If you didn’t make it to the Desert Trip, fear not, because there’s a ton of fan footage of the Californian event to savour including a seriously incendiary set from the Rolling Stones. Also performing – and smiling! – over the weekend was Nobel Prize-winner Bob Dylan who sounded more like his old self than he has done for quite a while.
“I want to thank Bob Dylan for an amazing set,” Mick Jagger told the sell-out 75,000 crowd. “We have never shared the stage with a Nobel Prize winner before. Bob is like our own Walt Whitman.”
A grinning Keith Richards added: “Congratulations to Mr. Dylan for all of his work. I can’t think of anybody else who deserves it better.”
Meanwhile, the celebrity tributes to The Big Zim continue to pour in.
“It’s a great day for Literature and for Bob when a Master of its original form is celebrated," Tom Waits and his wife Kathleen Brennan say in a joint communiqué. "Before epic tales and poems were ever written down, they migrated on the winds of the human voice and no voice is greater than Dylan’s."
Leonard Cohen, who's deserving of a Nobel gong himself, proffers: "To me it's like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain. I think that Bob Dylan knows this more than all of us: you don’t write the songs anyhow. So if you’re lucky, you can keep the vehicle healthy and responsive over the years. If you’re lucky, your own intentions have very little to do with this. You can keep the body as well-oiled and receptive as possible, but whether you’re actually going to be able to go for the long haul is really not your own choice.”