Maps of Music

The Basement Tapes (1975)

Where the lyrics of The Basement Tapes take you, and where it was really made.

The songs were recorded in 1967 in a Woodstock basement, but the official album did not come out until eight years later, in 1975.

Key places

The basement of Big Pink (1975)

Recording site Big Pink — In June 1967 the sessions moved from Dylan's house to the basement of Big Pink. Hudson set up the recording unit there. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Dylan's house in Woodstock (1975)

Recording site Hi Lo Ha — The first informal sessions began at Dylan's house, Hi Lo Ha, before the recording moved to Big Pink. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• The Basement Tapes: sixteenth studio album by Bob Dylan, his second with the Band
• Released 26 June 1975 by Columbia Records
• 24 tracks: 16 songs with Dylan and the Band recorded in 1967, 8 songs by the Band alone recorded between 1967 and 1975
• Two-thirds of the tracks feature Dylan on lead vocals
• Most of the Dylan songs had already circulated on bootleg albums
• Overdubs were added in 1975 to songs from both groups

Background

• Dylan was backed by the Hawks on his 1965–1966 world tour
• After a motorcycle accident in July 1966, four Hawks members came to his Woodstock home to collaborate on music and film projects
• While Dylan recovered out of public view in 1967, he and the Hawks recorded more than 100 tracks together
• The songs mixed original compositions, contemporary covers and traditional material
• The songs moved away from the urban sensibility of Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde
• A fourteen-song demo was copyrighted in October 1967 and registered with Dwarf Music

Recording

• Sessions began at Dylan's house, Hi Lo Ha, in the Byrdcliffe area of Woodstock
• In June 1967 the sessions moved to the basement of Big Pink, a house on Stoll Road
• Garth Hudson set up the recording unit with two stereo mixers and a tape recorder borrowed from Albert Grossman
• The microphones were on loan from the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary
• Recordings were later remixed to mono and some 1967 tracks received new keyboard, guitar and drum parts
• Four new Band songs were recorded for the 1975 release, one of them a cover of Chuck Berry's Going Back to Memphis, which was not included

Cover

• The cover photo was taken by Reid Miles in the basement of a Los Angeles YMCA
• It poses Dylan and the Band with characters suggested by the songs, including a woman in a Mrs. Henry T-shirt and a circus strongman

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Disc 1

Disc 2

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Formation

• Born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota; raised in Hibbing, Minnesota.
• Moved to New York City in January 1961 to pursue a music career.
• Signed to Columbia Records after playing harmonica on Carolyn Hester's album; debut album Bob Dylan released in 1962.

Members

• Solo artist; backed over the years by bands including the Hawks/the Band, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and his touring band led by bassist Tony Garnier.

Career

• Breakthrough with The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963); protest songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements.
• Went electric with Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited (1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966), provoking controversy among folk fans.
• Motorcycle accident in 1966 led to nearly eight years without touring; Basement Tapes recorded with the Band.
• Converted to Christianity in the late 1970s and released gospel albums; won Album of the Year Grammy for Time Out of Mind (1997).
• Has toured since 1988 on the Never Ending Tour; won an Academy Award and ten Grammy Awards; awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• The New York Times: John Rockwell hailed it as one of the greatest albums in the history of American popular music
• Rolling Stone: Paul Nelson called its contents the hardest, toughest, sweetest, saddest, funniest, wisest songs he knows
• The Washington Post: the review declared Dylan has to rank as the single greatest artist modern American pop music has produced
• Robert Christgau, creator of the Voice's Pazz & Jop poll, said the recordings sounded richer and stranger in 1975 than when they were made
• The Basement Tapes topped the Voice's Pazz & Jop Critics Poll

Reappraisal

• Michael Gray: the Band's tracks interspersed among the Dylan material merely disrupt its unity, and key songs such as I Shall Be Released and The Mighty Quinn are missing
• Clinton Heylin: compiler Robbie Robertson did Dylan fans a major disservice by omitting those songs
• Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker: Robertson, with some exceptions, knew which the good songs were
• Dave Hopkins: questioned the authenticity of the Band-only tracks, which he heard as muddied on purpose in 1975

Records

• Peaked at number seven on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart
• Reached number eight in the UK
• Rolling Stone ranked it number 291 on its 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, number 292 in 2012 and number 335 in 2020
• Q magazine awarded the record five stars in a special issue devoted to Dylan's work

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• Robbie Robertson and the others spoke of a basement recording method that became known as the Big Pink technique, which the Band used on its debut album Music from Big Pink
• Dwarf Music was a publishing company jointly owned by Dylan and Albert Grossman, and the 1967 demo was registered there
• Robertson said the songs were never meant to be a record, only demos for other people
• Dylan remembered the sessions as songs recorded in the basement out in the woods rather than as a record
• The album's 1975 remastered reissue in 2009 was praised for improved sound quality

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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