Dylanologists rubbed their eyes in disbelief this week when Sony announced the upcoming release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 12: The Basement Tapes Complete. The box set collects 138 tracks recorded by Bob Dylan and the fledgling Band in 1967 and 1968, during one of Dylan’s most reclusive periods. Entire volumes have been written about these legendary sessions (the most famous of which is Greil Marcus’ Old Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes), but the bulk of the recordings have remained in the hands of bootleggers until now. These sessions feature Dylan and the Band alternately at their most inspired (masterpieces like “Tears of Rage” and “I Shall Be Released” were born here) and at their most casual (false starts and flubs galore!). There’s also plenty of delightful strangeness and tomfoolery. Combing through the extant bootlegs, the most well-known of which is The Tree With Roots, here are some oddball highlights.
"You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere (Take 1)"
It’s one of the officially released Basement Tapes’ most beloved tunes, but the first take of “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” features radically different (and extremely strange) lyrics about cats that need to be fed, heads of lettuce and buzzards, seemingly conjured up at will by Dylan. “Look here, you buncha basement noise!” he scolds over the song’s beautifully breezy melody. “You ain’t no punching bag!” Surreal lyrics were the norm during the Basement Tapes sessions (see also “Tiny Montgomery”, “Yea! Heavy and Bottle of Bread”), but Dylan outdoes himself here.
"Tupelo"
Bob breaks out his best John Lee Hooker impression for a quietly hilarious laconic cover the Mississippi’s bluesman’s classic 1960 recording. He doesn’t stick very close to the script, however. As the Band chugs along on Hooker’s trademark, slow-as-molasses riff, the singer deadpans: “I was just a little boy. Twenty-two years old.” His reportage skills are somewhat lacking as well. “Big flood,” Dylan concludes. “Terrible.” Thanks for the news bulletin, Bob.
"Sign on the Cross"
This one sounds pretty straightforward at first, as Dylan leads the Band through some timeworn gospel changes. Robbie Robertson ekes out gorgeous guitar lines worthy of Curtis Mayfield and Garth Hudson’s organ swells at all the right moments, coaxing a truly remarkable vocal from their leader. Things take a turn for the weird, however, around 4:25, when Dylan slips into an off-the-cuff spoken monologue, coming off as a country-fried preacher who may have been dipping into his moonshine supply. What began as pure holiness starts sounding just a little bit creepy.
"See You Later Allen Ginsberg"
Many of the Basement Tapes tunes seem like exercises in who can keep a straight face for the longest. Everyone fails on this one. The guys start riffing on their compadre Bobby Charles’ “See You Later, Alligator” when someone chimes in with “See you later, Allen Ginsberg!” causing Dylan to giggle uncontrollably. Whirling feedback brings the song to an end. Ginsberg apparently loved it.
"I'm Your Teenage Prayer"
One of the downright goofiest Basement Tapes recordings, this charming folk-doowop pastiche features Dylan dueling with the Band’s vocal chorus. “Take a look at me, babe,” he sings, only to have his backing band respond: “No, take a look at me, babe.”
"It's the Flight of the Bumblebee"
The sheer variety of different voices that Dylan tried out during the Basement Tapes period is astonishing. One of the most delightful of these pops up during this fragment. After Garth Hudson deftly picks out a bid the old piano lesson favorite, Bob emerges as a smooth, baritone crooner, singing sweetly of a bothersome bumblebee. As he brings the song to its hammy big finish, it’s possible Dylan has never sounded quite so relaxed.
"The Spanish Song"
Dylan and the Band have so much fun with this bit of south-of-the-border nonsense that they do two takes of it, drunkenly raving and whooping it up in Spanglish. It’s a silly throwaway, to be sure, but it serves as a good reminder of just how young these musicians were at the time, no matter how road-seasoned they were. “The Spanish Song” is just some 20-something friends with plenty of time to kill, fucking around while the tape recorder rolls.
"I'm Not There"
The song so enigmatic it inspired a major motion picture. Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There plumbed the depths of Dylan’s slippery persona, but it didn’t get to the bottom of “I’m Not There”, the hallucinatory composition Bob and the Band laid down in Big Pink. “There is nothing like ‘I’m Not There,’” Greil Marcus claimed in The Old Weird America—and then spent the better part of a chapter trying to figure out why. Unlike other Basement Tapes songs, “I’m Not There” feels almost genre-less, as Dylan intones a tortured, oblique set of lyrics over the Band’s hypnotic and spare backing. It’s hard to know what exactly Dylan is singing about here, but the song is heavy with mystery and heartbreak.