In a wide-ranging 35-minute speech that had the 3,000 or so music executives and stars in the audience hanging on his every word, Mr. Dylan touched on the roots of his songwriting, the musicians who inspired him, and the naysaying of critics and others along the way.
It was an extremely rare and revealing speech from Mr. Dylan, 73, but in his usual fashion it was anything but straightforward. Reading from a thick cache of papers, he spoke in what at times was a kind of rhapsodic, canny prose-poetry, like one of his lyrics or an outtake from his 2004 memoir, “Chronicles, Volume One.”
“These songs of mine,” he said, “they’re like mystery plays, the kind Shakespeare saw when he was growing up. I think you could trace what I do back that far. They were on the fringes then, and I think they’re on the fringes now.”
Mr. Dylan was accepting the person of the year award from MusiCares, a charity affiliated with the Grammys that supports musicians in financial need or in health crises. Since MusiCares began in 1989, it has distributed nearly $40 million in aid, according to the group, and the event on Friday, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, raised a record $7 million through sales of tickets and memorabilia.
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