The speech that Bob Bob Dylan’s gave on his Grammy 2015 award was selected by “The Browser” as one of the top stories of 2015 in the culture section.
The speech as a whole is a masterpiece of gratitude humility and proportions by of one of the most important and popular music icons of the last decades. There are many great passages in his speech. Two in particular caught my attention more then others:
“Trends did not interest John, and I was very noncommercial but he stayedwith me. He believed in my talent and that’s all that mattered. I can’t thank him enough for that.”
“These songs didn’t come out of thin air. I didn’t just make them up out of whole cloth. Contrary to what Lou Levy said, there was a precedent. It all came out of traditional music: traditional folk music, traditional rock ‘n’ roll and traditional big-band swing orchestra music.
If you sang “John Henry” as many times as me — “John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I’ll die with that hammer in my hand.”
If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written “How many roads must a man walk down?” too.
System D 