It's Family Night for Dylans

NEW YORK -- From The Times: Thursday, February 26, 1998

It was Father and Son Night for Bob and Jakob Dylan on Wednesday at the 40th annual Grammy Awards as the Dylan bandwagon carted off five statuettes, including the coveted album of the year honor for the legendary patriarch.

Bob Dylan, 56, won three awards during the ceremony at Radio City Music Hall, including his victory for the "Time Out of Mind" collection, an acclaimed reflection on love and death that was widely hailed as the singer-songwriter's best work in 20 years.

Son Jakob, 27, won two awards, including best rock song, during a nationally televised program that also saluted Shawn Colvin's wistful "Sunny Came Home" as the year's best single record and song. The Top 10 single, co-written by Colvin and John Leventhal, is a mysterious tale of a woman's vengeance.

Dylan's best album victory was long overdue. Though he was one of the performers on the 1972 best album winner, "The Concert for Bangla Desh," he had never received a best album nomination for his own groundbreaking work before this year.

"Time Out of Mind," his first collection of new songs in seven years, marked a comeback for Dylan, who was forced to cancel a European tour last summer after he was hospitalized for a week last May because of a fungal infection near the heart. (The album, completed before his illness, was released in September.)

In accepting his best album Grammy, Dylan unexpectedly gave thanks to Buddy Holly, saying he had seen the late rock pioneer perform about 40 years ago.

"He looked at me and I just have some kind of feeling that . . . he was with us all the time we were making this record," Dylan said. "And in the words of the immortal Robert Johnson, 'The stuff we got'll bust your brains out.' We tried to get that across."

Dylan made no mention of his son, who apparently did not attend the awards, and the legendary songwriter did not appear before the backstage press. Both father and son have been reluctant to speak of their relationship since Jakob's band's made its splash last year.

Dylan wasn't the only performer to walk off with three awards. R&B singer-songwriter R. Kelly and bluegrass ace Alison Krauss and her band Union Station also won three, with Krauss running her career total to nine Grammys.

The national telecast was interrupted twice by uninvited guests on stage, including rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan, who took the microphone early in the show to argue that the New York collective should have won for best rap album. Later, a bare-chested man with "Soy Bomb" written on his torso gyrated wildly during Dylan's performance before being escorted off stage.

There also was some off-screen tension in the air.

Vince Gill, picking up his 11th Grammy, for best male country vocal, alluded to it when he joked that he had brought his 15-year-old daughter to New York for the first time, "and, according to the mayor, maybe the last."

It was a reference to a feud between New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and recording academy President C. Michael Greene, who was blasted by Giuliani for allegedly berating a deputy of the mayor last month.

Greene, appearing on the show to introduce a 40th-anniversary salute to the Grammys, made no reference to the feud or to the controversy surrounding his management of the academy and its charitable arms that was sparked by articles this week in The Times.