The 2024 Bob Dylan biopic, movies about Bob Dylan.

Director James Mangold directed and co-wrote the 2024 film A Complete Unknown, which outlines the musician’s life in the early 1960s. The film was lauded for its performances, cinematography, and entertainment value. However, A Complete Unknown makes numerous big changes to Bob Dylan’s story that could be called into question. Not every change has a significant impact on the story, though. The Bob Dylan biopic leaves out one funny detail that’s narratively insignificant but entertaining to think about.

Newsweek Accused Bob Dylan Of Buying "Blowin’ In The Wind" Off A High School Student

A 1963 Newspaper Article Furthered A Rumor About "Blowin' In The Wind"

A Complete Unknown left out one of the strangest details about Bob Dylan’s life in the early 1960s. In 1963, Newsweek published an article about Bob Dylan that correctly called out many of the singer’s lies, but it also reported on a rumor that turned out to be blatantly false. According to the newspaper, some people said the song was written by a high schooler named Lorre Wyatt, who sold the lyrics to Dylan. Both parties denied the assertion to the publication, but that didn’t stop the hilarious rumor from catching on.

The story became even more plausible because the two could have crossed paths. Bob Dylan frequently visited folk icon Woody Guthrie at the Greystone Psychiatric Hospital, where Wyatt volunteered. Plagiarism accusations aren’t usually funny, and many others warrant a solemn tone due to the weight of the claims. However, this one is amusing for two big reasons. Firstly, the rumor has been wholly debunked. Secondly, the true story surrounding the accusation is an example of “truth is stranger than fiction.”

Lorre Wyatt Cleared Up What Really Happened A Decade Later

Wyatt itted That His Lie Got Out Of Control Quickly

In May 1974, Lorre Wyatt spoke to New Times magazine about how a lie spiraled out of control, becoming the singer’s first major plagiarism scandal (via Snopes), and the true story feels akin to the Broadway musical and movie Dear Evan Hansen. Bob Dylan wrote the song Blowin’ in the Wind in April 1962, agreed to have it published in Broadside #6 in May, and recorded it for the first time in July. Wyatt found the song in a folk magazine after ing an octet-singing group called the Millburnaires. It sparked his creativity, inspiring him to write his own version of the lyrics.

Considering the “Blowin’ in the Wind” rumor is still ed five decades after it was cleared up, this story is a prime example of how one small lie can have a massive impact.

During a meeting of the Millburnaires, they opened the floor for new songs to sing. Even though Wyatt had a draft of his lyrics in his pocket, he chose instead to sing the original version of Blowin’ in the Wind to impress the group, claiming he wrote it. The group was impressed and asked him to sing it at the 1962 Thanksgiving assembly. He agreed if they didn’t mention who wrote it. However, the promise was broken, leading to his assertion that they’d never sing the song again.

In order to explain his refusal to sing the song, Wyatt created another lie. He told his homeroom teacher the group couldn’t sing the song anymore because he sold it to a singer for $1000. Unfortunately for Wyatt and Bob Dylan, the students and teachers ed the performance, the authorship claims, and the flimsy excuse about not singing it again.

Other of the group asserted that Wyatt wrote the song, and their proof was the fact that they sang the song before Dylan ever secured the copyright or released his recording, as reported in The Daily Princetonian in November 1963. Considering the “Blowin’ in the Wind” rumor is still ed five decades after it was cleared up, this story is a prime example of how one small lie can have a massive impact.

Why Bob Dylan Has Been Accused Of Plagiarism So Many Times

Bob Dylan Skirts The Line Of Plagiarism Frequently, Fanning The Flames Of An Age-Old Debate

While the “Blowin’ in the Wind” rumor that Bob Dylan faced in the 1960s can be written off as laughably false, not all of Bob Dylan’s plagiarism rumors can be dismissed so easily. In the past six decades, Bob Dylan has been accused of stealing others’ work constantly, with a new accusation coming up every few years. Some, like the “Blowin’ in the Wind” controversy, have no basis in reality. However, others have more merit.

Love & Theft has remarkable similarities to Confessions of a Yakuza by Dr. Junichi Saga and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some of his paintings seem to replicate photos by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dmitri Kessel, and Léon Busy (via The Guardian). The book The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob asserts that Bob Dylan’s autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, plagiarizes many sources, going over numerous examples. The most recent scandal is Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize lecture, which allegedly borrowed from the Sparknotes for Moby Dick (via The New York Times).

Many of the claims of musical plagiarism can be explained by folk tradition, which has historically included borrowing from other songs, often without attribution. It’s not out of the ordinary that “Blowin’ in the Wind” uses the tune from the folk spiritual “No More Auction Block For Me.” Even using others’ lyrics within a new song is a relatively common practice within the folk genre, giving more leeway to Bob Dylan’s music.

However, this argument becomes flimsy when applied to songs outside the genre and other forms of art. Ultimately, there will never be one correct answer as to whether Bob Dylan plagiarized because there is a strong argument on both sides. It comes down to each individual to decide for themselves where the line is. It’s probably better that A Complete Unknown left out all references to plagiarism, even if it were the provably false “Blowin’ in the Wind” accusation, because it would have brought back up a debate with no answer.

Bob Dylan said this of the plagiarism accusations: "Oh, yeah, in folk and jazz, quotation is a rich and enriching tradition. That certainly is true. It’s true for everybody, but me. I mean, everyone else can do it but not me. There are different rules for me... Wussies and p*ssies complain about that stuff. It’s an old thing – it’s part of the tradition. It goes way back. These are the same people that tried to pin the name Judas on me. Judas, the most hated name in human history!" (via The Rolling Stone).