Dylan at the Grammys III: "Love Sick," 1998

1998-02-25, Grammy Awards, Radio City Music Hall, New York, NY

The last installment in our Grammys series - Bob's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991 - is in the running as his most prominent Grammys appearance. There’s only one piece of competition - and this one's not really because of anything Bob did. Two words enter this performance into the annals of history:

Soy. Bomb.

But Mr. Bomb doesn't show up until halfway through, so, if you can, forget him for the moment. Depending on what YouTube version you find, that wouldn't be that hard - at one time, he was edited out of the official Grammys version. To me, that seems like telling the story of Rolling Stones at Altamont while omitting one liiittle detail. (There doesn't appear to be any “official” upload anymore, but that rewriting of history lives on here.)

The stage setup is cool as hell, a white floor with another white panel hovering above the band. Even though the panel itself is only on screen a few times, its diffuse light gives the whole thing an appropriately swampy look. Kanye West did a similar thing on his Saturday Night Live performance a few years back. 

Bob performs “Love Sick” in front of a few dozen extras. Apparently this was at Bob's own request (one that would come back to bite him in the ass when one of those extras went rogue). The performance is faithful to the recording, even approximating that Daniel Lanois echo. The main difference is Bob's extended guitar solo, which, as far as Bob guitar solos go, is pretty great. More than just repeating two notes over and over! Maybe he was inspired by what happened just before that solo began…

Which brings us to the Soy Bomb of it all. It’s one of the most famous stage-crashes in history. A shirtless man with “Soy Bomb” Sharpied onto his chest in capital letters runs on stage, plants himself next to Bob, and begins a strange undulating dance. It was the talk of the show.

Soy Bomb was really performance artist Michael Portnoy. Beyond that, facts are murky.

I've looked around to try to find clear and coherent answers to the obvious questions. Questions like "What?" and "Why" and "Huh??" And my research has led me to the conclusion that clear and coherent answers do not exist. He did a few interviews around the episode’s 20th anniversary in 2018, but mostly seemed focused on promoting his new projects and revealed little. The statement he released in '98 to explain what the hell a Soy Bomb is doesn't illuminate much either: "Soy represents dense nutritional life. Bomb is, obviously, an explosive destructive force. So, 'soy bomb' is what I think art should be: dense, transformational, explosive life!"

Yeah, that explains it.