Edit Record - RecordDB

Artist ID

Title

Field / Genre

Year Recorded

Label

Pressing

Rating

Discs

Media

Date Bought

Cost

Cover Name

Review

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. As many bootlegs (most notably the complete five-disc series) reveal, this isn't entirely true and that the Band were nowhere near as active as Dylan, but that ultimately is a bit like nitpicking, since the music here (including the Band's) is astonishingly good. The party line on The Basement Tapes is that it is Americana, as Dylan and the Band pick up the weirdness inherent in old folk, country, and blues tunes, but it transcends mere historical arcana by being lively, humorous, full-bodied performances. Dylan never sounded as loose, nor was he ever as funny as he is here, and this positively revels in its weird, wild character. For all the apparent antecedents -- and the allusions are sly and obvious in equal measures -- this is truly Dylan's show, as he majestically evokes old myths and creates new ones, resulting in a crazy quilt of blues, humor, folk, tall tales, inside jokes, and rock. The Band pretty much pick up where Dylan left off, even singing a couple of his tunes, but they play it a little straight, on both their rockers and ballads. Not a bad thing at all, since this actually winds up providing context for the wild, mercurial brilliance of Dylan's work -- and, taken together, the results (especially in this judiciously compiled form; expert song selection, even if there's a bit too much Band) rank among the greatest American music ever made.— Stephen Thomas Erlewine<HR> Wikipedia The Story of the Basement Tapes In the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan was at the peak of his creativity, having officially broken into the mainstream with his popular and acclaimed albums <A title="Highway 61 Revisited" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_61_Revisited">Highway 61 Revisited</A> and <A title="Blonde on Blonde" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blonde_on_Blonde">Blonde on Blonde</A>. In the latter half of 1965, during the interim between those two albums, Dylan began touring with The Hawks (later known as <A title="The Band" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Band">The Band</A>). Their live collaboration would continue into the first half of 1966, culminating in a legendary 'world' tour documented in <A title='The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert' href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bootleg_Series_Vol._4:_Bob_Dylan_Live_1966%2C_The_%22Royal_Albert_Hall%22_Concert">The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert</A>.According to Hawks/Band guitarist <A title="Robbie Robertson" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Robertson">Robbie Robertson</A>, "When I first met [Dylan] [in 1965], I played him this ballad from <A title="The Impressions (American band)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impressions_%28American_band%29">The Impressions</A>' Keep On Pushing album, 'I've Been Trying,' written by <A title="Curtis Mayfield" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Mayfield">Curtis Mayfield</A>. I said: 'They're not saying anything much and this is killing me, and you're rambling on for an hour and you're losing me; I mean, I think you're losing the spirit.'" Whether or not Robertson's comments had any real influence on Dylan's decision to change his musical direction, within a couple of years Dylan would be writing quite different styles of songs.On July 29th that year, Dylan suffered a mild concussion and cracked vertebrae when he crashed his Triumph 650 Bonneville motorcycle near <A title="Woodstock, New York" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock%2C_New_York">Woodstock, New York</A>. He was taken to a local hospital where he phoned the members of the Hawks, informing them of his injuries. Dylan and the Hawks were scheduled to perform at several concerts later in the year, but with Dylan's current condition, those concerts had to be cancelled.A little more than a week later, Dylan was back in Woodstock, wearing a neck brace and recuperating at a local doctor's house. While he was recovering, Dylan reviewed a preliminary cut of <A title="D. A. Pennebaker" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._A._Pennebaker">D. A. Pennebaker</A>'s documentary of the 1966 'world' tour. "They had made another <A title="Dont Look Back" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dont_Look_Back">Dont Look Back</A>, only this time it was for television," recalled Dylan in 1978. "I had nothing better to do than to see the film. All of it, including unused footage. And it was obvious from looking at the film that it was garbage. It was miles and miles of garbage." Dissatisfied with Pennebaker's results, Dylan re-edited the footage into a surrealistic film, titled <A title="Eat the Document" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_Document">Eat the Document</A>. (Howard Alk, who shot much of the footage, and Robbie Robertson also accepted Dylan's invitation to help him edit the film.)As biographer Clinton Heylin writes, "in the latter months of 1966 Dylan was certainly re-evaluating where he had come to at the age of twenty-five, and reviewing the raw film footage [of Eat the Document] was only part of that process."Dylan later recalled, "The turning point was back in Woodstock. A little after the accident. Sitting around one night under a full moon, I looked out into the bleak woods and I said, 'Something's gotta change.'"According to the late <A title="Rick Danko" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Danko">Rick Danko</A>, the Hawks joined Robbie Robertson at their house in West Saugerties in February of 1967. Nicknamed "Big Pink," the house originally belonged to "Rick Danko, <A title="Richard Manuel" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Manuel">Richard Manuel</A> and <A title="Garth Hudson" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Hudson">Garth Hudson</A>," according to Robertson. "I think Levon eventually moved in there, too. I didn't live there, but the whole idea was that we had been living in New York City, and we ended up moving upstate really to get a clubhouse, a place where we could woodshed. It was a real clubhouse, and we were just like a street gang — only we played music instead of going out fighting. We would get together every day at the clubhouse, just like the Bowery Boys. And as soon as Bob got well from his motorcycle accident, he started coming up every day."The date is uncertain, but sometime between March and June, Dylan and the Hawks began a series of informal recording sessions. Originally taking place at Dylan's house, "in the equally color-conscious Red Room" (according to Heylin), these informal sessions eventually moved to the basement of Big Pink."We used to get together everyday at one o' clock in the basement of Big Pink, and it was just a routine. We would get there and to keep [every] one of us from going crazy, we would play music every day ... There was no particular reason for it. We weren't making a record. We were just fooling around. The purpose was whatever comes into anybody's mind, we'll put it down on this little tape recorder." That tape recorder was actually an old Uher that was used on their legendary 'world' tour in 1966. Equipped with a couple of Altec PA tube mixers and allowing up to three microphones to be input per channel, with four or five studio-quality Neumann microphones, the machine was operated by the Hawks' Garth Hudson during the recording sessions. Dylan would later say in 1969, "that's really the way to do a recording — in a peaceful, relaxed setting, in somebody's basement, with the windows open and a dog lying on the floor."For the first couple of months, they were just "killing time," according to Robertson. Apparently, much of the early months was spent on covers. "With the covers Bob was educating us a little," recalls Roberston. "The whole folkie thing was still very questionable to us — it wasn't the train we came in on ... He'd come up with something like '[The Banks of the] Royal Canal,' and you'd say, 'This is so beautiful! The expression!' ... he remembered too much, remembered too many songs too well. He'd come over to Big Pink, or wherever we were, and pull out some old song — and he'd prepped for this. He'd practiced this, and then come out here, to show us." Circulating tapes from these sessions reveal a large, diverse number of popular songs, including compositions written or made popular by <A title="Johnny Cash" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash">Johnny Cash</A>, <A title="The Stanley Brothers" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stanley_Brothers">The Stanley Brothers</A>, <A title="Ian Tyson" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Tyson">Ian Tyson</A>, <A title="John Lee Hooker" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lee_Hooker">John Lee Hooker</A>, <A title="Hank Williams" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Williams">Hank Williams</A> and <A title="Eric Von Schmidt" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Von_Schmidt">Eric Von Schmidt</A> as well as "sea shanties ... country tearjerkers, from pure gospel to morality tales ... material from the English and Irish dales, the <A title="Appalachian Mountains" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_Mountains">Appalachian Mountains</A>, the <A title="Mississippi Delta" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Delta">Mississippi Delta</A>, <A title=Nashville href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville">Nashville</A>'s Music Row, and even <A title="Tin Pan Alley" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_Pan_Alley">Tin Pan Alley</A>," according to Heylin.Dylan was soon writing and recording new compositions at these informal sessions. "We were doing seven, eight, ten, sometimes fifteen songs a day," recalls Hudson. "Some were old ballads and traditional songs ... but others Bob would make up as he went along ... We'd play the melody, he'd sing a few words he'd written, and then make up some more, or else just mouth sounds or even syllables as he went along. It's a pretty good way to write songs."Two of the first songs Dylan recorded was "Tiny Montgomery" and "Sign on the Cross"; the former "rediscovered his flair for characters out of left field," wrote Heylin, while the latter "captures the deathless fatalism of gospel and country Dylan was after in much of his later born-again albums," according to <A title=NPR href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR">NPR</A>'s Tim Riley.In a matter of months, Dylan would record at least thirty new compositions with the Hawks, including some of the most celebrated songs of his career: "I Shall Be Released", "This Wheel's On Fire", "<A title="Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_the_Eskimo_%28The_Mighty_Quinn%29">Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)</A>", "Million Dollar Bash", "Tears Of Rage", "You Ain't Going Nowhere", "Going To Acapulco", "I'm Not There (1956)", "All You Have To Do Is Dream", "Apple Suckling Tree", etc. At least two songs were co-written with members of the Hawks: "Tears Of Rage" with Richard Manuel and "This Wheel's On Fire" with Rick Danko. "He came down to the basement with a piece of typewritten paper ... and he just said, 'Have you got any music for this?'," recalled Manuel. "I had a couple of musical movements that fit ... so I just elaborated a bit, because I wasn't sure what the lyrics meant. I couldn't run upstairs and say, 'What's this mean, Bob: 'Now the heart is filled with gold as if it was a purse'?'"In May of 1967, Dylan gave his first interview in roughly a year. He told Michael Iachetta that "What I've been doing mostly is seeing only a few close friends, reading a little 'bout the outside world, poring over books by people you never heard of, thinking about where I'm going, and why am I running, and am I mixed up too much, and what am I knowing, and what am I giving and what am I taking ... Songs are in my head like they always are. And they're not going to get written down until some things are evened up. Not until some people come forth and make up for some of the things that happened."According to Heylin, that someone expected to atone 'for some of the things that happened' was Dylan's manager, <A title="Albert Grossman" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Grossman">Albert Grossman</A>. Within weeks of the interview, Dylan recorded a <A title="Bobby Bare" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Bare">Bobby Bare</A> song that dated back to 1959. Titled "All-American Boy", it was originally a thinly veiled critique of <A title="Elvis Presley" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_Presley">Elvis Presley</A>'s notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker, but Dylan rewrote some of the verses, adding some personal references regarding his relationship with Grossman.Though Dylan still owed Columbia one more album, he did not want to fulfill that obligation with the songs written and recorded at Big Pink. In fact, Dylan's original intentions for those songs remain unclear. At the end of August, ten of them were dubbed down from their original stereo recordings to mono and copyrighted by Dwarf Music; in January of 1968, Dylan copyrighted another batch of songs including "Tears of Rage", "<A title="Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_The_Eskimo_%28The_Mighty_Quinn%29">Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)</A>," "Nothing Was Delivered", and "Open the Door Homer." Jointly formed by Dylan and Grossman, Dwarf Music was established in 1965 in order to copyright demos intended for other artists. In an interview taken in 1978, Dylan admitted that the songs written and recorded at Big Pink "were written vaguely for other people ... I don't remember anybody specifically those songs were ever written for ... At that time psychedelic rock was overtaking the universe and we were singing these homespun ballads."<A title="Peter, Paul and Mary" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter%2C_Paul_and_Mary">Peter, Paul and Mary</A> were the first to chart with a Big Pink composition when they issued their single of "Too Much of Nothing" in November of 1967. Soon after, <A title="Manfred Mann" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Mann">Manfred Mann</A> topped the charts with "<A title="Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_the_Eskimo_%28The_Mighty_Quinn%29">Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)</A>." When <A title="The Byrds" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Byrds">The Byrds</A> released their groundbreaking, country-rock album <A title="Sweetheart of the Rodeo" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetheart_of_the_Rodeo">Sweetheart of the Rodeo</A> in 1968, they opened and closed it with "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" and "Nothing Was Delivered". In the UK, "This Wheel's on Fire" made the top 5 for <A title="Julie Driscoll" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Driscoll">Julie Driscoll</A> and the <A title="Brian Auger" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Auger">Brian Auger</A> Trinity; the song was also covered by <A title="The Byrds" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Byrds">The Byrds</A> for their second album of 1968, <A title="Dr. Byrds &amp; Mr. Hyde" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Byrds_%26_Mr._Hyde">Dr. Byrds &amp; Mr. Hyde</A>, while the Hawks — reunited with Levon Helm and rechristened <A title="The Band" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Band">The Band</A> — recorded their own version on their celebrated debut, <A title="Music from Big Pink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_from_Big_Pink">Music from Big Pink</A>, an album that also featured "I Shall Be Released" and "Tears of Rage." <A title="Fairport Convention" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairport_Convention">Fairport Convention</A> would also record "Million Dollar Bash" on their celebrated third album, <A title=Unhalfbricking href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unhalfbricking">Unhalfbricking</A>.Eventually, rumors of Dylan and The Band's enormous stash of unreleased recordings began to circulate. <A title="Rolling Stone Magazine" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_Stone_Magazine">Rolling Stone Magazine</A> even ran a cover story in June of 1968, claiming that "there is enough material ... to make an entirely new Bob Dylan record, a record with a distinct style of its own ... These tapes could easily be remastered and made into a record. The concept of a cohesive record is already present."The fourteen songs copyrighted by Dwarf Music brought those particular songs into private circulation, as demo acetates were soon cut for those songs. With no planned release in sight, these demo acetates became the source material for a number of bootlegs, the first of which was titled Great White Wonder. Bootlegs had existed for many years, mostly among other forms of music, but with Great White Wonder, rock music had its first commercially (albeit illegally) available bootleg ever. <A id=Columbia.27s_release_of_The_Basement_Tapes_compilation name=Columbia.27s_release_of_The_Basement_Tapes_compilation></A><H2>Columbia's release of The Basement Tapes compilation</H2>On June 26, 1975, Columbia officially released a 24-song, double-album titled The Basement Tapes. Compiled and produced by Robbie Robertson, eight of the twenty-four songs did not feature Dylan, and of those eight, only four actually dated from the Big Pink sessions. All of the tracks were 'remixed' to mono while Robertson and other members of The Band overdubbed new piano, guitar, and/or drum parts over four of the original Dylan-Band recordings. Furthermore, songs like "I Shall Be Released," "<A title="Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_the_Eskimo_%28The_Mighty_Quinn%29">Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)</A>," "Sign on the Cross," and "I'm Not There (1956)" were omitted, and the rough, first take of "Too Much of Nothing" was used in place of the later, comparatively flawless take copyrighted by Dwarf Music. (Critic <A title="Greil Marcus" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greil_Marcus">Greil Marcus</A> would later hail "I'm Not There (1956)" and "Sign on the Cross" as the best and second best songs, respectively, of the Big Pink sessions.)Nevertheless, The Basement Tapes was initially hailed by critics, with <A title="Robert Christgau" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Christgau">Robert Christgau</A> giving it a rare A+ in his "Consumer Guide" column. "These are the famous lost demos recorded at Big Pink in 1967 and later bootlegged on The Great White Wonder and elsewhere," wrote Christgau, apparently unaware of some of the changes made by Robertson. "Because the Dylan is all work tape, the music is certifiably unpremeditated, lazy as a river and rarely relentless or precise — laid back without complacency or slickness. The writerly 'serious' songs like 'Tears of Rage' are all the richer for the company of his greatest novelties — if 'Going to Acapulco' is a dirge about having fun, 'Don't Ya Tell Henry' is a ditty about separation from self, and both modes are enriched by the Band's more conventional ('realistic') approach to lyrics. We needn't bow our heads in shame because this is the best album of 1975. It would have been the best album of 1967 too. And it's sure to sound great in 1983." Other critics agreed as The Basement Tapes topped <A title="The Village Voice" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_Voice">The Village Voice</A>'s <A title="Pazz &amp; Jop" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazz_%26_Jop">Pazz &amp; Jop</A> Critics Poll for 1975, beating out <A title="Patti Smith" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patti_Smith">Patti Smith</A>'s <A title="Horses (album)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_%28album%29">Horses</A>, <A title="Bruce Springsteen" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Springsteen">Bruce Springsteen</A>'s <A title="Born to Run" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_to_Run">Born to Run</A>, Dylan's own <A title="Blood on the Tracks" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_on_the_Tracks">Blood on the Tracks</A>, and <A title="Neil Young" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Young">Neil Young</A>'s <A title="Tonight's the Night (album)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonight%27s_the_Night_%28album%29">Tonight's the Night</A>, the #2, 3, 4 and 5 ranking albums, respectively.At the time, some critics lamented omissions like "<A title="Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_the_Eskimo_%28The_Mighty_Quinn%29">Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)</A>" and "I Shall Be Released" from The Basement Tapes, but the double-album only represented a fraction of the Big Pink recordings, and sure enough, a nearly-complete collection of the known recordings was eventually bootlegged as a 5-compact disc set known as The Genuine Basement Tapes; this collection is the centerpiece of <A title="Greil Marcus" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greil_Marcus">Greil Marcus</A>' well-known book of music journalism <A class=new title="The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Old%2C_Weird_America:_The_World_of_Bob_Dylan%27s_Basement_Tapes&amp;action=edit">The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes</A>. In this book, the Basement Tapes are compared to <A title="Harry Everett Smith" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Everett_Smith">Harry Smith</A>'s <A title="Anthology of American Folk Music" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthology_of_American_Folk_Music">Anthology of American Folk Music</A>. The thesis of Marcus' book is that both collections accurately describe an alternate weirder history of the <A title="United States" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States">United States</A>.While Columbia has issued only three more Big Pink recordings since The Basement Tapes ("I Shall Be Released" and "Sante Fe," both issued on <A title="The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare &amp; Unreleased) 1961-1991" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bootleg_Series_Volumes_1-3_%28Rare_%26_Unreleased%29_1961-1991">The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare &amp; Unreleased) 1961-1991</A>, as well as take 2 of "<A title="Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinn_the_Eskimo_%28The_Mighty_Quinn%29">Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)</A>" issued on <A title="Biograph (album)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biograph_%28album%29">Biograph</A> in 1985), even more complete collections of Basement Tape material circulate freely among Dylan fans and collectors, under such titles as A Tree With Roots; most recent commercial bootlegs of the material are actually sourced from noncommercial fan projects.

Cancel View Details