less. For what it is, it is first-rate. Thanks to the Dylan furor, I never would have discovered him.

Exactly.

I hope to hell Dylan sees fit to plagiarize my book once it's out.

The Knack: And How NOT to Get It

OK, I was 14, white, and male in 1979, and this means that I was demographically obligated to purchase "Get the Knack." And I liked it. I still think the cover of Buddy Holly's "Heartbeat" is pretty good. And the record as a whole has a kind of jumpy energy (unfortunately larded with more than its fair ration of misogyny) that qualifies it as a really good powerpop record. Over time I've come to regard it as a musically great record with lyrics written by a preening jerk. I was even pleased to see The Knack in good form when I stumbled across their performance on "Hit Me baby One More Time." They covered a Jet song that was perfectly suited to their own style, and looked and sounded good considering the mileage on the odometer.

Well this news story sure appears to confirm my "preening jerk" assessment. Doug Fieger has initiated a lawsuit against Run-DMC for their use of the signature riff of "My Sharona" in the Run-DMC hit "It's Tricky," released in 1986.

So Doug Fieger is, in effect, asking us to believe that the last 20 years have been agony for him and his bandmates, as their precious song was cruelly ripped from them, reimagined and reconstituted, and they have been cheated, cheated of their rightful due, and they thought they could endure it until one fine day in 2006 Fieger woke up and said, "twenty years of torment is enough . . . I can bear it no longer . . . I must sue, sue and thereby restore the rightful order that is my right as a holder of intellectual property in the United States."

Here's what a court should say (but won't):

"Mr. Fieger, in 1986, your band's career was dead as a doornail. Your 1981 album "Roundtrip" was a stiff. And then you had the good fortune to have one of the most popular bands in the country, Run-DMC, remind everyone of how enjoyable your insanely overplayed hit 'My Sharona' was by incorporating a smidge of your song in one of their songs. Run-DMC thereby invested your overplayed hit with a fresh veneer of hipness and increased the marketability and viability of both the song and your band. By current standards, yes, Run-DMC would be required to secure permission for this use, but way back then, people hadn't figured out the legal niceties just yet, as you well know. There's a tenuous legal claim here, and yes, Run-DMC should probably throw you a buck or two. But don't pretend that you've been egregiously ripped off. The members of the band never concealed their use of your work -- here's DMC acknowledging the use in a 2006 interview -- because they knew they had brought enough novelty to the table to pass any fair threshold for collage, bricolage, reinvention. Further, your silence for twenty years leads this court to question the timing of your suit, and whether you belatedly noticed that the legal climate had OVER 20 YEARS changed enough to make a formerly unsustainable claim marginally viable. But the real reason we're throwing this case out of court with prejudice is as follows.

"Here is the cover of your debut album . . .



"And here is the cover of the biggest band in rock and roll history's American debut . . .



"Your band got a lot of mileage out of the comparison you invited with the image and the title of your debut. In short, you grabbed onto the Fab Four's coattails and rode them into the mainstream of American popular culture. And good for you. Many others have tried and failed to get this equation just right. You did it. You were both derivative and novel, and people found your particular formulation pleasing, and you are lucky enough to have a big enough pop hit that licensing fees should be delivering steady income to you and your bandmates for many years.

"But here's the thing. You borrowed at least as much -- if not more -- from the Beatles as Run-DMC borrowed from you. If you agree to turn over every dollar you win in this suit to the Beatles, then let's press forward. If, on the other hand, you view your reconstitution of the Beatles' image as a reasonable reinvention of the source material, and the kind of thing that ought not trigger a lawsuit, then be consistent, and be quiet!"

Fieger has just had an awful month, surviving life-threatening surgery and enduring the loss of the band's original drummer. One can only hope that this suit as an expression of Fieger having momentarily stepped away from his better impulses under understandably trying circumstances. Still, the spectacle of -- of all bands -- The Knack pointing the finger and shrieking, "DERIVATIVE!" is so fundamentally absurd that I will not let it pass without observing the laughable irony.