Bob Dylan And The Band : The Basement Tapes Raw
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Bob Dylan And The Band : The Basement Tapes Raw

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Bob Dylan’s 1975 album The Basement Tapes stands as one of the great enigmas in a career of enigmas. An abbreviated back story goes something like this: in 1966, in the aftermath of his infamous motorbike accident, Dylan and members of the group who’d later become The Band holed up in a pink house in rural New York, where they put down in excess of 100 songs. Yet when an album surfaced nine years later, it contained only 16 Dylan songs (as well as eight by The Band). So for the better part of fifty years, the question’s been: what of the rest of the material?

The Basement Tapes Raw answers that question and answers it comprehensively. For die-hard Dylanologists, there’s the whopping six-disc box set, which follows every second of the original 1966 recordings. Alternatively, there’s the slimmer, more manageable two-disc collection, presenting highlights from the sessions.

As with much of Dylan’s Bootleg series, while the individual results sometimes vary, overall the venture is an absolutely worthwhile exercise.

There’s a luminous version of I Shall Be Released, before The Band snatched it up and took it as their own. One Too Many Mornings is given an Americana overhaul, with Rick Danko joining Dylan on vocals. There’s even a jangling cover of Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues. And through all of it are Basement Tapes staples – This Wheel’s On Fire, Please Mrs Henry, Million Dollar Bash – restored to their rawer, more stripped-back original forms.

A must for all Dylan fans.

BY WAYNE MARSHALL