The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #36236   Message #498938
Posted By: GUEST,Dita (at work)
05-Jul-01 - 11:02 AM
Thread Name: D.Behan, Dylan, Ives, and JO STAFFORD!?
Subject: RE: D.Behan, Dylan, Ives, and JO STAFFORD!?
Dominic was very bitter about what he saw a Dylan's rip-off, of his work. Even at the release of Dylan's "Biograph" set, he was still writing to the papers about it. He was well aware by this time that the tune predated "Patriot Game", as it had been the subject of much heated debate in the Vicky Bar and elsewhere. As far as Dominic was concerned it was from him that Dylan took the tune, and that was that.

Much of what Dylan wrote, especially the tunes, for "Freewheelin" and "Times" can be traced back to traditional song and blues. Someone described him, at about the time of his first visit to the UK, as a sponge, (ie he absorbed everything).

Dominic was prolific, and he did adapt traditional tunes to his own words, as well as write his own. I think that he would have liked Dylan to have given him as the source of the tune, or at least have had Words - Dylan Tune - Adapted. It was Dylan taking credit that stuck in his craw.

Dominic had this to say in a note to another song -Roddy McCorley - "Woody Guthrie, the great American folk-singer and ballad-maker, warned us never to take a great song and try to write anither lyric to it. And that's what is so wrong with "Sean South Of Garryowen".

From my personal experience I can remember writing a song with, what I was convinced was, my own tune, only to find Ewan MacVicar include it in an article with the words "..these words are sung to the tune of..." and damn him he was right.
,
love, john