The Bob Dylan album that he never wanted to be released
Every artist should have the right to give artists what they want to do. No one is entitled to hear everything that comes from someone’s pen, and even if some songs have more potential to be a hit than others, it’s all up to what the artist is comfortable with. However, the music machine always needs to get fed at some point, and while Bob Dylan was more than happy to put out material with his blessing, he did have reservations about some songs being thrown out into the wild without his approval.
Looking over Dylan’s work has almost become commonplace for any classic rock aficionado. For anyone even mildly interested in music, pouring over at least one of his albums is a twisted right of passage in a certain respect, whether that’s being blown away by the lyricism of his early years or being lit on fire when getting to his electric period when he turned his back on the folkies.
At the same time, Dylan wasn’t always in the best headspace when he made some of his greatest albums. Blood on the Tracks may be one of the most brilliant pieces of art that he ever made, but looking at what was going on in the background as he detangled his marriage made everyone feel like a voyeur into a chapter of his life that no one was supposed to see up-close.
Then again, that kind of emotional turmoil often makes for the best tunes. Part of the reason Rumours worked so well for Fleetwood Mac was that they fed off each other, and while the same applies to Dylan, there’s something about The Basement Tapes that was a lot different from anything he had released before.
“It doesn’t occur to me to put it out.”
bob dylan
While it wasn’t the first time that Dylan had a double album under his belt, hearing him woodshed a lot of his material with The Band behind him was a far more stripped-down affair than even fans probably intended. That’s because what you’re listening to are basically glorified demos put together by Dylan and The Band, almost like looking through the sessions from the late 1960s that somehow never made it to primetime.
It did include some nice sonic detours, but Dylan would have rather forgotten about the whole thing than have put it out, saying, “It doesn’t occur to me to put it out. If I wrote a song three years ago, I seldom go back and get that. I just leave ’em alone. I never really liked The Basement Tapes. I mean, they were just songs we had done for the publishing company, as I remember. They were used only for other artists to record those songs. I wouldn’t have put ’em out. But, you know, Columbia wanted to put ’em out, so what can you do?”
Even for what is, in essence, a record company obligation album, The Basement Tapes still works as a fantastic piece of Dylan lore. None of them may have been meant to be sung by him, but hearing them in this form really helps the listener get into Dylan’s head, whether he’s working on a lyric that isn’t quite ready yet or hearing another take on ‘This Wheel’s On Fire’ after The Band used it on Music From Big Pink.
Looking through this material may be the equivalent of looking into an artist’s diary in many respects, but in the case of Dylan, there’s a certain kind of magic in those intimate moments. This was a man who spent his whole life trying to be as enigmatic as possible, so the only place that he could possibly hope to be as truthful as he could was in his songs.
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