Nobelpriset 2016

One also shudders at the coming Dylan response, given that, when he got his first honorary degree, back in 1970, at Princeton, he wrote a derisive song, “Day of the Locusts,” about the people who had given it to him. “The locusts sang / and they were singing for me,” he announced, implying that they were not singing for the poor professors onstage with him. (“The man standing next to me / his head was exploding / I was praying the pieces / Wouldn’t fall on me,” Dylan added, ungallantly.) Although Dylan’s familiar sullenness has by now morphed into Dylan’s permanent inscrutability — one may expect twenty minutes of sublime mumbling in Sweden — this is still Dylan.

Dylan is, by all reports, shy, sly, inveterately oblique. (If members of the Swedish Academy believe that this time Dylan will bask in the attention and socialize with those who are honoring him, they haven’t spent much time on Maggie’s Farm.)

Here's what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you'd expect he would be. He wouldn't come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practicing before the set in the evening. He didn't want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn't show up to that. He came in and played "The Times They Are A-Changin'." A beautiful rendition. The guy is so steeped in this stuff that he can just come up with some new arrangement, and the song sounds completely different. Finishes the song, steps off the stage — I'm sitting right in the front row — comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin, and then leaves. And that was it — then he left. That was our only interaction with him. And I thought: That's how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don't want him to be all cheesin' and grinnin' with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise. So that was a real treat.