THE BASEMENT TAPES
The Basement Tapes is a studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the Band, released on June 26, 1975 by Columbia Records. The songs featuring Dylan’s vocals were recorded in 1967, eight years before the album’s release, at houses in and around Woodstock, New York, where Dylan and the Band lived. Although most of the Dylan songs had appeared on bootleg records, The Basement Tapes marked their first official release. (More from Wikipedia)
As I mentioned earlier, bootleg records were generally tolerated, but there was definitely considerable resistance to them. I would read in the press from time to time and hear from other sources that “legitimate” releases of the songs on Great White Wonder were coming, and we should just be patient and wait. Needless to say, I wasn’t having it; in all, I have purchased 23 Bob Dylan bootleg albums (many being double album sets, like Great White Wonder), and I will likely purchase more if I get a chance. It has been a while since I have seen any in a record store, however, now that I think of it.
As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait too long – about 6 years. With great fanfare, a two-album set called The Basement Tapes came out in mid-1975. While it was exciting to see another two-album set of unknown Bob Dylan music, the albums ultimately left me feeling underwhelmed.
* * *
When I started playing the albums, early on I didn’t recognize any of the music. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if The Basement Tapes is what you were supposed to buy instead of Great White Wonder, it sure wasn’t filling the bill. At the end of Side 2, I finally heard one of the songs from GWW, “Tears of Rage”; and then “Too Much of Nothing” to start Side 3, but no more again until Side 4. In a way, The Basement Tapes was structured like Great White Wonder, except that other “basement-tape” songs were provided in the parts of the discs where the early Bob Dylan songs were slotted on GWW.
What I noticed right away, first and foremost, is that none of Bob Dylan’s early folk music and acoustical songs were included on The Basement Tapes. While Great White Wonder included a variety of songs, that is the kind of music that I was encountering on most of the other Dylan bootleg albums that I had been gathering.
While there is a lot to love on The Basement Tapes, and I cannot argue with the 5-star rating on Allmusic and other sources, I gather that I am not the only one who was somewhat disappointed. By the time The Basement Tapes came out, the Band had gained considerable stature in the music world and were no longer just “the band” backing Bob Dylan (they were actually called the Hawks in the basement-tape days). Still, I certainly hadn’t expected that fully one third of the songs (8 out of 24) on The Basement Tapes would be songs by the Band alone, with no involvement from Bob Dylan.
Finally, I dare say that anyone buying The Basement Tapes would have expected, at a minimum, to hear those seven basement-tape songs from Great White Wonder; but the album came up short in that regard also. Only five of them are on The Basement Tapes, amazingly; “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)” and “I Shall Be Released” are omitted from the 1975 album. To be sure, they both had previously been included in the 1971 Bob Dylan retrospective album, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits, Vol. II.
(September 2017)
* * *
Items: The Basement Tapes
