The Basements Tapes is an album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It was released on June 26, 1975, by Columbia Records and is Dylan’s 16th studio album. Two-thirds of the album’s 24 tracks feature Dylan on lead vocals backed by the Band. The remaining eight songs, all previously unavailable, feature the Band without Dylan and were recorded between 1967 and 1975. It is considered one of the most important albums of the 1960s and early 1970s by some critics.
About The Basement Tapes in brief
The Basement Tapes is an album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It was released on June 26, 1975, by Columbia Records and is Dylan’s 16th studio album. Two-thirds of the album’s 24 tracks feature Dylan on lead vocals backed by the Band. The remaining eight songs, all previously unavailable, feature the Band without Dylan and were recorded between 1967 and 1975. For some critics, the songs on The Basements Tapes, which circulated widely in unofficial form, mounted a major stylistic challenge to rock music in the late sixties. Critics have questioned the omission of some of Dylan’s best-known 1967 compositions and the inclusion of material by the band that was not recorded in Woodstock. The album was critically acclaimed upon release, reaching number seven on the Billboard 200 album chart. It is considered one of the most important albums of the 1960s and early 1970s by some critics. Dylan’s new style of writing moved away from the urban sensibility and extended narratives that had characterized his most recent albums, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, toward songs that were more intimate and which drew on many styles of traditional American music. In general, they possess a rootsy quality anticipating the Americana genre. In 1969, Dylan said in an interview with Rolling Stone Jann Wenner, “I was rethinking the direction of his life while recovering from a dreadful motorcycle accident which put me away for a year.” The year after the accident is still viewed as the pivot of his career.
The great irony is that 1967—the year after his most prolific year as a songwriter—remains that year that he really did explode. The songwriter said in a 1969 Rolling Stone interview: “I couldn’t do it anymore. I mean I was just gonna go back to what I was doing before… but I couldn’t get up and go back” The album has been hailed as one of Bob Dylan’s greatest achievements, along with Blonde On Blonde and John Wesley Harding. It has been described as “the most influential album of the 1970s and 1980s” and “one of the greatest albums of all time” by Rolling Stone’s John McWhorter, who said it was “a masterpiece of Americana music” and called it “the greatest album of its time” It has also been called the “greatest album of all-time” by many critics, including Bob Dylan himself, who called it a “masterwork” and said it “a must-have” for fans of folk music. Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident in July 1966, and four members of the Hawks came to Dylan’s home in the Woodstock area to collaborate with him on music and film projects. The Hawks comprised four Canadian musicians—Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson—and one American, Levon Helm. During his 1965–1966 world tour, Dylan’s audiences reacted with hostility to the sound of their folk icon backed by a rock band. The tour culminated in a famously raucous concert in Manchester, England, in May 1966.
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