Today is publication day for Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine, a massive anthology inspired by the archival holdings of the Bob Dylan Center, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel are the editors; contributors include Greil Marcus, Michael Ondaatje, Gregory Pardlo, Lee Ranaldo, Richard Hell, Ed Ruscha, Lucy Sante, Greg Tate, my New Yorker colleague Amanda Petrusich, and myself, writing on "The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar." I'm not sure I've ever had so much fun working on an assignment; the day when I received images of the various drafts of the song was a giddy one. Anyone who loves Dylan is going to experience similar feelings of discovery all through the book; dozens of pages of drafts are reproduced, with more of Dylan's serpentine creative process revealed in the essays. A tiny example: in some early lyrics for "Tombstone Blues," Dylan wrote "complex vibrato" and then replaced it with "useless knowledge."
Previously: The Wanderer, Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan as Richard Wagner, Ain't Talkin'.
