It should have been a night remembered primarily for honoring Bob Dylan‘s amazing return to form from one of the roughest patches of his life and career. Instead, Dylan’s triumphant moment at the 1998 Grammy Awards will forever be intermingled with a strange decision by a stage-crasher of sorts and his bizarre message for the world, which was emblazoned on his bare chest.
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The “Soy Bomb” guy, aka Michael Portnoy, cemented his place in Grammy (and live television) lore with his decision to dance alongside an unwitting Dylan during the final performance of the evening. Let’s look back at how this bizarre anecdote attached to a brilliant album’s victory lap came to be.
Dylan’s Time Once Again
For most of the 1990s, Bob Dylan was viewed by many as an artist whose best days were clearly behind him. After his up-and-down ’80s catalog, he released the clunker Under the Red Sky (1990) and then two albums of folk songs that contained no Dylan originals. His Never Ending Tour rolled on, but few expected him to be swinging with the heavyweights in the industry again in the second half of the decade.
Dylan reconnected with producer Daniel Lanois in 1996 and recorded a set of originals that all involved knew was stronger than anything he’d done in some time. But before he could release it, he suffered through a serious infection that briefly put him in a life-threatening situation.
Luckily, he recovered, and the album Time Out of Mind was released to uniformly glowing reviews in September 1997. Grammy nominations followed, including one for the hallowed Album of the Year award. Going up against a stacked field that included Radiohead’s OK Computer, Dylan took home this hallowed honor for the first time in his career. Grammy producers booked him to close out the show with a performance, and it seemed like everything was in order to put a proper bow on both the evening and this great story. But Michael Portnoy had other ideas.
You Dropped a “Soy Bomb” on Me
Age 26 at the time, Portnoy was one of a bunch of folks promised $200 to hang out at the back of the stage and subtly shimmy and sway while Dylan performed “Love Sick” to close out the show. But he decided the exposure was simply too good to pass up, and took drastic measures to attract some attention.
A couple of minutes into the song, Portnoy stripped off his shirt and moved right alongside Dylan, and then began to gyrate around in some sort of possessed dance. On his chest, in thick black lettering, were the words “Soy Bomb.” Dylan could be seen mouthing to his band away from the mike, wondering who this guy was.
Watching the video, it’s striking just how long Portnoy was out there (a good 40 seconds or so) before anybody did anything about it. To Dylan’s credit, he didn’t miss a beat, keeping up with the lyrics while making sure to back away from the intruder whenever he had the opportunity. Finally, someone realized Portnoy didn’t belong out there and ushered him gently off the stage.
The Aftermath
Portnoy faced no consequences for his impromptu interpretive dance. After all, he was technically supposed to be on the stage, although clearly not that close to the artist. He later claimed in interviews he never did get his $200.
As for the message, Portnoy has explained that “soy” was meant to represent all things organic and from the Earth. “Bomb” meant that these things from nature would explode in a transformational way. In those pre-internet days, his 15 minutes of fame (or infamy perhaps) faded quickly without millions of sleuths trying to decode his message and his intent.
With Time Out of Mind, Bob Dylan once again basked in the praise and approbation of his fans, critics, and peers in a way he hadn’t known for quite some time. Who knew he’d briefly have to share that spotlight in the most unusual manner possible.
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Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage
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