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Article: Hard reign: Bob Dylan's song borrowing. (Behind the song: a closer look at some of the music we love).
- Article from:
- Sing Out!
- Article date:
- September 22, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Sing Out Corporation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"The difference between a bad artist & a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does copy a great deal."
-- William Blake
Bob Dylan didn't start out as a songwriter. Like everyone else, he began by singing songs of other people. His tastes varied wildly, as evinced by the various early bootleg tapes and the recordings (Bob Dylan, Dylan, Self Portrait, World Gone Wrong, etc.) on which he mostly sings songs other than his own. Personally, I think Dylan wrote his best songs before 1970. For the last thirty years he's had to sing those early hits to please a crowd that demands them. He obliquely admitted this in 1991 ...