Patti Smith Reflects on “Humiliating” Bob Dylan Nobel Performance

Patti Smith has written an essay on her performance at this year’s Nobel Prize Award Ceremony. At the Stockholm ceremony last week, she performed Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” in honor of Dylan, who was not present to accept his Nobel Prize in Literature. The essay centers on the moment Smith, overcome with nerves, couldn’t deliver the song’s lyrics. After repeating a line, she told the crowd, “I apologize, I’m sorry, I’m so nervous,” to encouraging applause. Now, she has explained that “I hadn’t forgotten the words that were now a part of me. I was simply unable to draw them out.” Read the full essay here.

Smith initially agreed to perform one of her own songs at the ceremony, before being told Dylan had taken the literature award. She discusses her hesitation after hearing the news:

In his absence, was I qualified for this task? Would this displease Bob Dylan, whom I would never desire to displease? But, having committed myself and weighing everything, I chose to sing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” a song I have loved since I was a teen-ager, and a favorite of my late husband.

Her preparation was extensive and, until she found herself on stage, seamless. Of the night, she writes:

The opening chords of the song were introduced, and I heard myself singing. The first verse was passable, a bit shaky, but I was certain I would settle. But instead I was struck with a plethora of emotions, avalanching with such intensity that I was unable to negotiate them. From the corner of my eye, I could see the the huge boom stand of the television camera, and all the dignitaries upon the stage and the people beyond. Unaccustomed to such an overwhelming case of nerves, I was unable to continue. I hadn’t forgotten the words that were now a part of me. I was simply unable to draw them out.

This strange phenomenon did not diminish or pass but stayed cruelly with me. I was obliged to stop and ask pardon and then attempt again while in this state and sang with all my being, yet still stumbling. It was not lost on me that the narrative of the song begins with the words “I stumbled alongside of twelve misty mountains,” and ends with the line “And I’ll know my song well before I start singing.” As I took my seat, I felt the humiliating sting of failure, but also the strange realization that I had somehow entered and truly lived the world of the lyrics.

Read the full essay here at the New Yorker.

 

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