Bob Dylan was, as he promised, a no-show at Saturday’s Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, but Dylan acolyte Patti Smith was on hand to accept the honour on his behalf, and performed one of his best-known songs as a tribute.
Unfortunately, it was not smooth sailing for the “Because the Night” singer when she was forced to awkwardly halt her performance of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” after forgetting the lyrics partway through.
“I apologize,” she told the audience. “I’m sorry, I’m so nervous.” The crowd, however, was behind her, and met her admission with a thunderous round of applause, after which she continued the song to completion.
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Before Smith’s performance, Swedish academy member Horace Engdahl gave a speech honouring Dylan, who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature in absentia.
“With the public expecting poppy folk songs, there stood a young man with a guitar, fusing the languages of the street and the bible into a compound that would have made the end of the world seem a superfluous replay,” the literary historian said in his speech. “At the same time, he sang of love with a power of conviction everyone wants to own. All of a sudden, much of the bookish poetry in our world felt anemic, and the routine song lyrics his colleagues continued to write were like old-fashioned gunpowder following the invention of dynamite.”
Dylan also wrote his own acceptance speech, which will be read on his behalf at the banquet, following the award ceremony.
