Because Bob Dylan wasn't there in person, Patti Smith accepted the Nobel Prize for literature in Stockholm on his behalf last Saturday. So it seems timely to recount a similar event 16 years ago in Stockholm that he did attend – and so did I.

This was The Polar Music Prize in May 2000, which was awarded jointly to the great classical violinist, Isaac Stern, and Bob Dylan for their contribution to music. Highly prestigious it came with a cheque for 1 million Kroner to each winner. I arranged press accreditation for myself hoping to photograph Bob Dylan again – we had first become acquainted a couple of years earlier at the 1998 Glastonbury Festival.



A week or two before attending I took photographs of Brian Ferry in Dublin. By chance he was due to sing his version of ‘A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall’ at the award ceremony - Patti Smith performed her version this year - so I arranged to hang out there with his party.

Ferry’s musicians consisted of a guitarist, a keyboard player and, appropriately for a sexy chanteuse, four nubile young women playing stringed instruments. There was an afternoon rehearsal in the empty Concerte Halle. The first four seats in the front row were labeled, Issac Stern, The Queen, The King and Bob Dylan. Backstage a group of choral singers in national costume, complete with Viking hats and blond wigs, rehearsed scales. Ferry’s girls played pool or lay provocatively over the green baize table in shiny leather strides. I was praying for Bob to walk in, but he didn’t.