As recipients don’t give a speech and musicians don’t perform, here are some other artists honoring Bob Dylan on December 7, 1997.
Bruce Springsteen performing “The Times They Are A-Changin'”
Shirley Caesar performing “Gotta Serve Somebody”:
Gregory Peck:
—
(Man In the Long Black Coat) “He is a man of music. A poet. A teller of tales. His birthplace was Minnesota, a land of small towns and nowhere to go. His teachers were the poets he read and the music he listened to. He took from here and there and stirred it into the music that already ran through him. He left Hibbing one night in a snowstorm and headed to New York. To Greenwich Village where protest and dissent were strung on a guitar.
(Talkin’ New York) Though he was just a kid, he was a keen observer. He looked out on America and told us what he felt.
(Blowin’, Masters) His cadences prodded and provoked. His words cut to the quick.
(Time’s Changin’) His songs became the rallying cry for a generation. The anthems of their time.
(She Belongs To Me) He turned his songs inward. And with a rush of poetic images, he took us deep inside.
(Tambourine Man) Then he expanded the canvas. Plugged in to rock ‘n’ roll.
(Rolling Stone) He exploded the form. Shot it through with ideas that made us think. It was a restless reinvention of the music. Album after album.
(Stuck Inside) In time, the children of the children would take up his songs as their own.
(Just Like A Woman) Who is this fellow Bob Dylan? He is surprises and disguises. He is a searcher with his songs.
(Tangled Up) (Most of the Time – “I can survive and I can endure”) In him we hear the echo of old American voices. Whitman & Mark Twain…blues singers, fiddlers and balladeers. Bob Dylan’s voice reaches just as high and it will linger just as long…”
Bobby richly deserves every possible accolade but I believe his greatest award will be his place in the highest chambers of eternity. The Gregory Peck story was a marvelous read. JRW