Bob Dylan “Mixing Medicine”

“Mixing Medicine” is the name of the volume, now available in German and presenting a selection of never-before-seen gems from the rich vault of the Bob Dylan Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The first thing you notice in the chronological book are the illustrations: how photogenic this man was! Dylan surrounded himself with the best minds of the counterculture of the early 1960s, and the photographs of him with Joan Baez are achingly beautiful. But there's also him with Françoise Hardy and David Bowie and Patti Smith, and – strangely – in very few of the pictures these people are talking to each other. It seemed as if it was enough for them to be there and breathe deeply in and out of each other's mist and aura. As if they were exchanging ideas and inspiration via a human version of an airdrop: an osmosis of charisma.

Now, one mistake you shouldn't make is to assume that Dylan himself is relying on the treasures on offer here. So never think: Oh, that's how it all happened. Dylan is always on the move, a transient figure, a shape-shifter, a clown of possibility and possibility. The tracks he puts out are always misleading, which is why many are disappointed when they don't hear “Blowin' In The Wind” at the now 82-year-old singer's concerts, and others tell them afterwards that they definitely heard it, but they didn't. She doesn't recognize it at first because Dylan first destroys it, then reassembles it, and then mumbles it away. “Alias” was the name of his role in the Western film “Pat Garrett Chases Billy the Kid.” In the movie “I'm Not There,” six actors played Bob Dylan, but they were unable to control him. So you can never see how he became what he is not. But just what he could have been before he turned into someone else. Status quo Vadis.

So, you spread out through a world of ghosts and shadows that sound like Hurricane and Tangled Up In Blue, and are not surprised by the sometimes very tragic tone of the 30 essays included by such great figures as Michael Ondaatje (“The English Book”). Patient”), Greg Tate and Lucy Sante. Sometimes the love is so great that Dylan suddenly appears before the public as a hip-hop pioneer, because “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is basically rap, as they say. And “Like A Rolling Stone” You actually expect the Sugarhill Gang's “Rapper's Delight.” Quite a bit, I thought at first. And then it's not so illogical.

There's also a lot of celebrity gossip. There is a card from Bruce Springsteen congratulating the future Nobel Prize winner in Literature on the publication of “Records.” And a greeting from George Harrison, in beautiful, puffy handwriting that begins with “Dear Bobby.” In a notebook she discovers the phone number of Nico Pavegen from Cologne, who met the Velvet Underground two years after Dylan and became world famous as Nico.

We learn that his draft lyrics are usually very mature. But Dylan struggles to nail every word, switching terms to make the verses more rhythmic and the rhymes smoother. For deanologists and Bobnis nerds – who have never read anything like this book – there are great critical historical reads like this one: An American reviewer happened to watch a 1967 episode of “Star Trek” on television and thought the dialogue sounded like this. It is spoken by Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Sulu is strangely familiar to him. He's not wrong, the lyrics are exactly the same as in Dylan's “Tight Connection To My Heart” from 1985. In this respect, the book works like a walk at dawn, when the morning dew makes cobwebs barely visible. A note between the two everyday things.

Where is Dylan now? what's he doing? You can't know that anyway. The latest photos in the folder show him doing his new favorite activity. He welds iron sculptures and metal entrance gates, which – don't get mad – are very ugly.

“Don't get up, gentlemen, I'm just a passerby,” he sings on “Things Have Changed.” Bob Dylan, unbelievable.