Bob Dylan's famous basement tapes have trickled out in various forms over the years, but this fall they will be released in their entirety — including 30 songs even hardcore fans never knew existed.
Slate reported Tuesday that "The Basement Tapes Complete: The Bootleg Series Vol. 11" will be released on November 4, and showcase all 138 tracks recorded in 1967 with the Band at a house named Big Pink in upstate New York.
"Some of this stuff is mind-boggling," folk musician and writer Sid Griffin, who wrote the liner notes for the collection,
told Rolling Stone. "The stuff that people haven't heard justifies, in every way, shape and form, all the hype, hubris and myth that surrounds these tapes."
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The previously unknown tracks include "Wild Wolf," an early version of "I Shall Be Released," a cover of Hank Williams' "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It," and country versions of "Blowin' in the Wind," "It Ain't Me Babe," and "One Too Many Mornings."
Basement-tape expert Greil Marcus, a former Rolling Stone editor who penned the book "Invisible Republic," said of the tapes: "I've always heard them as a version of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Except this is five or six guys instead of dozens and dozens from all over the country."
The environment in which the tapes were recorded was unstructured and free, with the band intending much of it to be demos they could sell to other musicians. They chose 14 of the tracks to shop around, and found success with that strategy.
Manfred Mann recorded "Quinn the Eskimo," the Byrds took "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere," and Peter, Paul and Mary covered "Too Much of Nothing."
A complete track listing of the forthcoming 6-CD set can be found at
BobDylan.com.
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