‘Blowin’ In The Wind’: The strange tale that saw Bob Dylan at the centre of plagiarism rumours
Recording a new song after it has been performed live is a strange business for any artist. Many seek to record songs the second they write them so that any potential plagiarism cases can be avoided. Others have already recorded the song long before they set out to perform it live. During his early days, however, Bob Dylan performed much of his material before getting behind the studio window, a move which primed him with a certain vulnerability perhaps even he didn’t anticipate.
When Dylan first began to gain traction, he was the obscure local folk singer who seemingly came out of nowhere – a phenomenon that no one could put their finger on but everybody wanted some part of, in one way or another. Coming off the back of the earlier folk revival, Dylan approached lyricism from an unsuspecting singer-songwriter standpoint, infusing his narratives with the type of realism and cynicism that surprised as much as it intrigued.
While performing, he liked to play what would become of his most famous compositions, ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’, which he didn’t officially release until May 1963, well over a year after it was recorded. After writing the song, Dylan performed it often, catching the attention of many aspiring singers who wanted to record his songs and claim them as their own.
Naturally, therefore, when ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ was finally released as part of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, an influx of covers arrived, many of which achieved their own level of popularity, but none ultimately matched up to the longevity of the original. Prior to this, however, controversy began to bubble which put Dylan at the centre of a potential plagiarism case after a certain article fuelled rumours that the singer stole the song from a New Jersey high school student.
At the time, the article insinuated that Dylan stole the song from Lorre Wyatt, a student who was said to have sold the song to the singer. The singer, of course, denied such rumours, and Wyatt claimed he didn’t have any ownership of the song whatsoever. Despite this, the other students at the university took Wyatt’s coyness when approached with the matter as an indicator of the truth, which made them feel they had obtained a fraction of the scoop that no one else had.
The real story, however, seems a lot more straightforward. In 1962, Dylan allowed a magazine called Sing Out! to publish the song lyrics, which fell into the hands of Wyatt, who then played the song for the band he was in, framing it as his own. He played it with his band a few months before Dylan released the song, leading others to believe it was his. However, there were some crossed wires that linked him to the student, which lead many to believe there may have been more truth to the rumours.
From Dylan visiting his good friend and inspiration Woodie Guthrie at Greystone Hospital during the same time that Wyatt was a volunteer there, to knowingly hanging out with him in Greenwich Village around the same time, many still believed Dylan stole the song from Wyatt. The student wouldn’t set the record straight until about a decade later, when he said his attempt at fanning the flames only served to exacerbate the problem. “I’d begun to make Pinocchio look like he had a pug nose,” he told the New Times.
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