The Basement Tapes

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This article is about the album. For the recording sessions and information on all known recordings made during this era of Dylan's career, see The Basement Tapes (Sessions).
The Basement Tapes
The Basement Tapes cover
Compilation album by Bob Dylan and The Band
Released June 26, 1975
Recorded June–September 1967, March 1975
Genre Rock, folk, blues, country
Length 76:41
Label Columbia
Producer Bob Dylan, The Band
Professional reviews
Bob Dylan chronology
Blood on the Tracks
(1975)		 The Basement Tapes
(1975)		 Desire
(1976)
The Band chronology
Before the Flood
(1974)		 The Basement Tapes
(1975)		 Northern Lights - Southern Cross
(1975)

The Basement Tapes is a studio album by Bob Dylan and The Band, released in 1975 by Columbia Records.

All of the sixteen Dylan compositions are thought to have been recorded eight years earlier in the basement of Big Pink,[1][2] a house shared by three of the members of the Band,[3] while the eight Band songs were recorded at various times and locations between 1967 and 1975; overdubs were also added in 1975 to some of the Dylan songs.[2][4] As Bob Dylan recovered from a motorcycle accident during 1967, he called on the Band to help him experiment with themes of traditional folk music and Americana; these explorations, and their possible links with the earlier Anthology of American Folk Music, are explored in rock writer Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic (later reissued as The Old, Weird America).

The sessions laid the foundation both for the approach of Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding, and for the Band finding their own voice on 1968's Music from Big Pink. The Dylan LP, a critically-acclaimed departure from the surrealist rock and roll he had recently pioneered on his milestone trio of albums from 1965 and 1966, was as much of a shock to his fans as were those records to his earlier folk audience. Both it and Music From Big Pink would greatly influence the turn, by many contemporary popular musicians, away from the psychedelic music that reached its height in 1967, toward an embrace of country-influenced folk styles.

Material from the sessions had been heavily bootlegged since 1968, with the most famous being 1969's Great White Wonder.

The Basement Tapes peaked at #7 in 1975 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart[5] and reached #8 in the UK. In 2003, the album was ranked number 291 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Contents

[edit] The story of The Basement Tapes

In the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan was at the peak of his creativity, having 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. Dylan returned exhausted from the hectic schedule of the world tour.[6] His manager, Albert Grossman, scheduled another sixty-three concerts across the USA for that year, with more concerts overseas rumored after that.[6]

[edit] After the crash

On July 29th that year, Dylan suffered a mild concussion and cracked vertebrae when he crashed his Triumph motorcycle near Woodstock, New York.[7] The concerts he was scheduled to perform had to be cancelled.[8]

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."[9] 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.)

Dylan spent this time thinking a lot about the direction he had been going, in which he felt exhausted from non-stop touring. He was thinking that "there must be another way of life for the pop star in which he is in control, not they" and also had to sort out his relationship with his manager Albert Grossman.[10] 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.'"[11]

[edit] Killing time with The Hawks

According to the late Rick Danko, he, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson joined Robbie Robertson in West Saugerties in February of 1967, and the three of them moved into a house nicknamed Big Pink, with Robertson living nearby with his future wife Dominique.[12] Danko and Manuel had been invited to Woodstock to shoot additional scenes that Dylan was thinking of adding to Eat the Document.[12]

The date is uncertain, but sometime between March and June, Dylan and the Hawks began a series of informal recording sessions. Originally taking place in the so-called Red Room in Dylan's house, these sessions eventually moved to the basement of Big Pink.[1][13]

Garth Hudson set up a recording unit, using two stereo mixers and a tape recorder borrowed from Grossman, as well as a set of microphones from Peter, Paul and Mary.[14] Dylan would later tell Rolling Stone's Jann Wenner: "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."[15]

For the first couple of months, they were just "killing time," according to Robertson.[16] 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 '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."[17] Circulating tapes from these sessions reveal a large, diverse number of popular songs, including compositions written or made popular by Johnny Cash, Ian Tyson, John Lee Hooker, Hank Williams, Hank Snow and Eric Von Schmidt, as well as many traditional songs.[18]

[edit] New compositions

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."[19]

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 Goin' Nowhere," "Going To Acapulco," "I'm Not There (1956)," "All You Have To Do Is Dream," "Apple Suckling Tree" and others. At least two songs were co-written with members of the Hawks: "This Wheel's On Fire" with Rick Danko and "Tears Of Rage" with Richard Manuel. Manuel recalled: "He came down to the basement with a piece of typewritten paper . . . and he just said, 'Have you got any music for this?' . . . 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"?'"[20]

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 seein' only a few close friends, readin' little 'bout the outside world, porin' over books by people you never heard of, thinkin' about where I'm goin', and why am I runnin', and am I mixed up too much, and what am I knowin', and what am I givin' and what am I takin'. And mainly what I've been doin' is workin' on gettin' better and makin' better music, which is what my life is all about."[21]

[edit] Dwarf Music demos

Dylan still owed Columbia one more album, or fourteen new songs.[22] In fact, Dylan's original intentions for those songs remain unclear, although it should be noted he copyrighted fourteen of the songs, the same number that he owed Columbia. The songs copyrighted were: "Million Dollar Bash," "Yea Heavy and a Bottle of Bread," "Please Mrs. Henry," "Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood)," "Lo and Behold," "Tiny Montgomery," "This Wheel's On Fire," "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "I Shall Be Released," "Tears of Rage," "Too Much of Nothing," "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)," "Open the Door, Homer" and "Nothing Was Delivered."

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 late 1967.[23] Ian & Sylvia, who like Peter, Paul and Mary were managed by Grossman, also had early access to the Basement Tape songs, and they recorded "Tears of Rage," "Quinn the Eskimo" and "This Wheel's on Fire."[23] Manfred Mann had a hit with "Mighty Quinn" in the US and the UK in early 1968.[24] The Byrds released "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" and "Nothing Was Delivered" on their country-rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo in 1968.[25] In the UK, "This Wheel's on Fire" was a hit for Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and The Trinity;[24] the song was also covered by The Byrds for their Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde album,[25] while the Hawks—reunited with Levon Helm and rechristened The Band—recorded their own version on their 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 1969 album Unhalfbricking.[26]

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 1968 demanding that they be released.[27] 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, which came out in July 1969.[28]

[edit] 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 by Robbie Robertson, eight of the twenty-four songs did not feature Dylan, and a number of these eight were not actually recorded at the Big Pink sessions.[2][29]

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 some of the original Dylan-Band recordings.[2]

The Basement Tapes was hailed by critics, with John Rockwell of The New York Times calling it "The greatest album in the history of American popular music."[30] Robert Christgau gave it a rare A+ in his "Consumer Guide" column.[31] Likewise, 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.[32]

Columbia has issued only four more Dylan Big Pink recordings since The Basement Tapes: take 2 of "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" on Biograph in 1985, "I Shall Be Released" and "Sante Fe," on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 in 1991, and "I'm Not There" on the I'm Not There soundtrack in 2007. A number of Band Basement Tape tracks were released on A Musical History in 2005.

A nearly-complete collection of the known Dylan recordings has been bootlegged as the 5-CD set The Genuine Basement Tapes, which was later remastered and re-released on the 4-CD bootleg A Tree With Roots.

[edit] Track listing

[edit] Disc one

  1. "Odds and Ends" (Dylan) (take 2, additional overdubs) – 1:46
  2. "Orange Juice Blues (Blues for Breakfast)" (Manuel) (additional overdubs) – 3:37
  3. "Million Dollar Bash" (Dylan) (take 2) – 2:31
  4. "Yazoo Street Scandal" (Robertson) – 3:27
  5. "Goin' to Acapulco" (Dylan) – 5:26
  6. "Katie's Been Gone" (Manuel, Robertson) – 2:43
  7. "Lo and Behold!" (Dylan) (take 2) – 2:45
  8. "Bessie Smith" (Danko, Robertson) – 4:17
  9. "Clothesline Saga" (Dylan) (take 1, additional overdubs) – 2:56
  10. "Apple Suckling Tree" (Dylan) (take 2) – 2:48
  11. "Please, Mrs. Henry" (Dylan) (take 2) – 2:31
  12. "Tears of Rage" (Dylan, Manuel) (take 3) – 4:11

[edit] Disc two

  1. "Too Much of Nothing" (Dylan) (take 1) – 3:01
  2. "Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread" (Dylan) (take 2) – 2:13
  3. "Ain't No More Cane" (Traditional) – 3:56
  4. "Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood)" (Dylan) (take 2) – 2:03
  5. "Ruben Remus" (Manuel, Robertson) – 3:13
  6. "Tiny Montgomery" (Dylan) – 2:45
  7. "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" (Dylan) (take 2, additional overdubs) – 2:42
  8. "Don't Ya Tell Henry" (Dylan) – 3:12
  9. "Nothing Was Delivered" (Dylan) (take 2) – 4:22
  10. "Open the Door, Homer" (Dylan) (take 1) – 2:49
  11. "Long Distance Operator" (Dylan) – 3:38
  12. "This Wheel's on Fire" (Danko, Dylan) (additional overdubs) – 3:49

[edit] Personnel

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960–1994 (New York: St. Martin's Press 1995), p. 55–56.
  2. ^ a b c d Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 293-303.
  3. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 85, 177, 190-221.
  4. ^ Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960–1994 (New York: St. Martin's Press 1995), p. 59, 67–68.
  5. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 304.
  6. ^ a b Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 40.
  7. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 46, 52-53.
  8. ^ Shelton, Robert. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Ballantine 1986), p. 426.
  9. ^ Rosenbaum, Ron. "The Playboy Interview: Bob Dylan," Playboy magazine, March 1978, in Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, Jonathon Cott (ed.) (New York: Wenner Books 2006), p. 215.
  10. ^ Shelton, Robert. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Ballantine 1986), p. 429.
  11. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 55.
  12. ^ a b Sounes, Howard. Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (Grove Press: New York 2001), p. 221
  13. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007), p. 120, 158.
  14. ^ Marcus, Greil. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (London: Picador 1997), p. 72.
  15. ^ "Interview with Jann S. Wenner," Rolling Stone November 29, 1969, in Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews (Wenner Books 2006), p. 151.
  16. ^ Marcus, Greil. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (London: Picador 1997), p. xvi.
  17. ^ Marcus, Greil. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (London: Picador 1997), p. 240.
  18. ^ Marcus, Greil. Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (London: Picador 1997), p. 237–265.
  19. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 104.
  20. ^ Spencer, Ruth Albert. "Conversations with the Band" in The Woodstock Times, Vol. 14, no. 12, March 21, 1985. Retrieved 2008-03-08.
  21. ^ Shelton, Robert. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Ballantine 1986), p. 427–428.
  22. ^ Shelton, Robert. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Ballantine 1986), p. 428.
  23. ^ a b Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 230.
  24. ^ a b Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 272.
  25. ^ a b Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 270.
  26. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 280.
  27. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 278.
  28. ^ Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 282.
  29. ^ Heylin, Clinton, The Basement Tapes, <http://theband.hiof.no/albums/basement_tapes_heylin.html>. Retrieved on 22 October 2007 
  30. ^ Shelton, Robert. No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan (New York: Ballantine 1986), p. 438.
  31. ^ Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide Reviews Retrieved on 2008-02-14
  32. ^ The 1975 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll Retrieved 2008-02-14

[edit] References

[edit] External links


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