Great White Wonder

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

In 1969, an underground Bob Dylan album featuring unreleased material found its way into the world; 40 years later, the effects of this early leak are still playing out.

If you were driving around certain parts of southern California in the summer of 1968, you may have heard Bob Dylan's version of "This Wheel's on Fire" on the radio. KNAC in Long Beach, KPPC and KMET in L.A., KCSB in Santa Barbara, and KRLA in Pasadena were playing it in heavy rotation. A different version of the song was included on side B of Music from Big Pink, the debut album from the Band, which was released that July. At the time, the Band were mostly known for their Dylan affiliation-- if they were known at all. Dylan, of course, was the most highly regarded solo musician since Elvis, though he'd been out of the public spotlight for two years after a motorcycle accident. For many Dylanites, "Wheel's" suggested a return to the looser, harder-rocking Blonde on Blonde after the more reserved folk record John Wesley Harding, which was issued the prior December. It's likely that many hearing the song were under the impression that it was an advance single from a forthcoming Dylan LP. But why was the quality so terrible?

The small readership of upstart San Francisco rock magazine Rolling Stone were more clued in. Its publisher Jann Wenner had written a June cover story advocating not just for the official release of "This Wheel's On Fire", but 12 other songs that Dylan had recently recorded in a basement in upstate New York. In a lead feature titled "Dylan's Basement Tape Should Be Released", Wenner reported-- in a manner predicting modern music journalists filing copy after a leak-avoiding listening party-- "Bob Dylan… made a rough but very listenable tape with thirteen songs… There is enough material-- most all of it very good-- to make an entirely new Bob Dylan record, a record with a distinct style of its own." Turned out that Dylan and the Band had set up shop to make a demo tape of new songs for other artists to record, and then circulated it privately. It worked: A cover version of "Wheel's" by English pop singer Julie Driscoll reached No. 5 in the UK that summer, Manfred Mann's take on "The Mighty Quinn" peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard chart, Peter, Paul & Mary hit the Top 40 with "Too Much of Nothing", and the Byrds' "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", a centerpiece of Sweetheart of the Rodeo, hit FM radio that April. Dylan's music was everywhere, but Dylan himself remained secluded.

While history records Great White Wonder as rock's firstwidely circulated bootleg, underground releases ofits ilk are like the cool uncle of the digital leak.

Was he retiring to start a lucrative career as a one-man Brill Building? Were these new tunes what someone would later call "deserter's songs," a retreat from a political climate threatening to boil over? Wenner's column-length advocacy, along with the radio play of "Wheel's" and other songs from that demo tape, were working to push against this possibility, creating demand for what was called The Basement Tape to be released on its own. "Dylan brings that instinctual feel for rock and roll to his voice for the first time," Wenner claimed. "If this were ever to be released, it would be a classic." Columbia would release these songs, and they would be very highly regarded and commercially successful... seven years later, in 1975.

Instead, in June of 1970, fans got the double-album Self Portrait, which, although reappraised in subsequent years, did not fare well initially. In his Rolling Stone review, Greil Marcus claimed, "Self-Portrait, though it's a good imitation bootleg, isn't nearly the music that Great White Wonder is." If you were a regular Rolling Stone reader, you were familiar with Great White Wonder--they'd covered it well. You may have bought a copy if you lived in L.A., or near an independent record store willing to stock it. While it's not part of Dylan's official catalog, Wonder did become a classic in its own right, though not as Wenner intended it to be. It was a demand-driven solution to The Basement Tape's scarcity. Great White Wonder was the first album leak.

Cheaply pressed as a double album in an initial run of 1 to 2,000 copies by two anonymous L.A. music industry insiders who went by Dub and Ken, Great White Wonder started appearing in record stores in summer 1969, the title gleaned from its plain white jacket, decorated only with a titular stamp. There were 23 tracks on Wonder, subscribing to a sequencing logic that is hard to pin down. Ten cuts were drawn from the "Minnesota Tapes", a collection of American standards Dylan recorded in May and December 1961. "Only a Hobo" and "Bob Dylan's New Orleans Rag" came from 1963 Columbia demos, and "Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence" and "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" were great-sounding studio outtakes from the Highway 61 sessions. A version of "The Death of Emmitt Till" was pulled from a session with the folk magazine Broadside, and "Living the Blues" was recorded off of the television, from Dylan's May 1969 appearance on "The Johnny Cash Show". Wonder was a grab-bag retrospective of Dylan's career to that point, serving as something of a corrective to his absence and a harbinger of a career that wouldn't continue along the path it had taken for the first half of the decade.

The low grade of the recordings on Great White Wonderonly added to their aura, and to the sense that fans werelistening in on a secret meeting between collaborators.

Just those 16 tracks alone wouldn't have amounted to much, however. Alternate versions of already existing songs are a nice bit of collectible ephemera for die hards, but they're nothing compared to the voyeuristic and legally dubious revelation of new songs. Wonder had seven of them; more than half of the Basement Tape demos recorded just before Dylan left to make John Wesley Harding in Nashville. Along with "Wheel's", "Quinn", "Nothing", and "Nowhere", there was "Open the Door, Homer", as well as "Tears of Rage" and "I Shall Be Released", which had respectively opened and closed Big Pink.

In terms of recording quality, these songs sounded absolutely horrible. They were only intended as demos, and odds are the versions that were circulating had been dubbed numerous times, resulting in a significant loss of fidelity. But the low grade of the recordings-- particularly in comparison to the other, better-recorded songs on Wonder-- only added to their aura, and to the sense that fans were listening in on a secret meeting between collaborators. "We went in with a sense of humor… It was all a goof," the Band's Robbie Robertson later told Greil Marcus. "We were playing with absolute freedom; we weren't doing anything we thought anybody else would ever hear, as long as we lived. But what started in that basement, what came out of it… came out of this little conspiracy, of us amusing ourselves." This was the nature of a leak in 1969-- a rare glimpse into the backstage life of a superstar. A conspiracy built from a conspiracy.

In 1969, Bob Dylan was one of three artists famous enough to create the kind of demand required to trigger a leak of unreleased studio recordings (the Beatles and the Rolling Stones would soon both fall prey to now-legendary leaks). While history records Wonder as rock's first widely circulated bootleg, underground releases of Wonder's ilk are like the cool uncle of the digital leak. By definition, they're indistinguishable: recordings (live or studio-made) which are not released on the artist's label but instead sold or traded in ancillary or underground markets (Dub and Ken had a "label" they called TMQ, or "Trademark of Quality"). Fans had been trading magnetic tapes of already-released albums for years by this point, but Wonder was different: It was the first time that unheard recordings of a superstar's new compositions had leaked to the public, and were being sold. It's easy to take such a thing for granted today, when leaks circulate freely online, but Wonder represented the earliest moment when advancing technologies combined with popular demand and illicit entrepreneurship to create cracks in the record industry's otherwise firm facade.

Despite the fact that many copies of Wonder were pressed at professional operations, the quality was extremely poor: Oftentimes, the top layer of vinyl would literally scrape off after about 20 plays.

In 2012, a simple Google search can turn up Wonder in full via BitTorrent, with few worries about private investigators tracking your movements. In 1969, however, the stakes were significantly higher, and much more money was being put into Wonder's production-- and exchanged for access to it. Southern California record stores saw it flying off the shelves-- or, more accurately, out from under the counter. Dub and Ken were wholesaling the album just like any other, reported Jerry Hopkins for Rolling Stone in September 1969, charging $4.50 each and lowering the price to $4.25 after the first 50. A typical markup was $2, though some stores were charging much more. "Those shops carrying the LP seem happy," Hopkins noted, "with many reporting the album's arrival has had the same effect on business as a new Beatles or Stones LP might have." By October, Wonder had spread to New York, and the Times reported that "at a small record stop near Columbia University, the proprietor just winked when asked where he had gotten the albums."

Dubs of dubs of dubs of Wonder, some with different track orders and most with different cover art, were proliferating through the underground. This is how Norton Beckman and Ben Goldman, two record store owners from the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, acquired their copies. They took an early version of the tape to an audio engineer in downtown L.A., who made acetates from it, which were then used to make "stampers"-- the master versions that were pressed to be sold. These were processed in the off hours of a record processing company-- "one of the many in the city who ask no questions," Rolling Stone noted, then pressed and inserted into plain white sleeves at S&R Record Manufacturers in Gardena. Despite the fact that many copies of Wonder were pressed at professional operations, the quality was extremely poor: Oftentimes, the top layer of vinyl would literally scrape off after about 20 plays.

Beckman and Goldman became the target of Columbia's investigation into Wonder bootlegging. They were given up to Columbia's A&R department by "an anonymous phone call from a woman who said she knew who the bootleggers were," Rolling Stone claimed. The woman was an acquaintance of the bootleggers, and was reporting them because the two "had been bad-mouthing some friends of hers." Columbia was quick to make a public show of finding and stopping the Wonder bootlegs, though they had already proliferated far out of their legal control. "We consider the release of this record an abuse of the integrity of a great artist," Columbia said in a 1969 press release. "They are at one time defaming the artist and defrauding his admirers." But to many fans, Wonder was the opposite of fraud; particularly with countercultural vibes in the air, Columbia was the bad guy.

Though they had to make a public stance against bootlegging, Dylan's label was fully aware that their legal options were significantly limited. Columbia sent private detectives to uncover record stores selling Wonder and filed cease and desist orders against transgressors, but that was about the limit of their capabilities. They had no idea who Dub and Ken were, let alone where they were, so they couldn't serve the two pirates with a legal order. As Clinton Heylin observed in his great 1995 book Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry, Wonder's tracklisting might have seemed random, but Dub and Ken weren't dumb-- they made sure to craft it to fit in a liminal legal zone. Columbia couldn't verify if the "Minnesota Tape" songs were recorded after Dylan signed with them (and he was a minor when he signed his contract with the label, to boot). The traditional songs were mostly in the public domain. Furthermore, the Basement Tape material wasn't recorded in a Columbia studio, the Band weren't under contract, and Dylan was himself between contracts with the label. (For some inexplicable reason, Columbia failed to do anything about the Highway 61 sessions included on the album.) And Dub and Ken were savvy enough not to include Dylan's name or likeness anywhere on the packaging, so as to avoid a lawsuit over those aspects of his identity.

In the wake of Wonder, bootlegging flourished, though quality was never guaranteed. Devoted rock fans near in-the-know stores could rely on buying unauthorized recordings cobbled together from leaked studio tapes, audience recordings of live performances, and televised appearances from Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles. "In Minnesota, Come Back is being sold illegally," reported Rolling Stone in 1970. "This is a poor quality copy of the Beatles' Let It Be album, due to be released God only knows when… Quality is… poor, as if the tape was recorded by a mike off a speaker, instead of directly dubbed."

Other bootlegs were of a much higher quality, and the practice was turning into a bonafide industry. Greil Marcus reviewed three bootlegs in a 1970 issue of the magazine: the Wonder followup Stealin', the Plastic Ono Band's Live Peace in Toronto, and the tremendous live Stones LP Live'r Than You'll Ever Be (recorded and released by Dub himself). Marcus took into account the vagaries of quality as well as the content. "Consider them new records by the Beatles, the Stones, and Dylan," Marcus wrote. "They aren't going to be around for very long, and simply on the basis of their musical quality, they should be bought right now. None of these albums is a mere 'collectors item,' like the Great White Wonder stuff-- all of them are listenable and exciting on their own terms."

In early 1970, the idea of flooding the market with consistent streams of new material from huge artists wasn't part of record labels' plans, though perhaps it should have been. B-side collections and live albums were expensive to produce and publicize, and their market was still very limited, at least in the labels' imaginations. It must have been thrilling to hear what Marcus claimed was "the ultimate Rolling Stones album," a high quality version of a show at the Oakland Coliseum in 1969 (which Marcus suspected was done from the stage by a sound technician, but which Dub confessed was accomplished merely by "the Sennheiser shotgun pointed at the PA system"). "Whatever we take out of their pockets, we're doing as much for them in terms of publicity and interest in their music," one bootlegger told Rolling Stone, in language that echoes down to 21st century downloading defenses. He continued, asserting that the rules of market competition still apply in the underground. "The word 'moral' doesn't apply. It's a matter of get what you can, and when someone else pops up copying our stuff, we do what we can to get more product at less cost. Maybe that's what the big record companies should do-- compete with us. They weren't going to release this material anyway, were they?"

What happens with mp3 leaks illuminates a very basic economic fact: Official markets will always lead to unsanctioned ones that feed off of the legit products-- and often operate much more efficiently.

While labels tried everything they could (at least publicly) to stamp out bootlegging, the artists themselves were much more amenable to their existence. The Live'r boot was so good, in fact, that after the Stones' road manager heard a copy at KSAN in San Fransisco, he bought a copy for himself and five more-- one for each band member. When the entirety of the Basement Tapes was finally released in 1975, Dylan himself was publicly surprised at the reception and strong commercial showing: "I thought everybody already had them." It makes sense that artists then and now would be more tolerant of leaks than their labels. While they need only concern themselves with making music to be discovered and heard by as many people as they wish, the labels have to foot the bill for production, distribution, and promotion.

On one basic level, what happened in 1969 with Wonder-- and what happens every day with mp3 leaks-- illuminates a very basic economic fact: Official markets will always lead to unsanctioned ones that feed off of the legit products-- and often operate much more efficiently. Consumer desire has never automatically limited itself to strictly legal operations, particularly when fans can convince themselves (often rightly) that they're doing no harm to the artists. In his recent book Pop Song Piracy, Barry Kernfeld pointed out that for as long as companies have been selling musical objects-- from sheet music to albums, cassettes, compact discs, and mp3s-- they have been faced with threats to their monopoly over distribution due to unauthorized duplication and circulation. Playing devil's advocate, since consumers are always encouraged to get the most product for the least amount of money and time, why should music fans make moral distinctions that capitalism itself doesn't?

Thanks to the unpredictable interplay of record labels, artists, laws, technologies, and music journalism, bootlegging and leaks can upend the the power structure when it comes to rolling out new releases-- but only the scope, not the idea, has changed in the last 40-plus years. In the late 60s, FM was still the Wild West compared to today's radio landscape, and rock journalism was in its infancy. Music copyright laws were full of loopholes, and duplication technologies were developing at an unprecedented pace. It was a moment when renowned critics would review hot new bootlegs, and Rolling Stone's publisher could openly lobby Columbia to release a particular Bob Dylan album. When record store owners could feel relatively safe moving illicitly pressed LPs from behind the counter, and radio jocks would play unofficial tracks in regular rotation. Labels filed lawsuits against bootleggers in vain, resenting a significant loss of control over their own operations, but often reaped their promotional benefits nonetheless.

And now: Bloggers and status updaters rewrote the guidebook for music journalism and promotion, leaving them in an unsettled state akin to the late 60s and early 70s (though now with much more gratis labor). Leaks are mass duplicated on the same machines that also serve as jukeboxes and publishing outlets, driving money not to labels or record stores or shady pressing plants but international file-locker sites like Mediafire, corporately owned ISPs, and proprietors of cloud servers. Fans take to Twitter and message boards begging for a leak of whatever new album has just been announced. And when these records are inevitably set free, they're often cloaked in the modern equivalent of plain white wrappers with a generic stamp-- .zip or .rar files renamed to travel online, unnoticed by label employees and Google-scouring security firms. Great White Wonder may be a modern impossibility in its original incarnation, but 40 years later, in a vastly de-industrialized music climate, its ongoing legacy suggests less a digital revolution than the mundane fact that, in the face of innovation, some old habits die hard.

— Eric Harvey, Pitchfork