Music Arcades: Bob Dylan and The Band: The Basement Tapes

The guitar teacher I had ten years ago was a Dylan fan, but his taste in Bobsongs was almost tje exact inverse of mine. All the songs I treasure most, he'd shake his head and sigh, "Awful lot of words…" The first song he taught me was Knockin' on Heaven's Door: C, A minor, G, D. He was a big fan of The Band, and The Basement Tapes may have been his favourite Dylan album.

Up to that point, I'd steered clear of it for the best part of two decades, but my teacher persuaded me to learn You Ain't Goin' Nowhere. I figured that was as good a time as any to engage with the album and bought Greil Marcus' Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes in the naive expectation that it might tell me something about… The Basement Tapes. It does go into some detail concerning a few lines of one song on the album — I forget which — but it has a lot more to say about Dock Boggs. On the silver lining side, the book directed me to World Gone Wrong, for which I'll always be grateful.

Marcus often frustrates and fascinates me in almost equal measure — actually about 60:40. I know where this review is coming from, and I agree with it that, if I were starting again, I'd read Sid Griffin's Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes instead. That book hadn't been published ten years ago, but I heard Sid talking about it very entertainingly at the Green Note in Camden a few years back.

In the end, I think I feel the same about The Basement Tapes as I do about Greil Marcus. I'll press on, sporadically, for years and feel, mostly, nonplussed. Then one day it will all click into place, and I'll wonder how I could ever have missed it. Maybe.