Sadly, Bob Dylan didn’t surprise the laureate community by showing up in Stockholm to personally claim his Nobel Prize in Literature after all — truly a shocker, wow — but alas! Very-good-alternative Patti Smith stepped up in his place, where she performed an emotional rendition of Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” with orchestra accompaniment after a Swedish Academy member presented the absent Dylan with an award speech. However, Smith had a momentary slip-up about halfway through the performance, as she accidentally repeated a lyric to the song, paused, and calmly asked the orchestra to start over again. “I apologize. I’m sorry, I’m so nervous,” Smith said to the crowd, who applauded back in support. (At the end of the day, even the greats suffer from occasional nerves, too.) The full ceremony can be viewed above, with the performance beginning around the 1:03:00 mark.
Patti Smith Stumbles Through Bob Dylan Lyrics at Nobel Prize Award Ceremony
