Rant BY Ian Whitcomb

Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books, and Songbooks by clicking here,
or by going to ianwhitcomb.com

 I’d love to join the Church For The Worship of Bob Dylan and be In the Swing, but I find I can’t stand the man even though he’s now a codger, hosting a radio show in which he tells dog jokes and plays Tony Bennett.

I can’t stand him not just for his past sins against Words & Music—his doggerel, revered and deconstructed by eggheads in academia and the smug-smooth “New Yorker”, and his stealing from folk melodies—but because on his latest CD, “Modern Times”, a monster hit, there’s a self-penned song called “Beyond The Horizon” and it’s a rip-off of the 1935 classic, “Red Sails In The Sunset”, written by Will Grosz and Jimmy Kennedy.

Anybody who knows the original will recognize the contours, but the trouble is that Dylan, having never had more than a handful of notes at his command is, at 65, reduced to a croak.  I supposed he’ll get away with it again as he has with unprotected ancient songs.

But then I realized this was different. This song is in copyright and rightly so: my old dead friend Jimmy, a fellow graduate of Trinity College Dublin, wrote the lyrics with love and care. His relatives need to be fed and clothed.

So I alerted the press, and a few malingering Dylanologists. Silence. Then they counter-attacked and this is what they said:

Bob Dylan is a cultural icon. He’s as sacrosanct as Mohammed. And if God chooses to use some meretricious Tin Pan Alley relic for his High Art then So Be It. The owners of such rubbish should be honoured to be touched by this genius. Thus It Is Written—and I was warned that unless I desisted my life would be made a hell in the jihad to come. Let Them Come, I say.

Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books, and Songbooks by clicking here,
or by going to ianwhitcomb.com