John Wesley Harding is the eighth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on December 27, 1967, by Columbia Records.
Dylan spent a substantial amount of time recording the informal basement sessions with the Band in West Saugerties, New York.
Robbie Robertson, the guitarist and principal songwriter of the Band, recalled that "it was just on a kind of whim that Bob went down to Nashville.
During most of the recording, the rhythm section of drummer Kenneth A. Buttrey and bassist Charlie McCoy were the only ones supporting Dylan, who handled all harmonica, guitar, piano, and vocal parts.
The first session, held on October 17 at Columbia's Studio A, lasted only three hours, with Dylan recording master takes of "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine", "Drifter's Escape", and "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest".
Dylan returned to the studio on November 6, recording master takes for "All Along the Watchtower", "John Wesley Harding", "As I Went Out One Morning", "I Pity the Poor Immigrant", and "I Am a Lonesome Hobo".
Dylan had arrived in Nashville with a set of songs similar to the feverish yet pithy compositions that came out of The Basement Tapes.
Johnston recalls that "he was staying in the Ramada Inn down there, and he played me his songs and he suggested we just use bass and guitar and drums on the record.
Cut between 9pm and 12 midnight, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" and "Down Along the Cove" would be the only two songs featuring Drake's light pedal steel guitar.
John Wesley Harding was Dylan's last LP to be issued simultaneously in both monophonic (CL 2804) and stereophonic (CS 9604) formats.
Upon the album's release, rumors circulated that the faces of the Beatles were hidden on the front cover in the knots of the tree.
When contacted by Rolling Stone magazine in 1968, album cover photographer John Berg "acknowledged their presence but was reluctant to talk about it.
[16] Reproduced in the liner notes to the eleventh volume of the Dylan Bootleg Series is an article by Al Aronowitz for The New York Times, date stamped December 23, 1967, in which he states that John Wesley Harding would be released "within the next two weeks".
[21] The album was re-released as one of the 15 Dylan titles remastered for Hybrid SACD on September 16, 2003, and was reissued again as part of The Original Mono Recordings on October 10, 2010.
Pepper, Their Satanic Majesties Request, After Bathing at Baxter's, somebody must have had a lot of confidence in what he was doing… Dylan seems to feel no need to respond to the predominate [sic] trends in pop music at all.
As late as 2000, Clinton Heylin wrote, "John Wesley Harding remains one of Dylan's most enduring albums.
Not tempted to incorporate even later basement visions like 'Going to Acapulco' and 'Clothesline Saga,' Dylan managed in less than six weeks to construct his most perfectly executed official collection.
[citation needed] While legend has it that Dylan recorded John Wesley Harding after finishing The Basement Tapes sessions with members of the Band, several biographers and discographers have argued that the final reel of basement recordings actually postdates the first John Wesley Harding session.
They played only three songs ("Grand Coulee Dam", "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt", and "I Ain't Got No Home"), and it would be another eighteen months before Dylan would again perform in concert.
His songs continued to be a major presence, appearing on landmark albums by Jimi Hendrix, the Byrds, and the Band, but Dylan himself would not release or perform any additional music.