Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine is a new book by Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, which marks the first official publication by the Bob Dylan Center. Located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Center serves as the public face for the Bob Dylan Archive, which houses a lifetime’s worth of Dylan’s lyric drafts, notebooks, photographs, videos, movies, drawings, business matters, and much more. This new book includes a sampling of the Archive’s holdings, highlighting key objects from the collection. Additionally, guest essayists were invited to write about objects from the Archive. Mixing Up the Medicine extends the reach of the Center, allowing Dylan freaks to interact with this Dylan material without having to travel to Tulsa.
Anne Margaret Daniel wrote one of the essays for Mixing Up the Medicine. She is a scholar who teaches at the New School University and Bard College and has written extensively on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Bob Dylan. Her seminal 2019 cover story for Hot Press examined the notebooks that Dylan used to craft the lyrics for the songs from 1975’s Blood on the Tracks. That article was a revelation, opening up Dylan’s process and allowing readers to track the transformation from initial inspiration to completion.
On the eve of the publication of Mixing Up the Medicine, Recliner Notes spoke with Daniel about the phone recordings documenting the friendship between Dylan and the musician and writer Tony Glover, which is the focus of her piece in the book. She also provides more insight into the Archive, the Center, and much more.
Recliner Notes: How did you get the invitation to contribute to Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine?
Anne Margaret Daniel: The big New York Times story was the initial introduction to most people in the world that there is now the [Bob Dylan] Archive. I submitted a research request. What I really wanted to see were the other Blood on the Tracks notebooks. Everybody had known for decades about the little red notebook that was in The Morgan Library that had been in the Hecksher Collection. I had worked pretty extensively with that notebook already since I’m based in New York. Years before, I had submitted a research request saying, “I would really like to read the drafts of the songs and look at his working process.” That’s what I do. I’m an archival scholar, and I like to read drafts. So, I had been to The Morgan to look at that notebook. When it was reported — I believe in the New York Times — that there were other Blood on the Tracks-era notebooks, I submitted a research request and I waited and I got an approval back. So I went and spent about a week and a half at the Archive, which were, at that point, housed out where the Gilcrease Museum used to be in The Helmerich Center For American Research. I worked out there on those notebooks. At that point, I couldn’t hold the actual notebooks. I was allowed to use a computerized scan that was only on the research computers in the building. I published a cover story on that for Hot Press’s annual in 2019.
Recliner Notes: What a big story that was!
Anne Margaret Daniel: It was such a pleasure to research and write, believe me. In the wake of that, I went a few more times to Tulsa with different specific requests. I was interested in not only Dylan’s Woodstock-era songs and the relevant notebooks and drafts as well as the copyright pages, but I also was really interested in any recent acquisitions.
These Tony Glover tapes — I’m sure you saw the news about the Glover auction, which was done by RR Auction. They had some amazing things, to put it mildly, from Tony’s longtime collection. I wish there was a way one could have waved a magic wand and kept together everything that Tony had done. But it’s good enough that, out of those tapes, one set of them has been donated to Tulsa, and they’re an interesting set of conversations. They’d come from, I believe, late ‘68-early ‘69, or late ‘69-early ‘70. It’s winter time when it starts out. Tony is in Minneapolis and Bob is in Woodstock. The conversation started out [with] two Minnesota boys and snow. Basically, they’re trading notes about the weather. Bob’s like, “Well, we got a foot of snow the other day.” And Tony’s like, “Well, we have 15 inches here and more on top.” And Bob’s like, “Oh yeah, Minnesota man!” Then, a conversation or two later, he and his family have just gotten back from a little vacation to Jamaica, and Tony’s like, “Man, I wish it could have been me.”
These very friendly, warm conversations that do have a personal note, like the two moments I just mentioned, which are very convivial and all that. But the bulk of the time they spend talking and the reason that Tony taped these conversations with Dylan’s permission is because they’re largely about music, the kind of new music that they’re both listening to. There’s one point where Bob says he’s heard that The Doors are moving up to Woodstock, and Tony’s like, “Really?”
Glover talks about musicians he’s played with recently, primarily new things he’s discovered for this radio show that he was starting to broadcast in Minnesota. I think it was broadcast initially from midnight to 4 am, and he’s sort of laughing about the requests that he gets. And Bob sent him a tape of new music, some of The Basement Tapes songs, and says, “With my blessing, listen to this. See what you think you can play.”
They were such wonderful, warm conversations. I clearly enjoyed listening to them. It was Mark Davidson who asked if I would be interested in writing a piece about these Tony Glover tapes in a slightly larger context, a look at their friendship and its musical basis and the kind of music they were both interested in and listening to at the time. I was thrilled, so that’s what I wrote.
Recliner Notes: So you were able to listen to those conversations during your visit to the Archive when you were looking at the other Blood on the Tracks notebooks?
Anne Margaret Daniel: No, that was later. They didn’t make their way to the Archive until a couple of years later. I’m sincerely hoping that whoever out there bought the other [Glover] tapes will donate them to Tulsa because that’s clearly where they belong. It’s just a wonderful item to have. It shows how, as if we didn’t already know from Theme Time Radio Hour and Chronicles, how incredibly deep and wide and varied Dylan’s musical interests are.
Recliner Notes: How did the Archives share the interviews with you? Did they share a sound file or did you go back to Tulsa to listen?
Anne Margaret Daniel: Tony prepared his own transcription of it, and I was able to listen to mp3s of all of them on a secure stick on my computer with it not being connected to the internet, so that Spotify wouldn’t pirate my stick [laughs].
In terms of my Fitzgerald work — with me, it’s all Minnesota writers, all the time — it’s really important that if something is previously unpublished, and the author or the author’s estate still holds the copyright — which is the case of anything unpublished or unreleased — you respect that, period. That’s non-negotiable.
Recliner Notes: Putting aside the book, is there anything from the Archives that you’ve identified that you want to write about in the future?
Anne Margaret Daniel: How long do you have? [laughs]. There’s so much. I’ve worked in a lot of archives, and I’ve rarely worked in an archive that is this deep and this chock full of — not just handwritten drafts that are on everything imaginable. Dylan, like James Joyce, is just constantly writing, noticing things. overhearing a bit of a conversation in a restaurant or on some sort of transportation. There are drafts on everything. There’s a lot of hotel stationery drafts, and there are drafts on pieces of a paper bag. Bits and pieces on those little freebie notepads that everybody hands out, like Kinko’s and your doctor’s and your dentist’s office, stuff scribbled on those. In terms of just his written output alone, it’s an incredible archive.
Slightly less so on the painting and sculpture because that comes later. How do you retain that in an archive if an artist does a sketch for a larger oil painting, which Dylan has done? I’ve seen those at the Halcyon Gallery in London and a couple of other galleries. If it were written work, you would retain the sketch in an archive. But the sketches also are artworks and so those, of course, are for sale. So I guess the way to preserve those would be to do digital files of all Dylan’s art, and that’s a way to have them all together in the archive. I don’t know if that’s being done, but it seems to make sense since he’s doing a lot of painting these days.
When it comes to other projects he’s undertaken, the recordings, obviously, that has all been collected, and there’s so much of that. You could listen to any relevant soundboards for weeks and months. Let’s say you’re writing on something that he’s performed a lot over the years, like “Ballad of a Thin Man” or “Like a Rolling Stone.” It would take you years to listen to different performances. I am assuming those are archived at Tulsa. I know I have listened to a lot of performances. I don’t know if they’re all there yet or if they’re still being processed. The same goes for Dylan’s film work; all the reels and everything from Eat the Document. Initially when I first went to Tulsa for the opening of the Center, Michael Chaiken gave a speech about that. He showed quite a number of clips that are now in the film that they show at the Archive. Dylan was making a kind of new wave movie in Woodstock at one point in the late 1960s, and it stars Tiny Tim. Some images and little clips of that have made their way out. That would be fantastic to work on something like that. I’m really interested in Dylan’s movies: ones in which he starred and, moreso, ones in which he was interested in producing.
Recliner Notes: What were highlights for you from the book, either the written pieces or the objects?
Anne Margaret Daniel: I knew that Bruce Langhorne’s tambourine would be something that would be chosen. Having worked with the Blood on the Tracks notebooks, I thought what Joy Harjo did with “Tangled Up in Blue” was just magical. Gosh, that was good. It’s fantastic that she is local and she lives in the arts district [in Tulsa.] She’s literally on the ground there. I’ve had the privilege of meeting her and listening to her a couple of times when I’ve been in Tulsa, and I just personally really love that one.
I have a mixed view sometimes on Clinton Heylin’s writing, and I’ve met him many times in person. I would say that to his face, and I have said that to his face. But Paul Williams is such an important person, not just in terms of Dylan, but in terms of music, in terms of Crawdaddy and the whole music history and as a cultural writer. I was delighted, particularly to see him acknowledged in that fashion. What were some highlights for you?
Recliner Notes: I thought Terry Gans digging up the lyrics for “I’m Cold” from the lost 1977 songs was great. He wrote that it was like a “eureka” moment, and I could understand how he could feel that.
Anne Margaret Daniel: I was lucky enough to be in Tulsa working, basically side by side with Terry. We were the only two researchers who were there that week. First of all, what a fantastic person and scholar, and, second of all, I think his book on Infidels is one of the best Dylan books that will ever be written. Yeah, I love Terry’s piece as well.
Recliner Notes: I also thought Michael Ondaatje’s piece was beautiful. Who knew that he was a Dylan freak?
Anne Margaret Daniel: I think everybody is, once you kind of peel back their layers!
Recliner Notes: I liked Ed Rucha’s piece. He’s an Oklahoma native as well, like Joy Harjo. Each turn of the page was a little discovery.
Anne Margaret Daniel: My favorite essays in the whole book are the interstices that Mark and Parker have put together; the essays and the images they’ve chosen that hold the essays together and make the frame that they sit in. That’s the Archive itself, kind of backing all the essays. I find that tremendous.
Also, you mentioned being an Oklahoman, the times that I have gone to Tulsa to work and visit, it is really beautiful to me the way that — not just the arts community in the area which is where the the Archive is now located right next to the Woody Guthrie Center on Reconciliation Way — but the way in which people from farther afield, everybody’s heard about the Dylan Archive. Local people come to take a look at it. It’s the new museum, and they’re digging it. It’s nice to see how Dylan, who, of course, is not an Oklahoman, has been embraced. I think, first of all, because of his affection for Woody Guthrie, who is a bonafide local hero, and second, because of the variety in the Archive itself. “I knew he wrote ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ Oh, I’ve listened to a couple of his albums in the past but who knew all this other stuff about him? This is cool!” I’ve seen that attitude when I’ve been out to local restaurants. It’s really lovely. It’s very warm and a great feeling.
Recliner Notes: What are you working on now?
Anne Margaret Daniel: My primary project right now is reading and transcribing Zelda Fitzgerald’s letters, so my pendulum has swung back a little to Fitzgerald right now. But I am also at work on a collection of essays about Dylan that I guess chronologically is the best way to order them, but they’re not entirely chronological. A lot of them are based on things that I have found and seen in the Archive as well as my own experiences of having heard him in concert regularly since the summer of 1988. My least favorite kind of criticism is what I call the “I me mine” school of criticism. “This is what Dylan means to me. This is what his song says to me.” I’m interested in his creative process, in a way not listening to me talk about it, which is kind of hard to write sometimes. But I’m a literary critic and that’s the road I’m going down.
Recliner Notes: Lastly, any music recommendations to share?
Anne Margaret Daniel: Well, I’m somewhat ashamed to say that I regularly visit Expecting Rain and I do listen to every single concert that I haven’t been able to go to. I personally don’t tape, but I am grateful to those who do. I’m really looking forward to catching Bob and the band on the road, beginning in Schenectady. I’ve actually been listening to a lot of Hank Williams. I’ve been thinking about Zelda and Montgomery, so, naturally, I go and listen to Hank Williams. Also, in large part thanks to Dylan, I’ve been listening to a lot of early rock ‘n roll, rhythm and blues things from the ‘50s; Howlin’ Wolf and people who he’s been covering in concert these days. I’m hoping that when it comes to my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, he will acknowledge the great Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who was not just a tap dancer, but also a singer-songwriter. Aw man, if he does some old Bojangles, I will be the happiest person in the world!
Recliner Notes: Thank you so much for taking some time to talk to me!
Anne Margaret Daniel: I hope people love the book as much as I do. I am dazzlingly honored to be a part of it. It’s really special for me. I have enjoyed reading everyone else’s essays there. What a collection of people writing, oh my goodness.
This conversation has been condensed and edited.
Recliner Notes 