The Basement Tapes

Bob Dylan's influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notion that a singer must have a conventionally good voice in order to perform, thereby redefining the vocalist's role in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan's force was evident during his height of popularity in the '60s -- the Beatles' shift toward introspective songwriting in the mid-'60s never would have happened without him -- but his influence echoed throughout several subsequent generations, as many of his songs became popular standards and his best albums became undisputed classics of the rock & roll canon. Dylan's influence throughout folk music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal turning point in its 20th century evolution, signifying when the genre moved away from traditional songs and toward personal songwriting. Even when his sales declined in the '80s and '90s, Dylan's presence rarely lagged, and his commercial revival in the 2000s proved his staying power.

For a figure of such substantial influence, Dylan came from humble beginnings. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Bob Dylan (b. Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) was raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, from the age of six. As a child he learned how to play guitar and harmonica, forming a rock & roll band called the Golden Chords when he was in high school. Following his graduation in 1959, he began studying art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. While at college, he began performing folk songs at coffeehouses under the name Bob Dylan, taking his last name from the poet Dylan Thomas. Already inspired by Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, Dylan began listening to blues while at college, and the genre wove its way into his music. He spent the summer of 1960 in Denver, where he met bluesman Jesse Fuller, the inspiration behind the songwriter's signature harmonica rack and guitar. By the time he returned to Minneapolis in the fall, he had grown substantially as a performer and was determined to become a professional musician.

Dylan made his way to New York City in January of 1961, immediately making a substantial impression on the folk community of Greenwich Village. He began visiting his idol Guthrie in the hospital, where he was slowly dying from Huntington's chorea. Dylan also began performing in coffeehouses, and his rough charisma won him a significant following. In April, he opened for John Lee Hooker at Gerde's Folk City. Five months later, Dylan performed another concert at the venue, which was reviewed positively by Robert Shelton in The New York Times. Columbia A&R man John Hammond sought out Dylan on the strength of the review, and signed the songwriter in the fall of 1961. Hammond produced Dylan's eponymous debut album (released in March 1962), a collection of folk and blues standards that boasted only two original songs. Over the course of 1962, Dylan began to write a large batch of original songs, many of which were political protest songs in the vein of his Greenwich Village contemporaries. These songs were showcased on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Before its release, Freewheelin' went through several incarnations. Dylan had recorded a rock & roll single, "Mixed Up Confusion," at the end of 1962, but his manager, Albert Grossman, made sure the record was deleted because he wanted to present Dylan as an acoustic folkie. Similarly, several tracks with a full backing band that were recorded for Freewheelin' were scrapped before the album's release. Furthermore, several tracks recorded for the album -- including "Talking John Birch Society Blues" -- were eliminated from the album before its release.

Comprised entirely of original songs, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan made a huge impact in the U.S. folk community, and many performers began covering songs from the album. Of these, the most significant were Peter, Paul and Mary, who made "Blowin' in the Wind" into a huge pop hit in the summer of 1963 and thereby made Bob Dylan into a recognizable household name. On the strength of Peter, Paul and Mary's cover and his opening gigs for popular folkie Joan Baez, Freewheelin' became a hit in the fall of 1963, climbing to number 23 on the charts. By that point, Baez and Dylan had become romantically involved, and she was beginning to record his songs frequently. Dylan was writing just as fast.

By the time The Times They Are A-Changin' was released in early 1964, Dylan's songwriting had developed far beyond that of his New York peers. Heavily inspired by poets like Arthur Rimbaud and John Keats, his writing took on a more literate and evocative quality. Around the same time, he began to expand his musical boundaries, adding more blues and R&B influences to his songs. Released in the summer of 1964, Another Side of Bob Dylan made these changes evident. However, Dylan was moving faster than his records could indicate. By the end of 1964, he had ended his romantic relationship with Baez and had begun dating a former model named Sara Lowndes, whom he subsequently married. Simultaneously, he gave the Byrds "Mr. Tambourine Man" to record for their debut album. The Byrds gave the song a ringing, electric arrangement, but by the time the single became a hit, Dylan was already exploring his own brand of folk-rock.

Inspired by the British Invasion, particularly the Animals' version of "House of the Rising Sun," Dylan recorded a set of original songs backed by a loud rock & roll band for his next album. While Bringing It All Back Home (March 1965) still had a side of acoustic material, it made clear that Dylan had turned his back on folk music. For the folk audience, the true breaking point arrived a few months after the album's release, when he played the Newport Folk Festival supported by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The audience greeted him with vicious derision, but he had already been accepted by the growing rock & roll community. Dylan's spring tour of Britain was the basis for D.A. Pennebaker's documentary Don't Look Back, a film that captures the songwriter's edgy charisma and charm.

Dylan made his breakthrough to the pop audience in the summer of 1965, when "Like a Rolling Stone" became a number two hit. Driven by a circular organ riff and a steady beat, the six-minute single broke the barrier of the three-minute pop single. Dylan became the subject of innumerable articles, and his lyrics became the subject of literary analyses across the U.S. and U.K. Well over 100 artists covered his songs between 1964 and 1966; the Byrds and the Turtles, in particular, had big hits with his compositions. Highway 61 Revisited, his first full-fledged rock & roll album, became a Top Ten hit shortly after its summer 1965 release. "Positively 4th Street" and "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" became Top Ten hits in the fall of 1965 and spring of 1966, respectively. Following the May 1966 release of the double album Blonde on Blonde, he had sold over ten million records around the world.

During the fall of 1965, Dylan hired the Hawks, formerly Ronnie Hawkins' backing group, as his touring band. the Hawks, who changed their name to the Band in 1968, would become Dylan's most famous backing band, primarily because of their intuitive chemistry and "wild, thin mercury sound," but also because of their British tour in the spring of 1966. The tour was the first time the British had heard the electric Dylan, and their reaction was disagreeable and violent. At the Manchester concert (long mistakenly identified as the show from London's Royal Albert Hall), an audience member called Dylan "Judas," inspiring a positively vicious version of "Like a Rolling Stone" from Dylan and the band. The performance was immortalized on countless bootleg albums (an official release finally surfaced in 1998), and it indicates the intensity of Dylan in the middle of 1966. He had assumed control of Pennebaker's second Dylan documentary, Eat the Document, and was under deadline to complete his book Tarantula, as well as record a new record. Following the British tour, he returned to America.

On July 29, 1966, he was injured in a motorcycle accident outside of his home in Woodstock, New York, suffering injuries to his neck vertebrae and a concussion. Details of the accident remain elusive -- he was reportedly in critical condition for a week and had amnesia -- and some biographers have questioned its severity, but the event was a pivotal turning point in his career. After the accident, Dylan became a recluse, disappearing into his home in Woodstock and raising his family with his wife, Sara. After a few months, he retreated with the Band to a rented house, subsequently dubbed Big Pink, in West Saugerties to record a number of demos. For several months, Dylan and the Band recorded an enormous amount of material, ranging from old folk, country, and blues songs to newly written originals. The songs indicated that Dylan's songwriting had undergone a metamorphosis, becoming streamlined and more direct. Similarly, his music had changed, owing less to traditional rock & roll, and demonstrating heavy country, blues, and traditional folk influences. None of the Big Pink recordings was intended to be released, but tapes from the sessions were circulated by Dylan's music publisher with the intent of generating cover versions. Copies of these tapes, as well as other songs, were available on illegal bootleg albums by the end of the '60s; it was the first time that bootleg copies of unreleased recordings became widely circulated. Portions of the tapes were officially released in 1975 as the double album The Basement Tapes.

While Dylan was in seclusion, rock & roll had become heavier and artier in the wake of the psychedelic revolution. When Dylan returned with John Wesley Harding in December of 1967, its quiet, country ambience was a surprise to the general public, but it was a significant hit, peaking at number two in the U.S. and number one in the U.K. Furthermore, the record arguably became the first significant country-rock record to be released, setting the stage for efforts by the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers later in 1969.

Dylan followed his country inclinations on his next album, 1969's Nashville Skyline, which was recorded in Nashville with several of the country industry's top session men. While the album was a hit, spawning the Top Ten single "Lay Lady Lay," it was criticized in some quarters for uneven material. The mixed reception was the beginning of a full-blown backlash that arrived with the double album Self Portrait. Released early in June of 1970, the album was a hodgepodge of covers, live tracks, re-interpretations, and new songs greeted with negative reviews from all quarters of the press. Dylan followed the album quickly with New Morning, which was hailed as a comeback.

Following the release of New Morning, Dylan began to wander restlessly. He moved back to Greenwich Village, he finally published Tarantula in November of 1970, and he performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. During 1972, he began his acting career by playing Alias in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was released in 1973. He also wrote the soundtrack for the film, which featured "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," his biggest hit since "Lay Lady Lay." The Pat Garrett soundtrack was the final record released under his Columbia contract before he moved to David Geffen's fledgling Asylum Records. As retaliation, Columbia assembled Dylan, a collection of Self Portrait outtakes, for release at the end of 1973. Dylan only recorded two albums -- including 1974's Planet Waves, coincidentally his first number one album -- before he moved back to Columbia. The Band supported Dylan on Planet Waves and its accompanying tour, which became the most successful tour in rock & roll history; it was captured on 1974's double live album Before the Flood.

Dylan's 1974 tour was the beginning of a comeback culminating with 1975's Blood on the Tracks. Largely inspired by the disintegration of his marriage, Blood on the Tracks was hailed as a return to form by critics and it became his second number one album. After jamming with folkies in Greenwich Village, Dylan decided to launch a gigantic tour, loosely based on traveling medicine shows. Lining up an extensive list of supporting musicians -- including Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Mick Ronson, Roger McGuinn, and poet Allen Ginsberg -- Dylan dubbed the tour the Rolling Thunder Revue and set out on the road in the fall of 1975. For the next year, the Rolling Thunder Revue toured on and off, with Dylan filming many of the concerts for a future film. During the tour, Desire was released to considerable acclaim and success, spending five weeks on the top of the charts. Throughout the Rolling Thunder Revue, Dylan showcased "Hurricane," a protest song he had written about boxer Rubin Carter, who had been unjustly imprisoned for murder. The live album Hard Rain was released at the end of the tour. Dylan released Renaldo and Clara, a four-hour film based on the Rolling Thunder tour, to poor reviews in early 1978.

Early in 1978, Dylan set out on another extensive tour, this time backed by a band that resembled a Las Vegas lounge act. The group was featured on the 1978 album Street Legal and the 1979 live album At Budokan. At the conclusion of the tour in late 1978, Dylan announced that he was a born-again Christian, and he launched a series of Christian albums that following summer with Slow Train Coming. Though the reviews were mixed, the album was a success, peaking at number three and going platinum. His supporting tour for Slow Train Coming featured only his new religious material, much to the bafflement of his long-term fans. Two other religious albums -- Saved (1980) and Shot of Love (1981) -- followed, both to poor reviews. In 1982, Dylan traveled to Israel, sparking rumors that his conversion to Christianity was short-lived. He returned to secular recording with 1983's Infidels, which was greeted with favorable reviews.

Dylan returned to performing in 1984, releasing the live album Real Live at the end of the year. Empire Burlesque followed in 1985, but its odd mix of dance tracks and rock & roll won few fans. However, the five-album/triple-disc retrospective box set Biograph appeared that same year to great acclaim. In 1986, Dylan hit the road with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers for a successful and acclaimed tour, but his album that year, Knocked Out Loaded, was received poorly. The following year, he toured with the Grateful Dead as his backing band; two years later, the souvenir album Dylan & the Dead appeared.

In 1988, Dylan embarked on what became known as "the Never-Ending Tour" -- a constant stream of shows that ran on and off into the late '90s. That same year, he appeared on The Traveling Wilburys, Vol. 1 -- by the supergroup also featuring George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne -- and released his own Down in the Groove, an album largely comprising covers. The Never-Ending Tour received far stronger reviews than Down in the Groove (the Traveling Wilburys album fared much better), but 1989's Oh Mercy was his most acclaimed album since 1975's Blood on the Tracks, due in part to Daniel Lanois' strong production. However, Dylan's 1990 follow-up, Under the Red Sky (issued the same year as the second album by the Traveling Wilburys, now a quartet following the death of Roy Orbison shortly after the release of the Wilburys' first long-player in 1988), was received poorly, especially when compared to the enthusiastic reception for the 1991 box set The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased), a collection of previously unreleased outtakes and rarities.

For the remainder of the '90s, Dylan divided his time between live concerts, painting, and studio projects. He returned to recording in 1992 with Good as I Been to You, an acoustic collection of traditional folk songs. It was followed in 1993 by another folk record, World Gone Wrong, which won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. After the release of World Gone Wrong, Dylan released a greatest-hits album and a live record.

Dylan released Time Out of Mind, his first album of original material in seven years, in the fall of 1997. Time Out of Mind received his strongest reviews in years and unexpectedly debuted in the Top Ten, eventually climbing to platinum certification. Such success sparked a revival of interest in Dylan, who appeared on the cover of Newsweek and began selling out concerts once again. Early in 1998, Time Out of Mind received three Grammy Awards -- Album of the Year, Best Contemporary Folk Album, and Best Male Rock Vocal.

Another album of original material, Love and Theft, followed in 2001 and went gold. Soon after its release, Dylan announced that he was making his own film, to star Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, John Goodman, Val Kilmer, and many more. The accompanying soundtrack, Masked and Anonymous, was released in July 2003. Dylan opted to self-produce his new studio album, Modern Times, which topped the Billboard charts and went platinum in both America and the U.K. It was Dylan's third consecutive album to receive praise from critics and support from consumers, and it was followed three years later in 2009 by Together Through Life, another self-produced effort (as Jack Frost) that also featured contributions from David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. He capped off the year with an old-fashioned holiday effort, Christmas in the Heart. Proceeds from the album were donated to various charities around the world.

Dylan released the self-produced (again as Jack Frost) Tempest on September 11, 2012; it debuted at three on both the Billboard 200 and the U.K. charts. The next two years brought acclaimed entries in the ongoing Bootleg Series -- 2013 saw the release of Another Self Portrait (1969-1971), which restored the reputation of a much-maligned era, and 2014 saw the long-awaited appearance of The Basement Tapes Complete -- and then Dylan threw a curve ball for his next studio album. Released in February 2015, Shadows in the Night found the singer/songwriter devoting himself to selections from the Great American Songbook in the pre-rock & roll era. Every one of the ten songs had previously been recorded by Frank Sinatra, and Dylan's album was his version of Sinatra's saloon songs, arranged by his own touring band. Shadows in the Night debuted at seven in the U.S. and at number one in the U.K. It was followed in the autumn by the next installment in The Bootleg Series, The Cutting Edge 1965-1966. Available in three editions -- a double-disc distillation, a comprehensive six-disc box, and a complete, limited-edition 18-CD set -- The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 collected unreleased (and unbootlegged) outtakes from the recording of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.

In May 2016, Dylan returned with Fallen Angels, his second Sinatra-inspired collection of songs from the Great American Songbook; it debuted at number seven on the Billboard charts. Later that year, Columbia/Legacy released The 1966 Live Recordings, a 36-disc box set containing every known recording from that pivotal year, but its release was overshadowed by Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in the autumn of 2016. Dylan continued his exploration of the Great American Songbook with the March 2017 release of Triplicate, a triple album containing three thematically arranged collections of pop standards. Entitled Trouble No More 1979-1981, the 13th volume of The Bootleg Series spotlighted Dylan's Christian era in the early '80s and arrived in November 2017. Live 1962-1966: Rare Performances from the Copyright Collections, a double-disc set of highlights culled from previously released rarities collections, appeared in July 2018. Four months later, the six-disc deluxe version of More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 14 appeared. It contained all known studio recordings -- full and partial -- that eventually resulted in the classic Blood on the Tracks in 1975. Dylan further explored his 1975 archives in 2019, teaming with director Martin Scorsese for the documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese. The film appeared in June, accompanied by a 14-disc box called The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings. Later in 2019, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 15: Travelin' Thru -- a triple-disc set concentrating on Dylan's Nashville recordings of the late '60s, highlighted by his sessions with Johnny Cash -- was released.

Dylan released "Murder Most Foul," a nearly 17-minute track about the JFK assassination, on March 27, 2020. It was his first original song in eight years, and it was quickly followed by "I Contain Multitudes" and "False Prophet," a pair of singles that announced the arrival of his 39th studio album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, on June 19, 2020. Rough and Rowdy Ways debuted at number one on Billboard upon its release; it entered the U.K. charts at number one. The outtakes collection 1970 -- a set featuring unreleased material from the Self Portrait and New Morning sessions, including recordings with George Harrison -- appeared in February 2021. In September, Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 16 (1980-1985) was released. Easily one of the artist's most provocative periods, it focused on the years that birthed Shot of Love, Infidels, and Empire Burlesque, with numerous unreleased outtakes, alternate takes, rehearsal recordings, and live performances.

—Stephen Thomas Erlewine

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

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 Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. In the latter half of 1965, during the interim between those two albums, Dylan began touring with The Hawks (later known as The Band). Their live collaboration would continue into the first half of 1966, culminating in a legendary 'world' tour documented in The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert.

According to Hawks/Band guitarist Robbie Robertson, "When I first met [Dylan] [in 1965], I played him this ballad from The Impressions' Keep On Pushing album, 'I've Been Trying,' written by Curtis Mayfield. 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 Woodstock, New York. 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 D. A. Pennebaker's documentary of the 1966 'world' tour. "They had made another Dont Look Back, 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 Eat the Document. (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 Rick Danko, 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, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson," 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 Johnny Cash, The Stanley Brothers, Ian Tyson, John Lee Hooker, Hank Williams and Eric Von Schmidt as well as "sea shanties ... country tearjerkers, from pure gospel to morality tales ... material from the English and Irish dales, the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi Delta, Nashville's Music Row, and even Tin Pan Alley," 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 NPR'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", "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)", "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, Albert Grossman. Within weeks of the interview, Dylan recorded a Bobby Bare song that dated back to 1959. Titled "All-American Boy", it was originally a thinly veiled critique of Elvis Presley'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", "Quinn The Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)," "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."

Peter, Paul and Mary 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, Manfred Mann topped the charts with "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)." When The Byrds released their groundbreaking, country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo 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 Julie Driscoll and the Brian Auger Trinity; the song was also covered by The Byrds for their second album of 1968, Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde, while the Hawks — reunited with Levon Helm and rechristened The Band — recorded their own version on their celebrated debut, Music from Big Pink, an album that also featured "I Shall Be Released" and "Tears of Rage." Fairport Convention would also record "Million Dollar Bash" on their celebrated third album, Unhalfbricking.

Eventually, rumors of Dylan and The Band's enormous stash of unreleased recordings began to circulate. Rolling Stone Magazine 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.

Columbia's release of The Basement Tapes compilation

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," "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)," "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 Greil Marcus 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 Robert Christgau 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 The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll for 1975, beating out Patti Smith's Horses, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, Dylan's own Blood on the Tracks, and Neil Young's Tonight's the Night, the #2, 3, 4 and 5 ranking albums, respectively.

At the time, some critics lamented omissions like "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" 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 Greil Marcus' well-known book of music journalism The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes. In this book, the Basement Tapes are compared to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. The thesis of Marcus' book is that both collections accurately describe an alternate weirder history of the United States.

While Columbia has issued only three more Big Pink recordings since The Basement Tapes ("I Shall Be Released" and "Sante Fe," both issued on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991, as well as take 2 of "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" issued on Biograph 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.