Bob Dylan in the 1970s by Chris Wade

Author:Chris Wade [Wade, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Twins Books
Published: 2016-12-26T23:00:00+00:00

THE UNEARTHING OF

THE BASEMENT TAPES

The eventual release of the legendary Basement Tapes was a landmark moment in not only Dylan's career, but in the whole rock field. After all, these scratchy demos, recorded in various Woodstock domiciles in the 1967, had proved to be massively influential over the previous eight years. Heavily bootlegged as The Great White Wonder, you weren't cool unless you had heard them. These were hidden gems, classics left to crumble on hissy old tapes. If Dylan was recording all this in 67, the same year he released John Wesley Harding, then that year is undoubtedly the most prolific and busy of his career; even if most of the material didn't see release until 75, then later on the 2013 Bootleg Series entry.

In the late 1960s, The Basement Tapes were almost like the bible to scenesters and rock aficionados. Producer Joe Boyd once said that you could hear all those songs coming from bedroom windows all over the place. People would get together to spin these mysterious demos that sounded like they had been recorded fifty years ago. Everyone in the rock inner circle dug these recordings, while groups like Manfred Mann and Julie Driscoll even scored hits with some of the songs, namely The Mighty Quinn and This Wheel's On Fire. If Dylan really did write and record these for kicks alone, bored of releasing his own work on the tiresome rock and roll treadmill, it sure sounds as if him and The Band were having a good time doing so. As if to prove that he didn't old these recordings in high regard as finished, polished product, Robbie Robertson once claimed that Bob suggested they even erase their versions of the songs so no one would ever hear them. Thankfully, Robertson was able to dissuade him.

An interesting piece published in Rolling Stone in 1968, entitled Dylan's Basement Tapes Should Be Released, has Jann Wenner waxing lyrical of the rough and ready recordings. "The group backing Dylan on this tape is called the Crackers. Formerly they were the Hawks," he wrote. "The band, which lives with Dylan at his home, consists of Levon Helm on drums, Rick Danko on bass and Robbie Robertson on guitar. They accompanied him at Carnegie Hall for the recent Woody Guthrie Memorial program. Robbie Robertson has been working with Dylan for the past three years. The instrumentation is closest to Blonde on Blonde, including an organ, an electric bass, drums and two guitars, acoustic and electric. The singing is more closely related to John Wesley Harding, however. The style is typically Dylan: humorous, rock-and-rolly with repetitious patterns. One of the things peculiar to this tape is that Dylan is working with a group; there is more interaction between him and the instrumentalists than can be seen in any of his other efforts, plus there is vocal backup in the choruses from his band. The quality of the recording is fairly poor, it was a one-track, one-take job with all the instruments recorded together.

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