BEYOND WHAT HORIZON?!

Modern Times or Modern Plagiarism?

Before I went off and bought Bob Dylan's "Modern Times" album a few weeks ago, I'd heard most of the songs on the Internet and I'd quickly read a few reviews online, from Rolling Stone and so forth. I think it was RS that kept identifying bits of music or lyrics that were derivative or stolen from specific other old songs. I didn't worry much about that because I knew Bob started out as a folkie and they stole from each other and from their predecessors. After I bought the album, though, I forgot all that shit. From time to time, I'd notice that his song, "Beyond The Horizon" sounded SO FAMILIAR. At one point I decided that it sounded like some whole class of songs from the past--that generality would have satisfied me if I hadn't heard "Red Sails In The Sunset" on the jazz radio station one day and I realized that THAT was the tune he'd stolen! Though I hadn't heard it a lot lately, it is an awfully well-known song for him to pilfer. But, everything is up for grabs in today's music, even at the top! But with today's lawyers, one doesn't always get away with it, I hear. I never knew until this year that Apple got sued by Chuck Berry's lawyers because the John Lennon line, "Here come old flat-top, he come grooving up slowly" was a recognizable ripoff from one of Berry's songs! Apple lost or gave way, I'm not sure which. Lennon was still alive at the time of the suit and a part of the settlement was that he'd record x number of Berry's songs, which was probably no great burden for an ex-Beatle in the throes of reliving his rocker youth! I guess when you listen to too many pop songs for 20, 30, or 40 years, you can't tell what you're creating or what you're remembering! Dylan's old enough to claim all sorts of enfeeblement of the mind. Too bad, but it's a good legal defense!

Actually, I have more sympathy for unconscious thieves of bits of song or literature. I often think of some great line, then realize it's something I remember from some song or book! Long ago, I had a line I liked a lot, "a foggy knight in mourning", that I thought I'd use in a poem some day until reality crashed down on my head and I realized that "A foggy night and morning" is the name of the last chapter in Thomas Hardy's "Far From The Madding Crowd". That rained on my parade. Or something! Now that I think of it, wasn't Joe Biden (democratic candidate for vice president) accused of plagiarism about 20 years ago when his eventual defense was the same as mine, that he'd forgotten where the line came from! Politicians and poets, who can you trust?