Times Are A-Changin’ as MusiCares Honoree Bob Dylan Delivers Revealing Speech

What kind of crazy world do we live in where Bob Dylan comes back from the dead and delivers the paramount rock ’n’ roll-related experience of the 21st century?

MusiCares is the Recording Academy’s No. 1 networking dinner of the year. Not only is it peopled by wannabes and no-name academy members, the movers and shakers all show up, the conversation is scintillating and informative, and then you retire to the ballroom, where household names go through the motions, singing songs via Teleprompter.

The presentation of the person of the year award is usually the lamest moment of the show. When the winner holds the trophy, thanks the usual suspects and says nothing meaningful.

But not the 73-year-old poet laureate from Hibbing.

Dylan talked in that insane voice he’s developed, like his skin is a different color and he was brought up in the holler. And he made some perfunctory remarks. And then he told us he was gonna read.

He didn’t play a note, but he delivered a speech that dropped jaws and had you tingling, not believing you were there in attendance.

He revealed he’s been listening all the while, he knows what we’ve been saying about him, he’s got an opinion about it, and unlike everybody else in this sold-out business, he’s not afraid to step on toes, he’s not afraid to offend.

He had written an essay, nearly a book, and it took him half an hour to deliver it. He started with John Hammond, giving the man props for signing him. He said he was indebted to his initial publisher Lou Levy — and Joan Baez, whom he praised to high heaven. Levy had said Dylan was ahead of his time, and if he was lucky, the audience would catch up with him in three to five years.

Dylan didn’t want to write novelty tracks like Leiber and Stoller, whom he excoriated. He said he was interested in the truth only, which he got from folk songs that he knew by heart, and played incessantly.

On this night, he told us where his songs came from, and made the connection from the past to the present. It was positively mind-blowing: the guy who obfuscates for a living giving us the God’s honest truth in a way no one ever does. It’s like the fathers of our country telling us what’s behind the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

Make no mistake: Dylan impacted the culture; we’re just pawns in his game. Great artists cobble together something new from the past and inspire those who come after.

Dylan talked about his voice and the criticism of it. Wondered why he was singled out and Leonard Cohen was not. Why everybody else can do a covers album and get away with it, but the critics put him through the wringer.

The truth is Dylan is different from the rest. We hold him to a higher standard, because he’s at the pinnacle, and we need to believe in him. He’s elusive, bobbing and weaving like a boxer, confounding expectations.

Dylan said confounding expectations was not a job description, that he’s just following his muse in search of the truth. But ultimately, it was more than Dylan’s words that resonated. It was the fact that he had trail-blazed again. These days, pandering rules the business. Dylan could get away with not doing that because of his unique voice — because he is the best lyricist of all time. I won’t say everything he does is good. But you’ve got to respect the man for trying, for continually being born instead of dying.

Grammy weekend is over. Bob Dylan made the entire ceremony look small, and he never sang a note.

That’s an artist.

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