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'Nervous' Patti Smith forgets lines to Bob Dylan lyrics during Nobel Prize tribute

The rock icon apologised before resuming her song and finished to a rousing applause.

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A screenshot from the video of Patti Smith's performance.
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Rock Hall's singer-songwriter Patti Smith, who filled in for Nobel Literature Prize winner Bob Dylan at the ceremony in Oslo, forgot lines to his lyrics as she was "so nervous".

After forgetting and mixing up some words in the second verse, the 69-year-old American rock star said, "I apologise. I'm sorry, I'm so nervous." She then asked to restart the section and had the audience's support as they applauded her.

Watch her performance:

Although he was not present, Dylan was still the centre of the event where Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos quoted his anti-war song 'Blowin' in the Wind'. "How many deaths will it take 'till he knows that too many people have died? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind," he resounded Dylan in his acceptance speech. Santos collected the Nobel Peace Prize for his "resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war" to an end.

Smith earlier revealed that organizers approached her in September to sing at the ceremony, prior to the announcement of this year's award recipients.

"I had planned to perform one of my own songs with the orchestra. But after Bob Dylan was announced as the winner and he accepted it, it seemed appropriate to set my own song aside and choose one of his," she shared.

Talking of her choice, Smith explained that it was because 'A Hard Rain' "combines his Rimbaudian mastery of language with a deep understanding of the causes of suffering and ultimately human resilience."

"I have been following him since I was a teenager, half a century to be exact. I am very proud to be doing so and will approach the task with a sense of gratitude for having him as our distant, but present, cultural shepherd," she added. 

Bob Dylan's acceptance speech:

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