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Bob Dylan's Life Work Being Scrutinized
Within English speaking countries the word culture has long been synonymous with the name Bob Dylan.
There are many interpretations of the definition of the word culture. One such definition describes culture as "the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively."
When referencing this definition with regard to the public's perception of Bob Dylan, we learn that Bob Dylan is the most revered celebrity on the planet by the intellectual community. In simplest terms M-o-s-t, R-e-v-e-r-e-d C-e-l-e-b-r-i-t-y (Most Revered Celebrity).
Please if you would be so kind focus on "celebrity". I'm not talking the most revered songwriter or the most revered musician I'm talking the most revered celebrity.
Dylan is the most quoted and chronicled celebrity of our time. It is that chronicling that establishes him as the most revered.
Dylan was hailed as a prophet by the mainstream media. "Prophet" Yes you read that right "prophet". So it would only be proper to pause here pay some homage to the prophet and give this accolade some thought.
We must pause here a moment and give thought to the portrayal of Bob Dylan being a prophet. Besides religious leaders of our day and not even the Pope is characterized as a prophet can I think of any one celebrity who has ever been portrayed as a prophet.
Of course Dylan modestly played this off which was what he was suppose to do knowing that the idea was fabricated by someone in his camp.
The whole scheme was semi subliminal as to have the vast amount of weak minded be persuaded by this concept. I mean come on who wouldn't want to listen to an album of songs written by a "prophet". Let's face it there is nothing more esteemed or flattering than being portrayed as a prophet even if it is just presented as a question or a comparison.
Dylan's 1979 release of evangelical songs under the title Slow Train Coming, baffled many of his devoted fans and adoring critics.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards saw it as an attempt to sell records, calling the proselytizing songwriter "the prophet of profit" which is precisely my point.
Dylan has always operated under the guise of the starving artist who refuses to relinquish his ideals for the opportunity to profit by relinquishing his persona to commercialism even though he's a muli-millionaire. But then he really blew it when blew it by advertising for Chrysler during a Superbowl commercial and also for advertising for Cadillac, and a few other corporations including Victoria Secrets, the latter being a mechanism to divert genuine Dylan secrets from google searches.
The word secret as in Victoria Secrets affords Dylan the opportunity to divert any Google searches having to do with any actual personal secrets Dylan would want to hide from his fan base.
Even more though being praised by the Beatles as being an idol Dylan reserves and secures the top spot in the genre of respect.
No other celebrity has been afforded the amount of adoration that Dylan has been afforded. College professors, actors, publishers. playwrights, editors, critics, reporters, producers including judges, politicians, senators and last but not least presidents, all hail Bob Dylan as the pinnacle of intellectualism. Every anybody who's somebody celebrity, Al Pacino, Robert Dinero, Robert Redford, Martin Scorsese, Bruce Springsteen, President Obama, President Clinton, etc. all speak in absolute awe of Bob Dylan.
When examining the reasons Dylan is so revered one must consider his position. Being a songwriter positions Dylan as a creator of original thought. It is this position that affords Dylan the great mantel of respect.
Throughout Dylan's fifty year cultivation of his mysterious subliminal persona there have been many secrets. Some of these secrets were and still are covered up by the mainstream media. One of the most damning secrets is that Bob Dylan does not write music. While being interviewed by Robert Hilburn of the L.A. Times Dylan stated:
“Well you have to understand that I’m not a melodist.
Melody Defined:
Melody is a sequence of pleasing sounds that make up a particular musical phrase. Normally anywhere from eight to sixteen consecutive notes repeated over and over again within the musical structure of the song. The melody line is sometimes referred to as the melody line. It is the part of the music of the song that is the most memorable.
Dylan
“Well you have to understand that I’m not a melodist. What happens is, I’LL take a song and simply start playing it in my head. That’s the way I meditate.” “I wrote ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in 10 minutes, just put words to an old spiritual, probably something I learned from Carter Family records. ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’ is probably from an old Scottish folk Song.” "I'll be playing Bob Nolan's 'Tumbling Tumbleweeds,' for instance, in my head constantly, while I'm driving a car or talking to a person or sitting around or whatever. People will think they are talking to me and I'm talking back, but I'm not. I'm listening to the song in my head. At a certain point, some of the words will change and I'll start writing a song.".......Bob Dylan
At first glance it appears that Dylan is being forthright by appearing to be honest about his song writing process which is actually a major form of plagiarism. A second glance tells us that the date of the interview was Aug. 4, 2004 forty years after the beginning of his career and after the release of many songs that were released under Dylan's name with no credit given to the original author.
Even if the songs was in the public domain there still was no reference on any of the albums liner notes or labels to that fact which was misleading to the public who just naturally thought that Dylan wrote the melody line to the song or music if you will.
And why would his fans think any different when the album stated written by Bob Dylan. Little did his fans know he just replaced the words to the song with his own words.
After a study of Bob Dylan's melodies it was learned that a very high percentage of Dylan's melodies were actually from preexisting melodies in which no credit had been given to the original author of the melody.
We know this by reviewing the actual label and sleeves of the album that states written by Bob Dylan with no mention of the original authors. We are talking about the most highly acclaimed songwriter in the world here. No other artist has had the amount of songs covered by other artists than Dylan.
For example it is uncontested common knowledge now that the melody line to "Like A Rolling Stone" was actually the melody line to an old anti slavery song titled "No More Auction Block". Dylan simply discarded the words to the old song and replaced them with his own words. The label to the record states that the song was written by Bob Dylan. There is no mention of the original author anywhere on the label or the album covers liner notes. There is also no reference to public Domain.
Dylan would have gotten away with this nefariousness had it not been for the internet. When the internet hit people started scrutinizing the origins of his songs. Feeling betrayed his fans started posting the similarities one by one until an avalanche of damning evidence was common knowledge.
After forty five years of profiting from royalties on stolen melodies it was this phenomena that persuaded Dylan to come out and admit the truth. After careful crafting a statement he called for an interview and released his statement which included the information that he is not a melodist.
Rolling Stone magazine actually published an article "Dylan's Greatest Thefts"
For decades Dylan simply credited himself on the entire song and mislead the public to believe that he had written the entire song including the music which he had not written. In some instances Dylan stole music and lyrics verbatim.
For decades Dylan's song writing process was a nice big fat cash cow bringing in an enormous amount of money. All in all he had been accused of plagiarism in more than two hundred incidences.
When Dylan's music plagiarism issue started getting a substantial amount of publicity he released a series of paintings in which he blatantly plagiarized another authors work as a diversion to the plagiarism issue. The painting plagiarism issue would fill the Google searches. He apparently thought it would look better to his fans to be accused of plagiarizing paintings instead of songs.
Rolling Stone magazine stated:
The paintings in Bob Dylan‘s “The Asia Series,” which are currently on display at the Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan, have come under fire for their resemblance to widely available pre-existing photographs. The series of paintings, which are said to part of a “visual journal” made by the singer during his travels through Japan, China, Vietnam and Korea, have been compared to famous photos by well-known photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Léon Busy.
“The most striking thing is that Dylan has not merely used a photograph to inspire a painting: he has taken the photographer’s shot composition and copied it exactly,” wrote Dylan critic Michael Gray in a post on his blog, Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. “He’s replicated everything as closely as possible. That may be a (very self-enriching) game he’s playing with his followers, but it’s not a very imaginative approach to painting.
More damning evidence of plagiarism surfaced when a hand written Bob Dylan poem was being auctioned off at Christie's and someone realized that the poem had been written by someone else. The article reads below;
Dylan "poem" on sale was actually Hank Snow song
Daniel Trotta
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A “poem” purportedly written by a teenage Bob Dylan and up for auction at Christie’s is actually a song written by the late Canadian country singer Hank Snow, the auction house said on Wednesday.
A hand-written poem believed at the time to be by a teenaged Bob Dylan and signed Bobby Zimmerman is seen in this undated handout photo from Christie's Auction House May 19, 2009. REUTERS
Christie’s announced on Tuesday the sale of the hand-written poem believed to have been written in 1957 when Dylan was 16 and away at Jewish camp.
Christie’s failed to detect that the words, with a few minor variations, matched those of a song previously recorded by Snow, who died in 1999 at age 85. Reuters discovered the lyrics matched the Snow song when alerted by a reader. Reuters then informed the auction house.
“Additional information has come to our attention about the handwritten poem submitted by Bob Dylan to his camp newspaper, written when he was 16, entitled ‘Little Buddy.’ The words are in fact a revised version of lyrics of a Hank Snow song,” Christie’s said in a statement.
“This still remains among the earliest known handwritten lyrics of Bob Dylan and Christie’s is pleased to offer them in our Pop Culture auction on June 23.” The manuscript had been expected to fetch $10,000 to $15,000. Christie’s said Dylan, still using his given name Robert Zimmerman, signed the piece Bobby Zimmerman and submitted it to the Herzl Camp newspaper. The editor of the paper kept it for more than 50 years and recently donated it to Herzl Camp, a Jewish camp in Wisconsin, Christie’s said.
A Motive
It was revealed in a Bob Dylan interview with Kathryn Baker In the late 80's that Dylan was experiencing writer's block when Ms. Baker published in her article the following statement "he (Bob Dylan) didn't have enough material of his own for an album"
When deposed Ms.Baker testified:
Mr.Kramer: You then continue without quotes: "The other reason for the others is inevitable: He didn't" that's d-i-d-n-'t, as in did not "He didn't have enough material of his own for an album." Did Mr. Dylan say those words?
Ms. Baker "I went back in the transcript and I was paraphrasing him and that's not entirely accurate. He said he didn't have enough songs that he wanted to put on an album."
This interview was given to Ms.Baker on August 5th 1988.
Elliot Mintz Bob Dylan's media relations liaison was asked Have you ever lied to James Damiano?. Mr. Mintz who testified "yes" was present at the Baker Dylan interview which was held over dinner at a restaurant in Beverly Hills. Part of Mr. Mint's duties were to read the interview and clear it for publication which he testified under oath that he did.
There are many interesting twists and turns in Mr. Damiano's movie "Eleven Years" which cites by comparison many of Dylan's blatant plagiarisms.
Damiano had been working on materials with Dylan's producer's and publishers at CBS in New York. At the time it was a seven year association that actually continued for a total of eleven years. The association started in the later part of the 70's.
An article written by Jonny Whiteside explains:
FOLK LIES: Joni Mitchell Outs Bob Dylan
by Jonny Whiteside
Big Hollywood
April 28, 2010
"Bob [Dylan] 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."
- Joni Mitchell, Los Angeles Times, April 22, 2010
Caterwauling Canuck "folk singer" Joni Mitchell got just about everybody riled up with that sweet morsel of self-serving insight, but the real shock is not that Mitchell is absolutely correct but that someone finally came out and said it. After decades of carefully manicured deification by Columbia Records, brain-dead rock critics and the slimy elite institution that elevated such barely able snake-oil salesmen as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger to celestial heights, it's high time to flout indoctrination and examine Dylan's track record as a Grade-A phony.
Most Dylan fans would be stunned to realize that his vocal style (for lack of a better term) was high-jacked, in its entirety, from long-dead bluegrass-country singer Carter Stanley. We're not talking about an influence, like Lefty Frizzell for Merle Haggard, but a total appropriation of Stanley's highly idiosyncratic approach. A counterfeit from the get-go, once Dylan realized what an advantage his audience's innate ignorance was, he's exploited it ever since.
Just type "Bob Dylan plagiarism" into your friendly search engine, and a plethora of questionable circumstances pop up, enrobing the singer almost as completely as his years of reflexive media fawning have.
Documented from his teenage start, when he submitted a hand written, thinly revised version of country star Hank Snow's "Little Buddy" for publication as an original poem, to his 1963 pilferage of Irish poet Dominic Behan's "Patriot Game"'s melody for the similarly slanted Dylan tune "With God on Our Side" to songwriter James Damiano's ongoing multimillion dollar copyright infringement suit (alleging Dylan's Grammy-nominated "Dignity" is nothing but an altered version of Damiano's "Steel Guitars") to the naked "Red Sails in the Sunset" melody heist for the song "Beyond The Horizon" on his Modern Times album, up through the recent Confessions of a Yakuza-Love & Theft plagiarism charges (Love & Theft? Calling Dr. Freud!), the Timrod controversy, even the numerous passages of Proust and Jack London that (re) appear in the text of Dylan's autobiography, it's a deep, dark thicket of thoroughly damning and apparently chronic bootlegging. Naturally, Dylan has said nothing publicly about any of these, but he already spent over three million dollars defending himself against one-time affiliate Damiano - the classic delay-to-destroy court room technique.
Defenders and apologist have an extraordinary array of excuses on Zim's behalf, from use of "literary allusion" to his building a "cultural collage," or that his "borrowing" is "homage," to the more deliciously desperate "he obviously doesn't NEED to do it" (strangely, though, he always has).
This instamatic, Clinton-ian excuse making serves only to further polish up the shine on Dylan's teflon hubris and to underscore the blind, Pavlovian worship which he has long enjoyed. Let's face it: as a lyricist, Dylan is crap, inarguably unworthy beside, say, Hank Cochran, Chuck Berry, Mickey Newbury or Jimi Hendrix ("All Along the Watchtower" plays as a lead balloon even for Hendrix, nearly deflating his Electric Ladyland masterpiece).
While we're endlessly told that "The pump don't work / cause the vandals took the handle" is vintage Dylan worthy of class room study, in truth it's little more than the wordy spew of a peripatetic rhyming dictionary who'll hang any phrase together as long as it fits. Metaphor is convenience, not expression for Dylan.
His songs have also treated women quite badly: the entire attitude of "It Ain't Me, Babe" is ugly; "Just Like a Woman" is nothing short of misogynistic, but, worst of all, Dylan's sheer verbosity has ineradicably stained American pop music, and we've all had to suffer through the post-Dylan legacy of long-winded nonsense ("American Pie," anyone?).
The real tragedy is that none of these very well-documented and nigh irrefutable plagiarism charges will ever emerge from the shadows, as the Cult of Zimmerman's hulking form casts a very, long one.
Even when the Hank Snow rip-off stared the world in its face, the strongest reaction was a nervous giggle and murmurs of youthful indiscretion. To capitulate the carefully constructed myth of folk music and Dylan's subsequent installation as rock & roll's poet laureate is unthinkable, a hot, hit-the-panic-button nightmare for generations of quiescent "hipsters" never weaned from the million-selling Dylan teat. His socio-cultural mystique is also an industry-manufactured sham, one that very handily diverted attention away from genuine political stink-stirrers like the MC5 or the lysergic guerilla warfare of the 13th Floor Elevators.
As a junta-backed counter-culture figurehead, Dylan is ideal: a harmless, unoriginal patsy, a cute insouciant whose relentlessly self-involved stance never threatened anyone, save for the hazard of the droning lip service endlessly paid him. We should all praise Joni Mitchell for this overdue call-out (just don't ask us to listen to her records), but it's unlikely that any in the Zim Cult will even consider the ramifications of her statement. But when you pile it up with all the rest, there's a single conclusion to be made: Bob Dylan is an artistic (and ethical) fraud, one whose own fear of creativity has long since given way to an apparently lifelong practice of emulating his superiors by vampirism, siphoning off their intellectual blood and using it to top off his own under-baked efforts. Weirdly, even then, the results have been scarcely palatable.
Damiano turned down a forty five million dollar movie deal to be able to keep the publishing rights to his lifes work. It's an astonishing David and Golliath story that's still in the making.
Produced During The Discovery Phase of Damiano’s Half a Billion Dollar Federal Plagiarism law suit with Dylan
On June 16th 2009 the following letter was sent to Bob Dylan’s Attorney Orin Snyder written by James Damiano’s Attorney in the Bob Dylan Damiano Plagiarism suit “Robert Church” regarding boxes of James Damiano’s songs produced to Bob Dylan during discovery
There were approximately fifteen to twenty five boxes filled with anywhere from 200 to 400 finished and unfinished songs in each box (thirty five years of writing) that were never returned
Dear Mr. Snyder:
I have one other matter. Mr. Damiano informs me that Steven Kramer (James Damiano’s lead attorney) had several boxes of songs delivered to Parcher & Hayes during the discovery phase of his case against Dylan. Mr. Kramer never made copies of the documents, since I am presuming he felt pressed to comply with an overdue discovery request. Mr. Damiano informs me that he has never had all the original songs returned to his possession, even though the case is over. If you don’t mind, please explain what you can recall about Mr. Damiano’s song production. Do you still have songs unaccounted for? Can they be returned?
Sincerely
Robert Church
Mr. Snyder has never replied
JULIE LEVINE an attorney and writer for the Cardozo Entertainment Law Review did a scholarly article titled" Lo and Behold" DOES TOLERATED USE GIVE AN INCENTIVE TO PLAGIARIZE? AN EXAMPLE THROUGH THE MUSIC OF BOB DYLAN.
Additionally, ruling that a qualified reporter’s privilege existed regarding an interview Dylan gave where he claimed he had writer’s block demonstrates the willingness of courts to protect the big name musician instead of the original composer, thereby endorsing a minor form of plagiarism.
However, protecting Bob Dylan in this one instance may differ in a case where the musician is not well known or does not have a reputation of borrowing from other musicians since the beginning of his career. Indeed, Bob Dylan disclaiming he has writer’s block can give rise to an inference for a reasonable jury to believe that it is more likely that he copied Damiano’s song if the jury heard that he had writer’s block, as compared to the jury not hearing that he had writer’s block.
Therefore, by deeming the requested evidence in the motion to compel irrelevant, it is not clear whether or not Bob Dylan did in fact plagiarize James Damiano’s song or was merely influenced by his music.
Hence, if Damiano’s musicologist’s theory had been presented to the court and was believed as true, it is very possible that Bob Dylan plagiarized James Damiano’s song.
On the other hand, if a contrary theory was presented, one that does not involve the Schenker analysis, it is possible that Bob Dylan was only influenced by Damiano’s song and used that influence to write Dignity, not to copy Steel Guitars as his own.
Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether the court endorsed Bob Dylan’s potential plagiarism because of whom he was or if the court was willing to turn a blind eye to the alleged plagiarism.
This court’s behavior further demonstrates how a court tolerating the use of another’s song may give an incentive to plagiarize. If a court is willing to dismiss a motion to compel discovery that could prove plagiarism, a court may very well do the same for another musician, even if he or she is not as well known as Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan fooled the world for decades claiming to have written many of the melodies to his hit songs when in fact most of the melodies were from preexisting songs that he did not write, including Blowin In The Wind.
In a last nail in the coffin scenario James Damiano's movie "Eleven Years" draws the straw that breaks the camel's back, rivets Bob Dylan to his secret past of plagiarism and rewrites musical history"......Virtue Films
It is uncontested by Bob Dylan and or Bob Dylan's law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, Parcher Hayes & Snyder, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Hecker Brown & Sherry including Mary Jo White, Steven Hayes, Jonathan Liebman, and Sony House counsel that Bob Dylan and people in Bob Dylan's entourage have solicited James Damiano's songs and music for over ten years.
Few artists can lay claim to the controversy that has surrounded the career of songwriter James Damiano. Twenty-two years ago James Damiano began an odyssey that led him into a legal maelstrom with Bob Dylan that, to this day, fascinates the greatest of intellectual minds.
As the curtain rises on the stage of deceit we learn that CBS used songs and lyrics for international recording artist, Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan's name is credited to the songs. One of those songs is nominated for a Grammy as best rock song of the year. Ironically the title of that song is Dignity.
Since auditioning for the legendary CBS Record producer John Hammond, Sr., who influenced the careers of music industry icons Billy Holiday, Bob Dylan, Pete Seger, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan, James has engaged in a multimillion dollar copyright infringement law-suit with Bob Dylan.