Dylan’s “Mixing Up the Medicine” Writes An Incredible Journey
There is no end to this story and there never will be.
Sean Wilentz (Introduction at page 22)
I asked Dylan what feeling he sought in his role as pseudonymous producer Jack Frost. “Just a plain sound with depth, a lot of room ambiance,” he said. “Everybody close in, hardly any headphones or separation. Each song has its own mood though, so the sound quality would vary. And no one sound quality would apply to everything. The lyrics won’t marry themselves to any old thing, so the sound has to be forthcoming. But it’s not the sound as much as the style in which the lyrics are sung that give them meaning.”
Douglas Brinkley (Epilogue at page 586)
MIXING UP THE MEDICINE. Bob Dylan. Edited by Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel. With text by multiple contributors. Introductory essay by Sean Wilentz; epilogue by Douglas Brinkley. Callaway Arts & Entertainment.
In one respect, the formal release of Mixing Up the Medicine is as exciting an event as the publication of Dylan’s 2004 memoir Chronicles. This 600-plus page retrospective, issued by the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, contains a wide assortment of Dylan’s personal archive which was discovered during the last decade and then donated to the Center.
This sprawling collection of jottings, draft lyrics, photographs and assorted ephemera surveys the entirety of his career while depicting the inner workings of Dylan’s very complicated mind. The reason I use the word exciting to describe publication is because the tome affords us the chance to sneak a peek at pieces of the poet’s daily working notebooks, allowing us the rare chance to see a writer’s eyes in motion.
As long-time fans know, Dylan is a serious student of the Beat Generation poets and he’s followed in their footsteps, using the Kerouac/Ginsberg model to record his thoughts in pocket notebooks while on the move. In turn, Mixing Up the Medicine unearths a vast array of material from Dylan’s secret easel, with the fragments of lyrics and poetry the true star of the stage.
In addition to getting the chance to pore over many of Dylan’s classic songs in rough manuscript form (“Chimes of Freedom,” “Dear Landlord,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”), Mixing Up the Medicine also includes keepsakes and mementos from Dylan’s vault: Several letters from Johnny Cash – one following Dylan’s performance of “Train of Love” at the 1999 Cash Tribute – stitched together with correspondence from Beat contemporaries Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Michael McClure, illuminate the respect the singer had generated from the literary icons of the day. In actuality, Dylan was able to take the collective mission of the Beats one step further by using music to broaden the reach of poetry. A business card belonging to Otis Redding Dylan apparently kept in his 1960’s wallet is also telling – a common artifact paying homage to that Motown sound that had captured both sides of his psyche.
Mixing Up the Medicine marks a monumental achievement because it presents strands of the real Dylan in pure unadulterated form. Juxtapose the text with pieces from the Bootleg Series and you’ll arrive at a living portrait of the artist at work. If you could only take one book to that desert island where you’ll be stranded for the next 10 years, this is the one you’ll want: the story of Bob Dylan told in his own inimitable words.
Electric Review 