Bob Dylan
My Once Hero, Now Fallen

I first encountered Bob Dylan unbeknownst to me—Peter, Paul and Mary’s version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” to be exact. I loved the song, and I loved Peter, Paul, and (especially) Mary—who I thought was beauty personified—but I had no idea that Dylan had written the song.

Time goes by—a few months of it. An acquaintance of mine brings my attention to the man himself: had I heard about Bob Dylan? No. Oh, you’d love him. He plays me a couple of his albums, and from that moment on, Dylan was my hero.

I listened to and learned his lyrics; I learned how to play his songs on my guitar. I sang them a lot, both for myself and for appreciative others.

I virtually channeled the man—that’s hero worship for you.

Time goes by—a few years of it. It’s now sometime in the early 1970s when a friend of mine (from Poughkeepsie, New York, of all places—I thought she was pulling my leg: that’s a town?) who knew I adored Dylan told me that she didn’t care for him.

Bob Dylan is still very much my hero. How on earth does one go about not caring for him? A little angry but even more perplexed, I asked her why. He’s written some amazing songs.

Like? she wondered.

Well, “Blowin’ in the Wind,” for one.

Oh, she said. He didn’t write that one. He stole it.

What do you mean, stole?

He didn’t write it. He “borrowed” (and she aired that dual quote thing with her fingers) it from another folk singer and then recorded and claimed it as his own.

Preposterous, I said. Unbelievable, I said. How could you? Have you no shame? I thought.

She shook her head; even so, that’s what I heard.

We never really broached the subject again; agree to disagree, I believe, is the term.

Time goes by—another few years of it. Meanwhile, I’ve left Bob Dylan behind (after his “New Morning” album, which was the last old Dylan-like one in my view), and in the mid-1970s I found another hero: Joni Mitchell. Though I never compared them directly in my mind, side by side, so to speak, I always felt it in my bones that Joni Mitchell was more of a poet than Dylan ever was (and who I now had begun to view less as a poet and more as an amphetamine-driven word avalanche).

Mitchell’s rhymes were never forced (many of Dylan’s were), and her metaphors and similes were always frighteningly spot-on. If I had to choose between them for the proverbial desert island stay, there was no doubt in my mind: I’d go with the Joni Mitchell catalog.

Time goes by—a few decades of it. It’s in 2010 that I read an interview with Joni Mitchell in the Los Angeles Times. At one point, the interviewer compares her and Dylan as two similar artists, which, as it turned out, was not a good move, for the article goes on to claim that Joni Mitchell fiercely refuted this comparison and stated: “We are like night and day, [Dylan] and I. Bob is not authentic at all. He’s a plagiarist, and his name and voice are fake.”

Then she drove the nail all the way in: “Everything about Bob is a deception.”

The ghost of my Poughkeepsie friend taps my shoulder and clears her throat, pointedly. Oh, my God. Maybe Bob Dylan did steal “Blowin’ in the Wind,” after all. Joni Mitchell certainly would not put it past him, by the sounds of it. A plagiarist, she called him. Everything about him is a deception.

This was a little hard to swallow, but even while I shook my head, I had to admit that I would trust Joni Mitchell a lot further than Bob Dylan. Just one of those things in my bones—the marrow singing true.

More time goes by — a baker’s decade of it. And so, I arrive at recently, where during the end credits of a television show I was watching online I hear this amazing version of a song I immediately recognize as Bob Dylan’s “Restless Farewell.”

This, let me add, was one of my all-time favorite Dylan songs — in fact, it was one of two Dylan songs (the other was “Ballad in Plain D”) that for me made him authentic, to use Joni Mitchell’s term. Oh yes, it was “Restless Farewell,” all right, but (oddly) with slightly different lyrics and one or two minor melody differences.

My God, someone had ripped Dylan off, I figured.

This called for an investigation. So, I rewound the stream a little and listened to the song again, noting the lyrics closely. As far as I could make out, this version of “Restless Farewell” was called “The Parting Glass.”

I Google it right away, and it comes right up. The version in the show was sung by The Wailin’ Jennys and the song is definitely called “The Parting Glass” and, and, and: it was definitely a traditional Irish song.

And it was definitely a near-carbon copy of Dylan’s “Restless Farewell.”

Or, obviously, I realized with a shiver and a sudden heavy heart, the reverse: Dylan’s “Restless Farewell” was pretty much a carbon copy of “The Parting Glass,” not only the melody but the structure and core meaning of the lyrics as well. The word “plagiarist” swings down from the trees and makes funny faces at me.

I Google this further and come to find that the comparison between “The Parting Glass” and “Restless Farewell” is almost ubiquitous. Quoting one critic: “‘Restless Farewell’” he says, “seems to be another case of the early Dylan appropriating and rewriting a traditional song for his own purposes”—a polite way of saying “another case of early Dylan stealing anything from anywhere or anyone and making it his own.” Just like my Poughkeepsie friend (still tapping my shoulder) had claimed.

Not that Dylan was alone in this shameful habit. Paul Simon did the same with “Scarborough Fair,” which, being a traditional English song, he learned from Martin Carthy and then, the following day, copyrighted as his, Simon’s, own. It’s crass greed like this that makes Europeans think less of Americans.

As for me and Dylan: some sort of balloon had popped—spilling guts.

Not only was it flagrantly obvious that Dylan stole “The Parting Glass,” but the sad (and for me devastating) thing is that “Restless Farewell” has always been a song that, along with “Ballad in Plain D,” confirmed for me Dylan’s authenticity. Now one might be forgiven for wondering where he stole “Ballad in Plain D.”

And now I am ashamed that my fellow Swedes awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature. By the evidence now at hand, and by Dylan’s reaction to receiving that highest literary honor in the world by refusing to go to Stockholm to collect it—in effect turning it down, or shall I say pissing on it—I don’t think Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize honor, nowhere near it.

Take it back and give it to Joni Mitchell instead would be my advice to the Nobel Committee.

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