If Bob Dylan was impressed by his recent Nobel literature prize win, he certainly did not let it show onstage in Las Vegas.
The 75-year-old rock legend took the stage on Thursday night for a show at the Cosmopolitan casino's Chelsea music hall with not a word to the crowd about his history-making prize - or anything else.
Instead, he reprised the set he played October 7 at the Desert Trip festival, covering 1960s and 1970s classics like Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35 and Tangled Up in Blue as well as newer songs like Make You Feel My Love, from 1997's Time Out Of Mind.
Dressed in a loose-fitting pearl-grey suit, spotlights illuminating his hair into a frizzy halo, the first songwriter to be named a literature laureate was all business, delivering songs in his trademark rasp as he played piano, guitar and harmonica backed by his five-piece band.
Instead of stage banter, he turned down the lights between songs. He ignored the audience's ovations and the shouts of "Nobel laureate!" that came from the audience - perhaps the first time that particular cheer has been heard at a rock concert.
But when it came time for encores, he changed his tune.
In an apparent nod to the occasion honouring his legacy, he veered off his Desert Trip script and instead took an upbeat romp through his 1962 protest anthem Blowin' in the Wind as the audience of 2,000 cheered him on.
Then, the enigmatic artist who has confounded generations of scholars searching for the message in his lyrics borrowed some from Frank Sinatra to close the show.
In Why Try To Change Me Now, which Dylan covered on his 2015 album "Shadows of the Night", he sang: "So let people wonder/Let'em laugh, let 'em frown/You know I'll love you 'til the moon's upside down/Don't you remember, I was always your clown/Why try to change me now."
Then, with the tiniest of bows, he walked off stage.
Later a representative said Dylan had no immediate comment on the Nobel win.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton calls the award "fantastic" and says he will issue a proclamation honouring Dylan, who was born in Duluth and grew up in Hibbing.
DPA/AP
