It's well known that Bob Dylan channeled Woody Guthrie in the metamorphosis which became his signature sound. But there's reason to believe the similarites go further than mere imitation.
I have a number of songs in mind which might skirt the boundaries of plagiarism. But one song in particular seems to make the case more strongly than the others. ---- At least to me. --- The song is "Cept You" (my favorite Dylan song).
For a long time I thought of "Cept You" as the most sublime statement of Dylan's conversion to faith in Jesus Christ. The lyrics seem unquestionably kerygmatic.
. . . But I later found out that "Cept You" was originally to be a track on the Planet Waves album, which was produced in 1974 . . . something like three or four years before Dylan's actual conversion to faith in Jesus Christ.
Now even though it's true that Dylan used biblical allusions in his songs even prior to his conversion experience . . . I think the case is strong that the lyrics to "Cept You" were written by someone who had already taken part in a Christian conversion experience (say maybe Guthrie himself?): a Christian "conversion experience" is the heart and soul of the song.
nothin' 'round here to me that's sacred
'cept you, yeah you
nothin' 'round here to me that matters
'cept you, yeah you . . .
This first stanza sets up the tone of the "sacred," and the fact that now "nothing else matters." --- Of course it can easily be admitted that the highest spiritual attainment of the unbeliever -- his relationship with a member of the opposite sex -- can rise to this level and this language, but lyrics later in the song seem to lessen the odds that we're here speaking of a romantic sort of "sacredness."
you're the one that reaches me
you're the one that i admire
every time we meet together
i feel like i'm on fire
nothin' matters to me
and there's nothin' i desire
'cept you, yeah you . . .
. . . Again, a romantic liaison could be the target for this language. But the langauage seems to rise above a merely amorous encounter . . . and for those familiar with the tone and tenor of the song . . . there's a seriousness bordering on genuflection which seems out of place concerning the merely romantic.
there's a hymn I used to hear
in churches all the time
make me feel so good inside
so peaceful, so sublime
now there's nothin' that reminds me of
that old familiar chime
'cept you, yeah you . . .
. . . Here the allusion to the sacred becomes associated directly with hymns and churches, and a specific line in a hymn. ---- All of which, admittedly could still be quasi-romantic language? . . . So we seem to need something like the next stanza to really quash the case for the merely romantic:
used to run in the cemetery
dance and run and sing when i was a child
an' it never seemed strange
but now i just pass mournfully by
the place where the bones of life are piled
i know somethin' has changed
i'm a stranger here and no one sees me
'cept you, yeah you . . .
Even though we should certainly admit of a certain Freudian entaglement between eros and thanatos . . . still . . . and again . . . in the language of this stanza that entanglement between "love" and "death" seems to transcend a merely romantic affair, and in fact rises to the level of a spiritual love stationed in the death of the old man and the birth of the new . . . affected precisely by means of passing through the hymen of the morgue.
The uniquely Christian experience of having passed through death into life while still living among (unnoticed by) the animated corpses, is nowhere so poignantly expressed as in the lyrics of this stanza. "I know something has changed. I'm a stranger here, and no one sees me, cept you, yeah you."
I personally doubt that Dylan penned this song prior to his conversion experience. And since it was written before that experience, I believe Dylan was intrigued by the lyrics in a dusty old Guthrie song.
Woody Guthrie penned over three thousand songs in his brief life-time. And maybe no one was so immersed in the spirit of Guthrie as a young Robert Zimmerman.
Bob Dylan was given permission by a dying and hospitalized Guthrie to sift through his things at his home.
Dylan showed up one day at the door of Guthrie’s home unannounced. His daughter was off-put by this young scruffy hippy hoping to come in and rummage through her father's things. She called the hospital and let Dylan in.
How many unpublished Guthrie songs did Dylan stash away in his leather satchel that day? How many of Dylan's masterpieces "borrowed" Guthrian imagery known only to Bob?
. . . And please don't mistake this query as iconoclastic!
In my mind Dylan is the greatest poet/artist of twentieth century America. ---- If Dylan was one of the few persons to appreciate the power of what was going on in Guthrie . . . then that only increases the sublimnity of Dylan's genius.
How ironic if the Spirit of "Cept You" --- the actual Spirit that motivated Guthrie to pen the song --- channelled itself through the song right into the heart of Bob Dylan. How weird if "Cept You" was a portent of Dylan's later conversion, even before Dylan himself was consciously aware of a "violent-peace" taking over his inner being, an erotic-thanatos associated in its highest manifestation with a direct "union" with Christ?