Mixing Up The Medicine is a new career-spanning compilation containing 12 of Bob Dylan’s greatest songs, including “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”, “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Hurricane”. It serves as the companion piece to the Mixing Up The Medicine book, which offers an unprecedented look into the Bob Dylan Archive. This magnum opus will include nearly 1,000 images, most of which have never been seen by the public, alongside original essays by prominent writers and artists.
Dylan is the thirteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on November 19, 1973 by Columbia Records. Compiled and issued by the label with no input from Dylan himself, it contains no original Dylan songs, the material consisting of two outtakes from Self Portrait and another seven from New Morning…
On his first LP of original songs in nearly a decade—and his first since reluctantly accepting Nobel Prize honours in 2016—Bob Dylan takes a long look back. Rough and Rowdy Ways is a hot bath of American sound and historical memory, the 79-year-old singer-songwriter reflecting on where we’ve been, how we got here and how much time he has left. There are temperamental blues (“False Prophet”, “Crossing the Rubicon”) and gentle hymns (“I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You”), rollicking farewells (“Goodbye Jimmy Reed”) and heady exchanges with the Grim Reaper (“Black Rider”). It reads like memoir, but you know he’d claim it’s fiction.And yet, maybe it’s the timing—coming out in June 2020 amidst the throes of a pandemic and a social uprising that bears echoes of the 1960s—or his age, but Dylan’s every line here does have the added charge of what feels like a final word, like some ancient wisdom worth decoding and preserving before it’s too late.
Bob Dylan returned from exile with John Wesley Harding, a quiet, country-tinged album that split dramatically from his previous three. A calm, reflective album, John Wesley Harding strips away all of the wilder tendencies of Dylan's rock albums – even the then-unreleased Basement Tapes he made the previous year – but it isn't a return to his folk roots. If anything, the album is his first serious foray into country, but only a handful of songs, such as "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," are straight country songs. Instead, John Wesley Harding is informed by the rustic sound of country, as well as many rural myths, with seemingly simple songs like "All Along the Watchtower," "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," and "The Wicked Messenger" revealing several layers of meaning with repeated plays. Although the lyrics are somewhat enigmatic, the music is simple, direct, and melodic, providing a touchstone for the country-rock revolution that swept through rock in the late '60s.
The official release of The Basement Tapes – which were first heard on a 1968 bootleg called The Great White Wonder – plays with history somewhat, as Robbie Robertson overemphasizes the Band's status in the sessions, making them out to be equally active to Dylan, adding in demos not cut at the sessions and overdubbing their recordings to flesh them out…