The Basement Tapes (1967; 1975)

Abstract

Midway through the dark woods of the 1960s, Bob Dylan took his Triumph motorcycle for a country ride and lost his balance, or hit an oil slick, or (according to the mythopoetic account Dylan himself would give) stared too long into the sun and found himself momentarily blinded. The specific circumstances are cloudy. But we do know that Dylan was burned out after nine months of a grueling, seemingly endless, still-ongoing tour; that the proofs of his first novel, Tarantula , had arrived and that Dylan, who seems to have written the book in a methamphetamine haze, recognized them to be unreadable and embarrassing; that there were hundreds of hours of films to edit for a forthcoming documentary, and constant demands for new recordings. Dyan's responsibilities had multiplied exponentially, and vast sums of money were at stake. We can only imagine the toll these expectations, and others, took on his central nervous system: “Different anachronisms were thrust upon me . . . ” Dylan wrote in his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One . “Legend, Icon, Enigma (Buddha in European Clothes was my favorite) - stuff like that, but that was all right. These titles were placid and harmless, threadbare, easy to get around with them. Prophet, Messiah, Savior - those are tough ones” (124). Bob Dylan was 25 years old. Dylan crashed his Triumph in July of 1966. His close friend, the folksinger and novelist Richard Fariña, had died in another motorcycle crash a few months earlier. The carousel was out of control.