Out of the Cellar

In the summer of 1967, a year after his near-fatal motorcycle accident, Bob Dylan got together with his favorite musical collaborators, The Band, near Woodstock, N.Y. Settling into a house called Big Pink, they hunkered down in the basement in front of a home recorder. Over several months, they played and sang in long informal sessions.

The tapes were not released, but over the years various tracks kept popping up in bootleg editions. Vexed by such fragmentation and by the inferior quality of the pirated versions, Dylan recently allowed Columbia to release the original material. The two-LP set, called The Basement Tapes, contains 24 songs, and is one of Dylan's best albums. Musically it is a transition between the assertive, nihilistic Blonde on Blonde (1966) and the mystical John Wesley Harding (1968). The tunes on The Basement Tapes are pithy, dense and funny. There are bizarre, surreal lyrics like Million Dollar Bash and traditional-sounding folk ballads like Apple Suckling Tree. But the album is stronger than all its songs put together. There is fellowship evident here as well as skill. It is easy to hear the group fueling each other, having a good time. They seem to sense the high quality of the music. It is a good-natured contest where everyone is a winner.

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