The latest instalment of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series looks set to be most exciting set yet. Ultimate Classic Rock reports that The Cutting Edge 1965-66: The Bootleg Series Vol 12 will include demos, unheard versions and outtakes from Dylan’s “thin, wild mercury sound” period, which saw him release the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.
Though there has been no official statement from Dylan’s camp or from Sony Legacy, the label that releases The Bootleg Series albums, the report seems credible, based on information the Guardian has seen. Ultimate Classic Rock reports that the set will come in three different versions – a two-CD set, a six-disc edition, and an 18-disc package, which will include comprehensive coverage of the sessions for Like a Rolling Stone.
If the18-CD set manages to come anywhere near 80 minutes of music per disc, it will include around 21 hours of recordings, which would allow scope to include an enormous amount of the material Dylan recorded in during an incredibly fertile period.
The report says the set will include one of the great unreleased sessions of Dylan’s career – the original recordings for Blonde on Blonde, made with the Band, before Dylan scrapped that version of the album and decamped to Nashville to record it with session musicians from the city.
The sets will reportedly be released on 6 November.