While Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell seem to have quite a bit in common (considering they’re both two of the most iconic folk rock musicians of all time), their relationship has been famously complicated. Now, Mitchell’s resurfaced criticisms of Dylan over the years are causing a stir among fans…but there’s much more to the story than some people think.
A recent Instagram post from American Songwriter brought several of Mitchell’s past comments to light, including a quote from a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times in which she called Dylan a “plagiarist,” adding, “Everything about Bob is a deception. We are like night and day, he and I.” (The post also referenced Mitchell’s claim in the book Both Sides Now that Dylan “never brushes his teeth.”)
View this post on Instagram
Fans in the comments were quick to come to Dylan’s defense, with one writing, “There would be no Joni if Bob hadn’t blazed that trail first so what does that make her?”
“Jealousy. Bob is the goat,” added a second person, with someone else agreeing, “Joni Mitchell has a professional jealousy complex. Dylan was insanely successful but she was not.”
Others sided with Mitchell, with one claiming “she’s 10x the writer and 100x the singer,” as yet another commenter pointed out that “Joni has also had very positive things to say about Dylan’s songs over the years.”
It’s absolutely true that Mitchell has given Dylan plenty of praise as well, even crediting him for the influence his work had on her early career.
“There came a point when I heard a Dylan song called ‘Positively 4th Street’,” she once recalled, “and I thought ‘Oh my God, you can write about anything in songs’. It was like a revelation to me,” she said, per Far Out Magazine
“I started scraping my own soul more and more and got more humanity in it. It scared the singer-songwriters around me; the men seemed to be nervous about it, almost like [Bob] Dylan plugging in and going electric. Like, ‘Does this mean we have to do this now?’ But over time, I think it did make an influence. It encouraged people to write more from their own experience,” Mitchell added.
It’s also important to note that several years after she was quoted as calling Dylan a “plagiarist” in the LA Times (an experience she slammed, saying, “I hate doing interviews with stupid people”), Mitchell clarified her comments in a 2013 interview with the CBC.
“I like a lot of Bob’s songs,” she said, adding, “Musically, he’s not very gifted. He borrowed his voice from old hillbillies. He’s got a lot of borrowed things…He’s invented a character to deliver his songs.”
Related: Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty’s Epic ’80s Performance Is a Rock and Roll ‘Fever Dream’
