“An aural record of an artist becoming himself”: Bob Dylan's early years explored in forthcoming Bootleg Series release

Bob Dylan in 1963
(Image credit: Sandy Speiser_Sony Music Archives Date- Nov. 1963)

Bob Dylan’s formative years are the subject of the latest release in his extensive Bootleg Series of albums. Bootleg Series Volume 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963 chronicles Dylan’s early years as the young singer-songwriter was making a name for himself in the burgeoning folk scene springing out of New York’s Greenwich Village.

Available as an eight-CD box set, two CDs or 4LPs from 31st October, the compilation includes rare and unheard home recordings, studio outtakes and live renditions, with a complete recording of his show at Carnegie Hall in October, 1963, also included. The eight-disc version contains 139 tracks, 48 of which are performances that have never seen the light of day until now.

“Of that time and those places, this collection is just a fragment,” writes author and historian Sean Wilentz in the set’s liner notes. “Even so, as an aural record of an artist becoming himself - or in Dylan’s case, his first of many artistic selves - the collection aims to collapse time and space, not as a nostalgic reverie but as a living connection between the past and the present, the old and the new, which are never as distinct as we might think.”

Listen to a preview song from the set, Rocks And Gravel (Solid Road), below:

Niall Doherty

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleagues Ted Kessler and Chris Catchpole. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he's interviewed some of the world's biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more. Radiohead was only for eight minutes but he still counts it.

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