The Basement Tapes

Woodstock, 1967The Summer Of Love passes Dylan by. While Sergeant Pepper converts the rest of the music scene to sitar, trumpets, sound experiments, strings, studio effects and psychedelics at all, Dylan and The Band sit for months in the countryside in a big house, playing antique folk and country songs in the basement of the Big Pink. In between, he tinkers and fools around with the band on about seventy of new songs that sound fresh and old-fashioned at the same time. Some of them are gratefully picked up by others. Manfred Mann scores with "The Mighty Quinn", Julie Driscoll has a hit with "This Wheel's On Fire", The Byrds throw themselves on "You Ain't Going Nowhere" and half the music world is happy with "I Shall Be Released", to name but a few. As for the originals: the world has to make do with sneaky bootleg recordings - especially The Great White Wonder achieves mythical status. In 1975 The Basement Tapes is released, on which a modest, polished selection of the recordings can be found, and it's only in 2014 that almost everything is officially released: The Basement Tapes Complete is number eleven in The Bootleg Series. In his sixth Dylan book, Jochen Markhorst takes the reader along 32 of the best and most completed Basement songs, highlighting the backgrounds, history and impact of the legendary Basement Tapes.