Okay, I've debated about this. First it came here, but then I thought I should be recreating the public experience at the time and not include access to these songs until they were released in 1975 (even tho' bootlegs abounded for all of the intervening years). But the more I try to eliminate my knowledge of them from my reactions to the subsequent recordings, the more it becomes a futile exercise and the more I realize that if someone were to read this, as I intend, as an introduction to Dylan, there's no real reason to keep this information from them and many reasons to include it.
Background: At this point, The Basement Tapes have taken on a mythical quality. Basically, Dylan was recuperating from his motorcycle accident, his backing group, formerly The Hawks, had taken up residence near his Catskill—yes, Woodstock—home. They began working together regularly, at first just jamming, playing songs they all knew and teaching each other ones they didn’t. Much else is conjecture, rumor and myth-building. For whatever reason, they eventually decided to tape at least some of their sessions, whether it was supposed to be as demos for themselves or other artists, or if they just wanted to know how the whole thing was sounding, we really don’t know.
The Recording: Not always the best quality, not even, necessarily complete songs, these are the re-mastered 1975 releases of a portion of the songs that were taped. People who gather the bootlegs have a much larger playlist from these sets. (See Sid Griffin’s Million Dollar Bash for an exhaustive—if somewhat speculative—investigative report of the sessions and the re-masterings as well as a song-by-song description of the complete set of tapes as they are known to exist.) 24 songs. The first to emerge from the basaement were used by Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, as demos and soon became hits for other groups. Others became standards in The Band’s repertoire a few years down the line. A select set has made it’s way to Dylan’s live concerts. And a few, except for the fact that they are among this touted group, have faded quietly away.
Conclusion: Eric Clapton has confessed that hearing these tapes was the impetus for his disbanding Cream to seek another musical direction for himself. These are an important milestone in popular music, at the very least. They are the explanation, if you will, for the change in direction Dylan takes in the recordings that follow. But what was behind that, we may never really know. Did the emotional burden of the events in the years leading up to this period thrust him in a new direction in hopes of escaping the expectations he felt had been placed upon him or did a young loner from the mid-west who’d never been able keep a band around him in high school and who had taken it upon his narrow nineteen year old shoulders to venture to New York City and solitarily follow his muse despite what might come finally find solace in a group of talented musicians who were open to new ideas? Whatever the motivation, much was accomplished that eventually spilled into mainstream music in the decades that followed.
No comments:
Post a Comment