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Topic: Did Dylan Plagiarize Japanese Author? (NSC) Return to archive
07-08-03 12:02 PM
GimmeExile from WALL STREET JOURNAL:

July 8, 2003

Did Bob Dylan Lift Lines From Dr. Saga?

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Is the View of This Japanese Writer

As a 62-year-old physician and writer in a small town north of Tokyo, Junichi Saga knows almost nothing about 62-year-old Bob Dylan.

"Bob Dylan is a very famous American country singer, yes?" asks Dr. Saga. "I'm not familiar with these things."

Mr. Dylan, on the other hand, would seem to be quite familiar with Dr. Saga's work. On the legendary singer-songwriter's most recent studio album, "Love and Theft," he appears to have lifted about a dozen passages from Dr. Saga's book, "Confessions of a Yakuza."

"I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound," sings Mr. Dylan on the song "Floater," from his 2001 album. "I'm not as cool or as forgiving as I might have sounded," writes Dr. Saga on page 158 of his oral history of a Japanese gangster, which was published to little acclaim or profit more than a decade before the release of Mr. Dylan's album. To date, Dr. Saga says he has earned about $8,500 from his book.

Doris Kearns Goodwin and the late Stephen Ambrose, among others, have gotten in some trouble in recent years for doing similar things. But Dr. Saga, unlike a good many other imitated authors, isn't angry. He's delighted.

"Please say hello to Bob Dylan for me because I am very flattered and very happy to hear this news," the writer says. He is hoping that Mr. Dylan's fans might go out and buy the book. "Confessions" has sold only about 25,000 copies in English and fewer still in Japanese. Indeed, the Japanese edition is out of print.

Mr. Dylan's manager, Jeff Rosen, said Mr. Dylan couldn't be reached for comment. "As far as I know," Mr. Rosen said, "Mr. Dylan's work is original." The liner notes for "Love and Theft" list Mr. Dylan as the sole author of the 12 songs on the album.

The songwriter has borrowed material before. He often makes passing references to the Bible or to works of literature in his songs. On "Love and Theft," he briefly quotes a passage from "The Great Gatsby." As an aspiring artist, Mr. Dylan, né Zimmerman, is often said to have taken his name from the late Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, though Mr. Dylan has sometimes denied that.

He's like "some very imaginative sponge," says Christopher Ricks, a professor of humanities at Boston University, who has lectured on Mr. Dylan's works. Usually, says Mr. Ricks, Mr. Dylan's sponging is a healthy part of the creative process. The songwriter takes a few words, twists them, changes their context, and produces an entirely new work of art.

But Mr. Ricks says he was surprised by the extent to which Mr. Dylan seems to have borrowed from "Confessions of a Yakuza" on his latest album. "No one of these instances was very telling," he says. "But when you put together the whole string of them, it's quite striking."

No one was more surprised than Dr. Saga. The internist, writer and painter lives a life of prosperous, suburban tranquility in Tsuchiura, a small city of 134,000 people north of Tokyo. His home and clinic are set in a dense garden with stone footpaths.

This is where he wrote "Confessions," which is based on the testimony of one of his patients, a retired gangster named Eiji Ijichi. The story is set in pre-World War II Japan. Men and women in his book live hard, rootless lives, filled with gambling, prostitution and violence. The book, Dr. Saga says, is about people who find love despite bad luck and bitter lives. "The two themes are love and the life of an outlaw -- in other words love and theft," he says.

After learning from a reporter that some of his prose had turned up on Mr. Dylan's album, Dr. Saga, who usually favors opera, bought a copy of the CD. "I like this album," he says. "His lines flow from one image to the next and don't always make sense. But they have a great atmosphere."

He says he's pleased that Mr. Dylan read his book -- if, indeed, he did -- and chose to adapt some of the language to fit his songs. Dr. Saga says he has no intention of suing. "I don't want this to become a bad thing," he says. But he would like to see Mr. Dylan acknowledge his source -- perhaps with a note in future editions of the liner notes. "That would be very honorable," the author says.

The similarities between the album and the book were first spotted by an American living in Japan. He recently submitted a comparison of the two works to a Web site devoted to Mr. Dylan's music. Soon after the comparison was posted, "Confessions of a Yakuza" jumped more than 20,000 places, to about 45,000 -- on the Amazon.com list of best-selling books. But Dr. Saga's publisher, Kodansha International, with offices in Tokyo, New York and London, says it's too soon to tell whether the controversy will significantly boost sales.

"I guess we should print the next edition with Bob Dylan's picture on the cover," says Stephen Shaw, editorial director for Kodansha and the editor of "Confessions." Absent a photo, Mr. Shaw says, the publisher would at least like to have a blurb from Mr. Dylan for the book's jacket.

Mr. Shaw says he and other members of the staff at Kodansha were surprised that Mr. Dylan made so little effort to change lines appearing in the book. "It struck me as a little bit lazy," he says. But he doesn't want to make too much of a fuss. "We're flattered as hell, let's face it," Mr. Shaw says.

Mr. Dylan's apparent muse might not have been discovered were it not for Chris Johnson, a Minnesota native and Dylan fan who happened upon a copy of "Confessions" while browsing in a bookstore in Fukuoka. He knew little about Japan's seamy side and was glad to find a book on the subject.

On the first page, Mr. Johnson read the following line: "My old man would sit there like a feudal lord...." It reminded him instantly of a lyric from the Dylan song "Floater": "My old man, he's like some feudal lord."

"I've probably listened to that album at least a hundred times, so the matching phrases just jumped right out at me," says Mr. Johnson, a 29-year-old English teacher in Kitakyushu. "They may as well have been printed in red ink."

He began searching for more phrases from the recording as he read the book, folding down pages as he found them. By the time he had finished the book, he had folded a dozen pages.

Mr. Dylan didn't choose the most poetic or most powerful lines from the book, Mr. Johnson says. He appears at times to have clipped phrases almost randomly. Mr. Johnson has given a lot of thought to the process by which Mr. Dylan wrote his lyrics. He imagines the singer sitting in a hotel in Japan, where he has often appeared over the years, and browsing through "Confessions" as he worked on a new batch of tunes, using lines from the book as kindling for his imagination.

"I kind of wondered if he had done a lot of that before on other albums," says Mr. Johnson. "But if he'd been doing this all along, somebody would have caught him a long time ago."





07-08-03 12:13 PM
Lazy Bones Here are the textual sources to the songs on Love & Theft (submitted to Expecting Rain, 14th May). Interesting, indeed!

http://www.dylanchords.com/41_lat/textual_sources.htm
07-08-03 12:26 PM
jb I told you all about Dylan months ago and was reported to Gerardo and Gazza...Please post, by name, your apologies to me .........
07-08-03 01:03 PM
Sir Stonesalot Told us all about Dylan?

What the fuck are you gonna tell me about Dylan?! You don't know shit about the guy.

What? You think that Bob lifting some lines from an obscure Japanese book is a bad thing?

Writers lift things from each other all the time. Good GOD man! Look at the Blues! These guys copped stuff from each other constantly! That's how they knew they had good. If someone else used it in a tune, you done did good. JB, the author and editor of the book are FLATTERED...and of the hundreds of lines on that album...only 12 obscure phrases or sentences match up. That isn't plagerizing...that is homage.

But what the fuck would you know...you graduated from Miami.
07-08-03 01:05 PM
jb Please don't confuse me with SDH.....
[Edited by jb]
07-08-03 01:08 PM
Sir Stonesalot How could I do such a thing....at least you have a real wife...for now.
07-08-03 02:04 PM
Nasty Habits Dylan has cribbed lines from everything from old movies to blues lyrics (there are WAY more than 12 lines from old blues tunes on Love and Theft) to stuff he's overheard in conversations since, well, ever. Back in the 60s people used to accuse him of ripping off old folk melodies and lyrics all the time.

This is the nature of "folk" or "blues" music -- to recycle and recontextualize found motifs. In fact, it's the nature of virtually all art. That's why they call it "Love" and "Theft". Absolutely no difference between this and Jagger lifting a phrase like "Baby I'm just a stranger/your face I've never seen before" from the song "Man of Constant Sorrow" that he no doubt heard from Bob Dylan.

The only people who get upset or say "I told you so" about this sort of thing are people who have no idea how creativity works.

Bob Dylan is no scumbag hack poster.
07-08-03 02:13 PM
jb I have some fresh ideas!!!
07-08-03 02:15 PM
Nasty Habits Lay it on us, litigator!

07-08-03 02:52 PM
Sir Stonesalot No reply.

Duh.

Hey Nas-T...The Monkey & I are gonna catch the White Stripes in Philly on the 25th. What is the best way to meet Jack and Meg post show?
07-08-03 02:55 PM
Joey Individuals who plagarize are THE lowest forms of life --------------even lower than pond scum .

JACKY !
07-08-03 03:14 PM
FPM C10
quote:
Sir Stonesalot wrote:
What is the best way to meet Jack and Meg post show?



Yeah...I wanna ask Meg to be MY sister.
07-08-03 04:12 PM
jb There is a vaginal spray by Vagisil which women sparay on their pussy to freshen it up...it works as there is no discernible smell.
[Edited by jb]
07-08-03 04:23 PM
steel driving hammer The thing that I'm most worried about of all this is, who's gonna save 'The People Of Naboo'?
07-08-03 04:54 PM
Dandelion* Beautiful post Nasty. Joey should read it carefully and learn from it. Or copy it.
07-08-03 04:55 PM
Joey " Beautiful post Nasty. Joey should read it carefully and learn from it. Or copy it. "

Dande ...........................................


You make young Joey say , Huh ???????????

Bunny Joe !

07-08-03 05:06 PM
sirmoonie I'm embarrased to say that I just learned Dylan did Man of Constant Sorrow. Even more embarrassed to say I thought it was the best damn tune George Clooney ever wrote.

But thats why I love this board (and Gasland). You can learn something everyday.

07-08-03 05:06 PM
Dandelion* You just dropped the ball young Joey. I'm going to have to reclaim Larry Hagman now.
07-08-03 05:12 PM
Joey " You just dropped the ball young Joey. I'm going to have to reclaim Larry Hagman now. "

Not until you sign over the leases to those off-shore Asian Oil Wells that you own .

I have been trying to get in on THAT action for years now ? What am I talking about ????? Do I know ?!?!?!?!?! Do I know ANYTHING ?!?!?!?!?!

JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA JA BUNNY

BUNNY JACK

07-08-03 06:51 PM
FPM C10 Reylan-- reprinted - no, I plagiarized myself - from over there...
<-------------------------

Although this IS a rather obscure source, Dylan has lifted lines from EVERYWHERE throughout his career, perhaps nowhere more than on L&T, which I consider one of his five best albums. I'd have to double check, but I bet there's filched stuff in every song - Cry Awhile has "It's gonna be your funeral, my trial" ,stolen from a Sonny Boy Williamson song of the same name; High Water, which is a re-write of a Charley Patton song to begin with, features the line "The cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as he flies" from "The Coo Coo Bird" by Clarence Ashley, recorded in 1929 and re-released by Harry Smith on his Anthology of Folk Music, a bible of sorts for the Greenwich Village folk scene Dylan sprang from. However, in both cases, Dylan follows the stolen line by one which totally twists the meaning and transcends the source. (He rhymes the latter line with "I'm preachin' the Word of God / I'm puttin' out your eyes"). One side effect of all this stealing - if you can catch ALL of his thefts, you're as remarkably well-read as Dylan himself.


Another of the Truly Great Americans (an extinct species) of whom I often speak had similar work habits. When William Seward Burroughs read a book, he would often write "GETS" in the margin beside sections he liked. This stood for Good Enough To Steal. Parts of his cut-up novels - "The Soft Boys" and "The Ticket That Exploded" - had lines lifted from Shakespeare and the Bible mixed up with material left over from Naked Lunch. Although these books are often called unreadable, they are NEVER thought of as un-original. And rightfully so.


Some adages to remember -


There is nothing new under the sun.


The mediocre artist borrows; the genius steals.


If anything, this revelation makes me love "Love and Theft" even more. Wish the Stones would steal something more interesting than a k.d. lang song for THEIR next album.
07-08-03 07:51 PM
TheSavageYoungXyzzy Dylan's snagged a few lines here and there since birth. So have the Stones. So have lots of bluesmen. Hell, Shakespeare never wrote a 'true original' play in his life - the stories are all taken from either older plays or history books, or both. It's all what you do with 'em that counts. Bob actually really varies his sources, more paying homage rather than out-and-out theft.

You think the Stones are free from this? What about "Trad. arranged by Jagger/Richards/Taylor/Wyman/Watts"? Erm, last time I checked, "Stop Breaking Down" had an author. A rather big author. So, by the way, did "Love In Vain", although they finally credited that properly when they reissued the album in the mid-eighties. That's far worse than what Dylan did.

Listen to "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", and look at the lyrics to the call of the call-and-response.

"Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?"
-A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan, 1963)

Now listen to the English poem (that later became a folksong) "Lord Randall" -

"O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha you been, my handsome young man?"
-Anonymous, c. 1700 A.D.

Hmm. How 'bout that similarity? Doesn't stop "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" from being a great tune. We gonna blast authors for making allusions to the Bible in books now?

-tSYX --- It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a harrrrrrd rain's a-gonna fall!
07-08-03 08:57 PM
Nasty Habits
quote:
Sir Stonesalot wrote:
No reply.

Duh.

Hey Nas-T...The Monkey & I are gonna catch the White Stripes in Philly on the 25th. What is the best way to meet Jack and Meg post show?



check your pms -- SS. I have a purty good thought on that one.



[Edited by Nasty Habits]
07-09-03 01:23 PM
Factory Girl Hey Nasty, can you PM me your purty ideas about meeting the Strokes after a show??? TIA!
07-09-03 03:37 PM
Prodigal Son Getting fussy over great artists lifting lines for their songs from other tunes, poems, literature, it doesn't matter. What you do with it is what counts, no doubt. Truer words have never been spoken. Anyone who finds this a reason to rip Dylan is either a)jealous, b)doesn't like him, c)is a spiteful, blind ignorant or d)doesn't understand a great artist like Zimmerman.
07-09-03 11:53 PM
McQueen Dylan is Dylan. Nuff' said.

Backwards blow-job, shut your pathetic ass and move on pee-wee. Miami eh? I do believe you've blown enough sailors your lips go in and out with the tide no doubt.

Back off Bob. You are clearly unworthy of considering him in any way, shape, or form.

Just what the world needs, another dickless lawyer with a penchant for inane babble. C'mon now, fess up, you put that vagisil on your ass don't you?
07-10-03 09:47 AM
T.CentralScrutinizer I knew there were lawyers amongst stoneheads. I knew it.
While you'll still be in the circus, Dylan will be laughing in his grave.
07-10-03 09:51 AM
T.CentralScrutinizer I knew there were lawyers amongst stoneheads. I knew it.
While you'll still be in the circus, Dylan will be laughing in his grave.