The one songwriter Bob Dylan copied “phrase for phrase”
Any aspiring songwriter who says that they don’t care for Bob Dylan needs to take a cold look in the mirror.
There are many ways to attempt to quantify what makes a songwriter truly great. Is it saes? Perhaps the unforgettableness of the songs, or maybe just the legacy it leaves behind? If so, Dylan likely trumps everybody in each category. He is, for most people’s money, the greatest lyricist of all time and a singular voice that birthed millions more.
For all of the drawbacks that come with hearing Dylan’s distinctive nasally vocal tone, his way of writing is pure poetry on all of his albums, carrying on the same tradition that folk singers have been doing for years. Dylan never claimed to be the greatest to ever do it, and even he admitted that he took everything that he knew from Dave Van Ronk.
From the first few minutes of listening to Dylan’s classics, though, the guy is clearly a descendant of artists like Woody Guthrie. In the tradition of other amazing folk singers, Dylan has that kind of Everyman cadence that Guthrie was so good at, often speaking with the kind of authority that had more to do with the people on the street rather than the mindless party songs of rock and roll.
When Dylan was still cutting his teeth as a songwriter, Van Ronk was making the rounds on the folk circuit as a songwriter. Even with his unique approach to fingerpicking, his voice was far more polished than Dylan could ever hope to be, having the kind of grit that feels like it would be better suited for the singer-songwriters that would come a few decades later like Harry Nilsson.
Dylan may have still been a kid when he saw Van Ronk, but he was already mesmerised by what he heard, eventually recalling in Chronicles Vol. 1, “I’d heard Van Ronk back in the Midwest on records and thought he was pretty great, copied some of his recordings phrase for phrase”.
For an artist as seemingly original as Dylan, this kind of remark feels particularly jarring. Dyan is regarded as one of the founding fathers of confessional songwriting, using his own world and the view of the world to create personal music that felt universal. But, if music and art are any one thing, it is the transferring of culture through expression. So, channelling the artists around him is perhaps as expected as anything else.
If all Van Ronk had to do was make a quality record, though, chances are he would have been as big as Dylan was once the folk-rock revolution kicked in. Dylan was more concerned with telling stories, and one of the most valuable lessons that he learned from his folk hero was how to deliver songs effectively.
When talking about his style, Dylan thought that Van Ronk was unrivalled in his delivery, explaining, “He was passionate and stinging, sang like a soldier of fortune and sounded like he paid a high price. [He] could howl and whisper, turn blues into ballads and ballads into blues. He was what [Greenwich Village] was all about”.
Dylan may have had a home in the songwriter scene in New York, but what he had meant something for the whole world rather than just a few holes in the wall in Manhattan. By taking Van Ronk’s delivery and putting his own poetic spin on it, Dylan began to write songs that meant something to the whole world, either tracks that called out injustice or let his fans know about the more sentimental side of his heart.
While ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’ may see the Guthrie side of Dylan coming out, songs like ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right’ feel like Van Ronk’s doing, especially with the way Dylan strums his guitar and the kind of soft demeanour that he sings the song with. Because Dylan knew that songwriting was just about putting notes and words on a page. It was glorified acting, and Van Ronk knew the part better than anyone else in his mind.
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