List of Basement Tapes songs (1975)

"Odds and Ends" Dylan – vocal; Robertson – electric guitar; Hudson – organ; Danko – bass, backing vocal; Manuel – drums. Overdubbed 1975: Hudson or Manuel – piano. The chorus of the opening song—"Odds and ends, odds and ends/Lost time is not found again"—functions as "a kind of editorial comment on the entire Basement Tapes", writes Andy Gill, emphasizing the songs' "fragmentary form and fleeting pleasures". Clinton Heylin suggests that this was one of the final basement songs to be recorded, and that here Dylan acknowledges that "when it came to spouting catchphrase choruses while espousing mock profundities in the verses, the process had just about run its course. Dylan admits as much by singing, 'I've had enough, my box is clean/You know what I'm saying and you know what I mean'." "Orange Juice Blues (Blues for Breakfast)" Manuel – vocal, piano; Danko – bass. Recorded in Woodstock, 1967. Overdubbed 1975: Robertson – guitar; Hudson – organ, saxophone; Helm – drums. Manuel and Danko laid down the basic track in Woodstock in 1967, according to Griffin, and the contributions of the rest of the Band were overdubbed eight years later. Critic Dave Hopkins notes that the demo version included as a bonus track on the 2000 Music from Big Pink reissue is the same performance, without overdubbing. Griffin calls the song "charming in its own right", but says it would not have fit in on the original Music from Big Pink because it was all too obviously from their past: "an up-tempo bluesy number that the Hawks might have played" in rural Ontario in 1964. Barney Hoskyns describes the song as one of the Band's early recordings that revealed "the breathtaking scope" of their musical range; he praises "the rollicking bar-room R&B style" of the performance. "Million Dollar Bash" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal. According to Dylan biographer Robert Shelton, "Million Dollar Bash" epitomizes what he sees as one of The Basement Tapes principal themes, joy. Griffin named his detailed book about The Basement Tapes after this song, which has a similar instrumentation to 1950s rockabilly hits. According to Griffin, "Like Elvis's earliest single on Sun Records, the lack of a drummer does not prevent the assembled from swinging on this nonsense like the experienced players they are." Heylin heard in this song two references to the Coasters: "'Along came Jones'—a song title in itself—and 'emptied the trash'—a reference to 'Yakety Yak'." It would be almost forty years before Dylan would perform the track, presenting it to an initially confused but joyous crowd during one of his shows in Brixton, London, in 2005. In a 2014 interview promoting the release of The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, Dylan cited the Summer of Love as an impetus for the song. "Yazoo Street Scandal" Helm – mandolin, vocal; Robertson – guitar; Hudson – organ; Danko – bass; Manuel – drums. Recorded in Woodstock, late 1967. This is one of the earliest examples of the Band's "grittily distinctive" sound coming together, according to Hoskyns. employing what Hoskyns describes as his "best redneck-wildcat yelp". "The song proposes a romp in that posh Mexican resort, but the heavy spirit is down in Juarez again", writes Shelton, who hears the anguish of Blonde on Blonde return to haunt the "basement proceedings". Heylin comments on its uninhibited sexual innuendo, "featuring the usual debauched narrator, rambunctious harmonies, and euphemistic ribaldry" of what he regards as the best basement songs. "Katie's Been Gone" Manuel – piano, vocal; Robertson – guitar; Hudson – organ; Danko – bass, backing vocal. Recording date disputed. Overdubbed 1975: Hudson – additional keyboards; (possibly) Helm – drums. Probably one of the first numbers written by Manuel and Robertson in mid-1967, one of "the songs that all but announced the birth of the Band". A different mix of the same recording was released as a bonus track on the 2000 Music from Big Pink reissue. Griffin believes this was recorded in Woodstock, with drums overdubbed in 1975. Hoskyns asserts it was "almost certainly" recorded at CBS's Studio E in New York in September 1967, with a drummer present, possibly Gary Chester. ==Side two==

"Lo and Behold" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal. This is, for Heylin, another "song that gives precedence to word play over sense". Griffin notes that it is held together by "one of the key phrases of the Old Testament prophets in the King James Bible: Lo and behold!" "The whole song reads like a tall tale told by a self-aggrandizing barfly", writes Gill. "The rousing chorus harmonies—which prefigure the famous chorus harmonies which would become one of the hallmarks of the Band's music—join in like drinking pals saluting him with foaming beakers, urging the narrator on to ever more ridiculous flights of fancy, rising at the end to leave him no place to go but further into fantasy, the true source of American identity." "Lo and Behold" was adopted as the title of an album of unreleased Dylan songs—including a half-dozen basement tracks—recorded by the British group Coulson, Dean, McGuinness, Flint in 1972. "Bessie Smith" Danko – vocal, bass; Robertson – vocal, guitar; Manuel – piano; Hudson – organ; Helm – drums, backing vocal. Recording date disputed. Rob Bowman stated in 2005 that this track was "probably" recorded at an "unknown studio" in late 1968. But in the notes for the 2000 reissue of the Band's fourth album, Cahoots, it is written that "Robbie [Robertson] is certain that 'Bessie Smith' was recorded sometime between their 1969 second album and Stage Fright", the group's third album, issued the following year. Based on the testimony of engineer Rob Fraboni, Griffin asserts that "Bessie Smith" was recorded by the Band in 1975 in their Shangri-La studio in Los Angeles, as The Basement Tapes was being prepared for official release. He calls it "the most far-fetched selection included on the official Basement Tapes release, even by Robertson's broad standards." Critical reaction to the song is divided: Thomas Ward of Allmusic described it as "arguably one of the slightest and most routine songs of all the 'basement tapes, and noted that it lacked many of the key qualities of Dylan and the Band's other work on the album. Rock critic Greil Marcus, on the other hand, describes the song as a "lovely idea", "the plaint of one of Bessie's lovers". Hoskyns, singling out Hudson's keyboard playing, writes that the song is "transformed by Garth into something as magically evocative as an old silent movie." "Apple Suckling Tree" Dylan – vocal, piano; Hudson – organ; Manuel – tambourine, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal; Robertson – drums. Critic Greil Marcus identifies the tune as that of the ancient children's ditty "Froggy Went A-Courtin'" and quotes Danko's description of the recording: "It all felt natural, we didn't rehearse. One or two takes from conception, on paper, to the finish. We all knew it would never happen twice." Describing it as a good-natured nonsense song that really swings, Griffin suggests it was one of the last basement compositions to be recorded before Helm arrived in Woodstock and Dylan departed for Nashville. "Please, Mrs. Henry" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal. Heylin describes this as a hilariously bawdy song in which the singer yearns for relief both sexual ("Look Mrs Henry/There's only so much I can do/Why don't you look my way an' pump me a few?") and scatological ("Now I'm startin' to drain/My stool's gonna squeak/If I walk too much farther/My crane's gonna leak"). Marcus describes it as "a detailed explanation, addressed to either a landlady or a madam of just what it means to be too drunk to move, if not complain." "Tears of Rage" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Robertson – electric guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal. "Tears of Rage" is one of the most widely acclaimed songs from The Basement Tapes. Gill likens it to King Lear's soliloquy on the blasted heath in Shakespeare's tragedy: "Wracked with bitterness and regret, its narrator reflects upon promises broken and truths ignored, on how greed has poisoned the well of best intentions, and how even daughters can deny their father's wishes." He suggests that Dylan is linking the anguish of Lear's soliloquy to the divisions in American society apparent in 1967, as the Vietnam War escalated: "In its narrowest and most contemporaneous interpretation, the song could be the first to register the pain of betrayal felt by many of America's Vietnam war veterans. … In a wider interpretation [it] harks back to what anti-war protesters and critics of American materialism in general felt was a more fundamental betrayal of the American Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights." A strong Biblical theme runs through this song, according to Griffin, who notes that "life is brief" is a recurrent message in the Old Testament books Psalms and Isaiah. As a father, Dylan realizes now that "no broken heart hurts more than the broken heart of a distraught parent." Griffin calls the four minutes of this song "as representative of community, ageless truths and the unbreakable bonds of family as anything in the Band's canon—or anyone else's canon." Marcus suggests that the "famous beginning"—"We carried you/In our arms/On Independence Day"—evokes a naming ceremony not just for a child but also for a whole nation. He writes that "in Dylan's singing—an ache from deep in the chest, a voice thick with care in the first recording of the song—the song is from the start a sermon and an elegy, a Kaddish." ==Side three==

"Too Much of Nothing" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Robertson – electric guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal. Overdubbed 1975: Hudson – additional keyboards; Helm – (possibly) drums, backing vocal. One of the most haunting themes of The Basement Tapes is an apprehension of the void. By November 1967, this song was a Top 40 hit for Peter, Paul and Mary. In Dylan's original, the chorus addresses two ladies—"Say hello to Valerie/Say hello to Vivian/Send them all my salary/On the waters of oblivion"—but Peter, Paul and Mary changed the second name to "Marion," displeasing Dylan. According to the trio's Paul Stookey, Dylan consequently became disenchanted with the group: "We just became other hacks that were doing his tunes." Patrick Humphries notes that, whether by accident or design, the two women originally named share the names of the two wives of the major 20th-century poet T. S. Eliot. "Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal. The meaning of this song's lyric is unfathomable. In Gill's description, the lines appear to be knocked together from offhand phrases that display "an instinct for the enigmatic which rescues the song from being forgettable". Marcus calls it "the ultimate basement performance: an irreducible little throwaway that could have come from nowhere else." The low harmony part on the chorus is supplied by Manuel. "Ain't No More Cane" Helm – bass, vocal; Robertson – guitar, vocal; Hudson – accordion; Danko – mandolin, vocal; Manuel – drums, vocal. Recording date disputed. This is a traditional Southern prison work song that Helm learned from his father while growing up in Arkansas. Ward calls the song "one of the joys of the whole collection". "Crash on the Levee (Down in the Flood)" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano; Danko – bass. In 1927, after the Mississippi floods had left half a million people homeless, Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe recorded "When the Levee Breaks"; they sang, "Oh crying won't help you, praying won't do no good/When the levee breaks, mama you got to move". A 1975 reviewer wrote that "Dylan's song repeated these images, but ... added the Biblical notion that the flood was retribution for some past sin: 'Now it's sugar for sugar and salt for salt/If you go down in the flood it's gonna be your fault'." These lines are adapted from "James Alley Blues" by Richard "Rabbit" Brown—a song Dylan would have heard on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. Fraboni has identified the version on the album as an early 1968 Music from Big Pink sessions outtake, ==Side four==

"You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal; Robertson – drums. Overdubbed 1975: Robertson – electric guitar. A first take of this song, unreleased until 2014's The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, features a stream of nonsensical lyrics, held together by the chorus, "Now look here dear soup, you'd best feed the cats/The cats need feeding and you're the one to do it/Get your hat, feed the cats/You ain't goin' nowhere". For Heylin, this first version demonstrates Dylan's talent for delivering "strings of pearls wrapped in riddles. ... Dylan had a tune, the last line of each verse (i.e., the title), and the chorus." The Basement Tapes version, the second take, fleshes out the verses into something closer to a narrative. Gill argues that the first verse possesses a "stark rural cohesion" via its "brisk meteorological details"—frozen railings, rain and clouds—but the succeeding verses become more and more fantastic, ending with a non-sequitur about Genghis Khan supplying his kings with sleep. The Byrds' version, released as a single on April 2, 1968, reached number 74 on the Billboard Hot 100. They transformed it into a classic of the then burgeoning genre of country rock, whereas on the basement version the country music flavor is more of an undercurrent, suggested by "the lilting chorus melody". "Don't Ya Tell Henry" Helm – mandolin, vocal; Robertson – guitar; Hudson – piano; Danko – bass, backing vocal; Manuel – drums. Recording date disputed. This song was written by Dylan, and there is a 1967 recording with the Band on which he sings lead. The version sung by Dylan appears on The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete. According to Bowman, the Band-only version released on The Basement Tapes was recorded between late 1967 and early 1968 in an "unknown studio". "Nothing Was Delivered" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Robertson – electric guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal. For Marcus, Dylan's "cool cowboy vocal" helped turn it into the "best rewrite of Fats Domino's 'Blueberry Hill' anybody's ever heard." And Roger McGuinn heard a story behind this song: "'Nothing Was Delivered' sounded like a drug deal gone bad. It had a slightly dark or ominous tone." "Open the Door, Homer" Dylan – vocal, guitar; Robertson – electric guitar; Hudson – organ; Manuel – piano, backing vocal; Danko – bass, backing vocal. The refrain of this song is lifted from a 1947 number one hit by Count Basie, "Open the Door, Richard"—which is what Dylan actually sings in his chorus. That song was based on a 1919 vaudeville skit by Harlem comic John Mason, so, as Griffin puts it, "this is a nonsense song based on a nonsense song". According to Heylin, Homer was "apparently" a nickname for the late novelist and musician Richard Fariña, a friend of Dylan's. Fariña died in a motorcycle crash on April 30, 1966, on his way home from a launch party for his debut novel, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, so the song may be an homage to a departed friend. Danko thought Dylan changed the title from Richard to Homer because Richard was already there—in the shape of Richard Manuel. "The song lopes along jauntily", writes Gill, "tendering obscure bits of baffling advice, some common sense, others with the cryptic power of folk remedies: value your memories properly, they won't come again; flush out your house if you don't want to be housing flushes; swim a certain way if you want to live off the fat of the land; and forgive the sick before you try to heal them. The sensible ones lend a sort of bogus credence to the less sensible". In Shelton's description, "Despite its light source, agony tempers the joy, contrasting not only Dylan's conflicts but also his ability to grow despite holding opposing ideas and impulses in his mind." This song was written by Dylan, and he had performed it as early as December 4, 1965, at a concert in Berkeley, California—soon after the Hawks had started to back him on his rock and roll tour. Dylan and the Band ran through this number in Woodstock in 1967, although the Basement Tapes version is an outtake from the 1968 Music from Big Pink sessions. ==Notes==