In 1966, Bob got into a motorcycle accident. Reports vary wildly about exactly how bad the injuries were, but either way this was a wake-up call for Dylan. Either that, or it was an excuse to escape the rat race. Whichever it was, Bob cancelled all plans to keep touring (and getting booed at), pumping out albums and singles, and generally burning himself out. He had secretly gotten married and had a kid at this time, and wanted to spend some time with them at home.

But Bob didn’t want to spend all of his time at home. This wasn’t John Lennon retiring to become a househusband and raise his son, Sean. Dylan needed to get out of the house occasionally. Luckily, his band (soon to be The Band) were still on retainer, so they rented a big pink house near Dylan’s in upstate New York, and every day, Bob would wander over and they would all jam and record the proceedings. Some were for submission as potential songs to be recorded by other artists. And a lot of them were just for fun, with no thought given to whether anyone would ever hear them. These eventually leaked out into the booming bootleg market, until being finally officially released in 1975 as The Basement Tapes.

While those tapes may not have been meant for public consumption back in the sixties, Bob wasn’t done with recording and releasing albums. He was just done being public figure, much less a rock-star. His first release after the motorcycle crash was John Wesley Harding, a sparse acoustic album released at the end of 1967, the year of Sgt. Pepper and the “summer of love.” It was the exact opposite of what was popular at the time, but Jimi Hendrix turned All Along The Watchtower from this album into something more in line with the current zeitgeist, and the tune became something of a hit for Dylan despite not being released as a single.

His next single, would be a relative hit for him, Lay Lady Lay. Written for the movie, Midnight Cowboy, but not finished in time, this tune featured Bob in his new country-mode. Bob went full-on C&W, the most un-hip, square, redneck thing he could do. Maybe he was deliberately trying to torpedo his career, but the song proved to be so good and catchy, that it became quite popular despite of itself. If Dylan was going to try and alienate his fanbase in an attempt to get some personal privacy, he was going to need to get much more off-putting. And so began the sessions for Self Portrait.

And if you want to hear all about that particular record, go HERE.