Sonny Rollins Settles the Score

I've heard some bitchy arguments lately about songs that have been "stolen" from other songs, usually from someone who wants to claim moral superiority over the song thief. One I've head a couple of times recently revolves around how John Lennon wrote "Norwegian Wood" after hearing Bob Dylan's "Fourth Time Around." (One of the rare times Bob doesn't get called the thief.)

Ever the sage elder statesman, Sonny Rollins settles this in an essay from the New York Times.

There’s an axiom that says there is no such thing as “original” music. After what we could consider to be the first sound, from a spiritual perspective — “om” to some, “amen” to others — it’s all the same. Musicians borrow different parts and make them their own, but there’s nothing really new, nothing that hasn’t been done before. Claude Debussy and Johann Sebastian Bach may sound different, but what they did was all there already, in a sense.

Another piece of evidence in Lennon's (and everyone else's) defense is a film called John Lennon's Jukebox, which, while sounding like another excuse for boomer nostalgia, ends up being a lesson in how songwriters influence each other by giving examples of how Lennon borrowed different parts from the supply of records he carried around and made them his own.