Whew. What a relief. They're not geniuses after all.
For as long as there's been creativity, there have been charges of plagiarism. Envy almost certainly developed around the same time as well.
We put these guys on pedestals, as examples of the unachievable godgiven talent that the rest of us should aspire to emulate. We buy their records, quote their lyrics, use their songs for our most important human events -- proms, graduations, weddings, funerals. And yet although we know we can't hold a candle to them, secretly we mere mortals are comforted to know that, yes, even the gods aren't perfect.
The recent stories that McCartney may have borrowed the melody and some lyrics from a Nat King Cole song and that Dylan probably borrowed some cool lines from an English-language version of a Japanese book seem to go beyond simple reporting of the news. They carry the unmistakable scent of joyful delight. A-ha! Gotcha, legends!
What's so interesting, though, is how people differ in their reaction to the two stories. For McCartney, any claim of unconscious thievery is tempered by the fact that "Yesterday" is more than 35 years old. Great as it is, it's an oldie, part of a culture's dusty memory, no threat to anyone. Moreover, hey, it's McCartney. Releasing album after album of mediocre post-Beatle work has shown how fallible he is -- the notion that he possibly lifted something from someone else way back when isn't quite shocking.
Whereas the McCartney news was just one more interesting footnote to the week, the Dylan discovery seemed substantial. Carried in just about every major news source, the allegation that the singer-songwriter pilfered quotes from Confessions of a Yakuza for his stellar Love and Theft album felt like something close to otherworldly. The man does few interviews (and in them can remain rather mysterious), and even though he performs hundreds of shows a year, he remains inscrutable, a riddle. He says little about the origins of his songs; he keeps his intentions mostly hidden from the public. This Confessions revelation, then, was a rare pulling back of the curtain, a glimpse into a musician who prefers distance and puzzles.
But even if the story is true, really, what have we learned about Bob? OK, Dylan's an obscure reader. This is nothing new. Love and Theft's very title is taken from Eric Lott's book about minstrelism in American culture. (How much bigger of a hint does the man need to give you of his intentions?) And it's not like his entire career hasn't been fraught with homage and creative license. His earliest folk tunes were almost direct copies of works compiled in Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Near the time of the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood," an acoustic song about a tryst gone bad, Dylan came out with "4th Time Around," a similar-sounding acoustic song about a tryst gone bad. He's always sprinkled literary references, fictional characters, Biblical allusions, real people, and news items into his music. In the '90s, he did two albums of blues and folk covers in order to return with Time Out of Mind, which was basically a modern-day adaptation of the spirit evoked by those classics. And then there is Love and Theft, a dazzling sampling of 20th century American music -- jump blues, crooner ballads, Groucho jokes, bluegrass, rock 'n' roll.
C'mon, people, the guy's been doing this his whole life, daring us to unravel the mysteries. How else to explain the career of Greil Marcus?
So, if we're not really learning anything new about Dylan, what have we uncovered? A lot about ourselves, actually. More specifically, we are again reminded of our knotty, fascinating relationship with creativity.
As a culture, we are obsessed with natural talent. Documentaries like Crumb and Stone Reader, works like Amadeus, memoirs like Stephen King's On Writing -- we worship the creative process. Impressed and awed when it results in lasting art, we remain at the same time envious, confused, and enraged because such amazing gifts have not been bestowed on us. How can it be that others around us somehow lucked out? What crucial ingredient do they have within themselves that we lack?
Go to any screenwriting seminar, and you'll listen to a teacher tell you how to follow the formulas of successful films in order to make one of you own. Every recordmaker desperately wants to work with one of the five producers who are red-hot at that moment. (Today, the Neptunes and the Matrix. Tomorrow, R. Walt Vincent and Michael Penn?) The nonfiction bestseller list is filled with biographies of the famous (or the famous-and-dead). We are a world consumed by a single question: How did they do it?
The flip side of such wonder is the reassurance that these idols of worship aren't so perfect after all. Peter Biskind's classic Easy Riders, Raging Bulls informed us just how petty, backstabbing, clueless, and lucky so many of our favorite '70s filmmakers really were. We read the recent biographies of Neil Young, Clint Eastwood, and Lew Wasserman, and our heart leaps to know that, by and large, these titans are all royal pains in the ass. George Harrison ripped off the Chiffons for "My Sweet Lord." "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is just a knockoff of "More Than a Feeling." All these new young bands are just trying to sound like Pearl Jam. Without James Brown's drummers, hip-hop wouldn't have even happened. Radiohead wants to be Pink Floyd. Lenny Kravitz wants to be everybody from the '70s.
A-ha! What a comfort to know. These people who make millions -- these people who have abilities we could never possess, could never even comprehend -- are all phonies and shams after all. We may not be as talented, but, damn it, they ain't so great, either.
Dylan's people had no comment about the charges of Confessions plagiarism, and the story will fade away soon enough, the legend's reputation as solidly fortified as ever. For the rest of us, though, the trouble is just beginning.
Struggling for greatness, looking at the superstars for a helpful sign, we'd like to believe we have something momentous, important -- meaningful! -- inside us just waiting to crawl out and change the world. And why not? Great art inspires us, and who wouldn't want to elicit the same feeling in someone else -- and get real paid for it? After all, a terrific song can seem so effortless that we fool ourselves into thinking, Hey, I coulda done that.
And so we try.
And it's not so easy.
And so we struggle some more.
And it's really a lot of work after all.
Jesus, how do they do it?
We are forever Salieri, elbow to elbow with the Mozarts who live and work within spitting distance of our meager selves. We have good intentions, a couple cool ideas, and a burning desire to make our mark, to have articles written about us. Hell, we'd be flattered just to be accused of plagiarism. We should be so lucky.
