written and sung by Robbie Robertson and Rick as the plaint of one of Bessie’s lovers, who can’t figure out if he’s lost his heart to the woman herself or the way she sings. There is Levon Helm’s patented mixture of carnal bewilderment and helpless delight in “Don’t Ya Tell Henry” (and the solos he and Robbie stomp out on that tune)—and the tale he tells in “Yazoo Street Scandal,” a comic horror story wherein the singer is introduced, by his girlfriend, to the local Dark Lady, who promptly seduces him, and then scares him half to death.
The Basement Tapes, more than any other music that has been heard from Bob Dylan and the Band, sound like the music of a partnership. As Dylan and the Band trade vocals across the discs, as they trade nuances and phrases within the songs, you can feel the warmth and the comradeship that must have been liberating for all six men. Language, for one thing, is completely unfettered. A good number of the songs seem as cryptic, or as nonsensical, as a misnumbered crossword puzzle—that is, if you listen only for words, and not for what the singing and the music say—but the open spirit of the songs is as straightforward as their unmatched vitality and spunk.
One hears a pure, naked emotion in some of Dylan’s writing and singing—in “Tears of Rage,” especially—that can’t be found anywhere else, and I think it is the musical sympathy Dylan and the Band shared in these sessions that gives “Tears of Rage,” and other numbers, their remarkable depth and power. There are rhythms in the music that literally sing with compliments tossed from one musician to another—listen to “Lo and Behold!” “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood),” “Ain’t No More Cane.” And there is another kind of openness, a flair for ribaldry that’s as much a matter of Levon’s mandolin as his, or Dylan’s, singing—a spirit that shoots a good smile straight across this album.
More than a little crazy, at times flatly bizarre (take “Million Dollar Bash,” “Yazoo Street Scandal,” “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” “Lo and Behold!”), moving easily from the confessional to the bawdy house, roaring with humor and good times, this music sounds to me at once like a testing and a discovery—of musical affinity, of nerve, of some very pointed themes; put up or shut up, obligation, escape, homecoming, owning up, the settling of accounts past due.
It sounds as well like a testing and a discovery of memory and roots. The Basement Tapes are a kaleidoscope like nothing I know, complete and no more dated than the mail, but they seem to leap out of a kaleidoscope of American music no less immediate for its venerability. Just below the surface of songs like “Lo and Behold!” or “Million Dollar Bash” are the strange adventures and poker-faced insanities chronicled in such standards as “Froggy Went A-Courtin’,” “E-ri-e,” Henry Thomas’s “Fishing Blues,” “Cock Robin,” or “Five Nights Drunk”; the ghost of Rabbit Brown’s sardonic “James Alley Blues” might lie just behind “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood).” The Basement Tapes summon sea chanteys, drinking songs, tall tales, and early rock and roll.
Alongside of such things—and often intertwined with them—is something very different.
Obviously, death is not very universally accepted. I mean, you’d think that the traditional music people could gather from their songs that mystery is a fact, a traditional fact.
—Bob Dylan, 1966
I think one can hear what Bob Dylan was talking about in the music of The Basement Tapes, in “Goin’ to Acapulco,” “Tears of Rage,” “Too Much of Nothing,” and “This Wheel’s On Fire”—one can hardly avoid hearing it. It is a plain-talk mystery; it has nothing to do with mumbo-jumbo, charms or spells. The acceptance of death that Dylan found in traditional music—the ancient ballads of mountain music—is simply a singer’s insistence on
The Basement Tapes, more than any other music that has been heard from Bob Dylan and the Band, sound like the music of a partnership. As Dylan and the Band trade vocals across the discs, as they trade nuances and phrases within the songs, you can feel the warmth and the comradeship that must have been liberating for all six men. Language, for one thing, is completely unfettered. A good number of the songs seem as cryptic, or as nonsensical, as a misnumbered crossword puzzle—that is, if you listen only for words, and not for what the singing and the music say—but the open spirit of the songs is as straightforward as their unmatched vitality and spunk.
One hears a pure, naked emotion in some of Dylan’s writing and singing—in “Tears of Rage,” especially—that can’t be found anywhere else, and I think it is the musical sympathy Dylan and the Band shared in these sessions that gives “Tears of Rage,” and other numbers, their remarkable depth and power. There are rhythms in the music that literally sing with compliments tossed from one musician to another—listen to “Lo and Behold!” “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood),” “Ain’t No More Cane.” And there is another kind of openness, a flair for ribaldry that’s as much a matter of Levon’s mandolin as his, or Dylan’s, singing—a spirit that shoots a good smile straight across this album.
More than a little crazy, at times flatly bizarre (take “Million Dollar Bash,” “Yazoo Street Scandal,” “Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” “Lo and Behold!”), moving easily from the confessional to the bawdy house, roaring with humor and good times, this music sounds to me at once like a testing and a discovery—of musical affinity, of nerve, of some very pointed themes; put up or shut up, obligation, escape, homecoming, owning up, the settling of accounts past due.
It sounds as well like a testing and a discovery of memory and roots. The Basement Tapes are a kaleidoscope like nothing I know, complete and no more dated than the mail, but they seem to leap out of a kaleidoscope of American music no less immediate for its venerability. Just below the surface of songs like “Lo and Behold!” or “Million Dollar Bash” are the strange adventures and poker-faced insanities chronicled in such standards as “Froggy Went A-Courtin’,” “E-ri-e,” Henry Thomas’s “Fishing Blues,” “Cock Robin,” or “Five Nights Drunk”; the ghost of Rabbit Brown’s sardonic “James Alley Blues” might lie just behind “Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood).” The Basement Tapes summon sea chanteys, drinking songs, tall tales, and early rock and roll.
Alongside of such things—and often intertwined with them—is something very different.
Obviously, death is not very universally accepted. I mean, you’d think that the traditional music people could gather from their songs that mystery is a fact, a traditional fact.
—Bob Dylan, 1966
I think one can hear what Bob Dylan was talking about in the music of The Basement Tapes, in “Goin’ to Acapulco,” “Tears of Rage,” “Too Much of Nothing,” and “This Wheel’s On Fire”—one can hardly avoid hearing it. It is a plain-talk mystery; it has nothing to do with mumbo-jumbo, charms or spells. The acceptance of death that Dylan found in traditional music—the ancient ballads of mountain music—is simply a singer’s insistence on
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