Bob Dylan Angrily Fired Back at People Who Accused Him of Plagiarism: ‘Rot in Hell’
Bob Dylan won a Nobel Prize for Literature, and his songwriting has moved many, but he has faced more than one accusation of plagiarism. Writers, critics, and even other musicians have called him out for it. Dylan is unapologetic about these accusations. He once even lashed out at anyone who thought he was plagiarising.
Bob Dylan has faced accusations of plagiarism
Over his decades-long career, Dylan has faced more than one claim that he lifted words from other sources. Journalist David Kinney wrote about it in the book The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob.
“There are a couple of different reactions to it,” Kinney told The Daily Beast. “The first level is the denial — the people who think, ‘C’mon, these are commonplace phrases,’ or ‘Maybe he’s just reading stuff and he’s got one of those weird minds that can recall this stuff.’ That’s become a harder and harder case to make as more stuff has come out. The second point of debate goes to whether all artists borrow and recast and appropriate.”
Dylan has allegedly borrowed from the Civil War-era poet Henry Timrod, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, amongst others. Per The Atlantic, he reportedly lifted parts of his Nobel lecture from SparkNotes.
He once angrily responded to these claims
When confronted with these claims, Dylan made his frustration clear.
“Wussies and p***ies complain about that stuff,” Dylan said in 2012, per the LA Times. “It’s an old thing — it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. Yeah, and for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherf*****s can rot in hell.”
He then added that he was simply creating art in the way he always had.
“I’m working within my art form. It’s that simple,” he said. “I work within the rules and limitations of it. There are authoritarian figures that can explain that kind of art form better to you than I can. It’s called songwriting. It has to do with melody and rhythm, and then after that, anything goes. You make everything yours. We all do it.”
Joni Mitchell once accused Bob Dylan of plagiarism
One of Dylan’s critics was Joni Mitchell, who harshly called him out for plagiarism in a 2010 interview.
“Bob is not authentic at all,” she per American Songwriter. “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.”
She later walked back some of these comments, saying that Dylan was putting on a character.
“I like a lot of Bob’s songs, though musically he’s not very gifted,” she said, adding, “He’s got a lot of borrowed things. He’s not a great guitar player. He’s invented a character to deliver his songs. Sometimes I wish that I could have that character — because you can do things with that character. It’s a mask of sorts.”
