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ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS

Dylan Stays in Character as He Receives
MusiCares Person of the Year Award

Bob Dylan didn’t perform last night at last night’s MusiCares event at the L.A. Convention Center honoring him as Person of the Year—he left that to an assortment of fellow legends and veterans including Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Tom Jones, Beck, Jack White, Norah Jones, Aaron Neville, Sheryl Crow and Crosby Stills & Nash. But the Bard did speak, at great length.

“Standing before the podium and gazing down at his notes like he was giving an eighth-grade book report, the artist thanked the organizers and then started reading,” L.A. Times pop critic Randall Roberts reported. “For the next 35 minutes Dylan, who seldom talks between songs onstage anymore, offered a range of thanks, thoughts, memories, acknowledgments and advice. He deconstructed the blues, offering a brief history of its origins. He talked rock & roll, about a life consumed by it. He praised one-hit wonders, defended his voice, quoted unsung heroes.”

His soliloquy was pure Dylan—colorful, allusive and inscrutably; for example, he described the blues as “a combination of Arabic violins and Strauss waltzes working it out.”

Of his songs, he said, “they’re like mystery stories, the kind that Shakespeare saw when he was growing up. I think you could trace what I do back that far. They were on the fringes then, and I think they’re on the fringes now. And they sound like they’ve been on the hard ground.”

“[The Byrds, the Turtles, Sonny & Cher’s versions of his songs] were like commercials, but I didn’t really mind that because 50 years later my songs were being used in commercials.”

Bob’s take on having his songs turned into Top 40 hits by others was particularly provocative. He began with the first significant cover, Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Blowin’ in the Wind”:

“I didn’t even think of myself as writing songs for others to sing, but it was starting to happen and it couldn’t have happened to, or with, a better group. They took a song of mine that hadn’t been recorded before that was buried on one of my records and turned it into a hit song. Not the way I would have done it—they straightened it out. But since then hundreds of people have recorded it, and I don’t think that would have happened if it wasn’t for them. They definitely started something for me…

“The Byrds, the Turtles, Sonny & Cher—they made some of my songs Top 10 hits, but I wasn’t a pop songwriter and I really didn’t want to be that, but it was good that it happened. Their versions of songs were like commercials, but I didn’t really mind that because 50 years later my songs were being used in commercials. So that was good too. I was glad it happened, and I was glad they’d done it.”

Dylan expressed great respect and affection for Johnny Cash, and marveled that Jimi Hendrix “took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and brought them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere, turned them all into classics. I have to thank Jimi, too. I wish he was here.”

And in a lighter moment, he said of his highly unorthodox approach to vocals, “Critics say I can’t sing, [that] I sound like a frog. Why don’t critics say that about Tom Waits? Critics say my voice is shot. Why don’t they say that about Leonard Cohen? What have I done to get this special attention?”


More at LATimes.com and RollingStone.com.

Photos: Kevin Mazur/WireImage (Dylan); Gina Ferazzi/L.A. Times (Beck)

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