I bought my first 2 Dylan albums together in 1966. There was the 1963 'Freewheelin' and the 1965 'Bringing It All Back Home'. I collected the 3 albums that had come before and bought everything I could that came afterwards, but then Dylan songs that he hadn't recorded started to appear by other artists. In '67 Peter Paul & Mary sang 'Too Much of Nothing'. In '68 Manfred Mann had a hit with 'Mighty Quinn' and the same year Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and The Trinity came out with 'This Wheel's on Fire'. The Byrds sang 'You Ain't Going Nowhere' and 'Nothing Was Delivered' and The Band put out their album 'Music From Big Pink' which included 'This Wheel's on Fire', 'I Shall Be Released' and 'Tears of Rage'.
That album by The Band was a clue to what had happened during the spring, summer and autumn of 1967. The title 'Music From Big Pink' referred to a house in West Saugerties, New York, not far from Woodstock where members of The Hawks (to become The Band), Dylans 1966 touring group, moved in. Along with Dylan they first started some informal recordings at Dylan's house, then moved to the basement of 'Big Pink', given that nickname because of the colour of the sidings. Those sessions were leaked, traded and spoken of in hushed tones. Some, like the ones listed above, were made commercial by others, but not by Dylan. When the worlds most famous and first bootleg of the rock era 'Great White Wonder' came out in 1969 it had 7 songs from those basement recordings.
Then in 1975, after the success of 'Blood on the Tracks' Dylan and Columbia agreed to release some of these previously 'legally' unavailable songs on this double album 'The Basement Tapes'. Finally we got to hear not only the tracks we already knew from those artists mentioned above but there were all the other gems waiting in the wings.
Once you heard 'Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread' you could spend your life wondering what it meant ..
"Yes, the comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus
The poor little chauffeur, though, she was back in bed
On the very next day with a nose full of pus
Yea, heavy and a bottle of bread"
Under that 'Apple Suckling Tree' oh yea. I defy anyone not to tap a foot, clap along and smile as this song picks up and takes off, Garth Hudson swirling the organ in the background as Bob tries to fit 20 words into a 15 word space and Robbie Robertson plays drums like a 2 year old smacking a cardboard box. Joyous !!
'Clothes Line Saga' has been likened to a deconstructed 'Ode To Billie Joe' and when you listen to it with that reference in your mind, there will always be a ghost of Bobby Gentry running through it. Bob has a history of pulling his influence and inspiration from everything around him and as 'Ode To Billie Joe' was popular at the time there's no reason to think he didn't play with it.
I have to stop - I could go through every song and basically rave about them. This album to me was a total revelation when it was released. Out of the 24 songs, Dylan sang on 16 of them, the other 8 taken by The Band. There was more to come though if you had the patience. Much more.
In 1991 Columbia started to release material previously only available as bootlegs and pirated recordings, starting with "The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991". It took another 7 years to get to Vol.4, then 4 years to Vol.5 but then they started to pick up speed as people were wanting - no demanding - more. To get clean, crisp studio or soundboard recordings of previously unavailable material was brilliant. Many releases had alternate takes, rehearsals, unreleased finals, a cornucopia of Bob. To date there have been 15 of these Bootleg Series but for the sake of this post, "The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete" is the go-to set.
Almost 40 years after that original Basement Tape double album two versions of this official piece of history were released in 2014. There was a 2-CD option or the one that I got, a full blown 6-CD bonanza. 138 tracks of which 117 had not been previously released. As complete a collection as could ever be hoped for. Critics have rightly claimed that there are a large number of tracks that should maybe not have seen the light of day, but Dylan fans such as me regard the whole thing as an important and vital slice of Dylan history and it should be taken in the way it was recorded. Sometimes raw, unfinished, imperfect and crude, other times chilling in that same rawness, but mostly a fly-on-the-wall glimpse into the mind and work of the one and only 1967 version of Bob Dylan.
The casual listener will not and probably should not invest in a 6-CD set, but for an insight into the creative juices at 'Big Pink' in 1967, you owe it to yourself to dip your toe in either this 1975 issue or the 2-CD 2014 run of the basement tapes.
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