The Basement Tapes is a studio album by Bob Dylan and The Band, released in 1975 by Columbia Records.
Most of the album was actually recorded eight years earlier, in the basement of a house shared by the musicians. As Bob Dylan recovered from a near-fatal motorcycle accident during 1967, he called on The Band to help him experiment with themes of traditional folk music and Americana; these explorations, and their possible links with the earlier Anthology of American Folk Music, are explored in Invisible Republic by author Greil Marcus.
The sessions laid the foundation both for the approach of Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding, and for the Band finding their own voice on 1968's Music From Big Pink. The Dylan LP, a critically-acclaimed departure from the surrealist rock and roll he had recently pioneered on his milestone trio of albums from 1965 and 1966, was as much of a shock to his fans as were those records to his earlier folk audience. Both it and Music From Big Pink would greatly influence the turn, by many contemporary popular musicians, away from the psychedelic music that reached its height in 1967, toward an embrace of country-influenced folk styles.
Material from the sessions had been heavily bootlegged since 1968, with the most famous being 1969's Great White Wonder. It wasn't until Dylan's comeback with Blood on the Tracks in 1975 that any of it was officially released, and The Basement Tapes was welcomed with high praise from fans and critics. Compiled by Robbie Robertson, the album features new songs and many overdubs made by The Band long after the original sessions. More complete and authentic documents of the 1967 tapes have since surfaced and are traded by fans, while the later Band tracks have appeared as bonus tracks on CD reissues of their proper albums.
The Basement Tapes peaked at #7 in 1975 on Billboard's (North America) Pop Albums chart and reached #8 in the UK. In 2003, the album was ranked number 291 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
