It bums me out that Bob Dylan is so angry. Here he is responding to critics who think he lifted lyrics from a writer and a poet without attribution:
“Wussies and pussies complain about that stuff. 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 motherfuckers can rot in hell.”
First of all, critics aren’t evil. At worst, they’re stupid. Dylan proved his critics wrong a billion times over, and he should have the self-confidence to know that. Secondly, he’s bitching about something that happened a half-century ago.
I like the interviewers’ response. “Seriously” sums up my reaction. Dylan should have added “Get off my lawn” to his cranky-pants old man routine. It would then be funny.
Dylan has been bumming me out for well over a decade now. He was always a better songwriter than singer and his voice has gotten so bad his croaking mumbling is unintelligible and irritating. Seeing him perform now just creeps me out and makes me feel OLD and embarrassed by his display of egotism. He ought to stay home and let Mumford & Sons do his songs.
Boo:
Isn’t it obvious? Dylan, like plenty of people, want to be loved on their terms. Especially performers. Why do you think most never stop performing, if they can help it?
Sheesh, can’t a 71-year-old guy get a little crotchety without it being a federal case.
As poor as we writers are, plagiarism pisses us off mightily when someone with ducats in the bank wants to skim off us. Of course, that happens when they’re begging for the muse to touch them.
I give Dylan all the respect in the world (and he’s coming out our way pretty soon), but he knows better than that.
You’re right. Critics are not “evil.” They are a necessary balance to the creativity of artists. Without critics artists would simply be able to create without fear of retribution from packrat-brained collectors of shiny objects that they can neither use nor understand.
But…oh, wait!!!
Almost of the media figures who talking-head themselves into almost every article that you write are critics too.
Hmmmm…
So your main job is being a critic of critics?
Oh.
Nevermind.
Yore freind,
Emily Liitella
P.S. Bob Dylan has earned the right to diss critics a hundred times over. A thousand times over. Bet on it. He’s just continuing to tell the truth as he knows it, and he’s got a truth meter as big as the Empire State Building. Bet on hat as well.
We have media figures in here?
Is he now a Christian now?
Thought he held a big Bar Mitzvah for his son in Israel.
That aside, he’s correct that artists have been borrowing from other artists like forever. iirc Goethe was accused of having plagiarized from Shakespeare and his response was basically “I steal from the best.”
I have no idea what he’s going on about, but empathize with his disdain for the nitpickers who worry about whether somebody’s quoting something else. He’s absolutely right that this is the way art (and science, for that matter) works. Maybe he’s just sick of the copyright/patent crap attack going on lately that is sucking the life out of the innovation our pols so love to talk about while they’re upholding laws that drown it.