Written by Bob Dylan and Band bassist Rick Danko, this was one of Dylan's famous "Basement Tapes" songs, recorded in April 1967 with the members of The Band in Big Pink (a house in upstate New York) after Dylan's near-fatal motorcycle accident in 1966. Fourteen different Basement Tapes became available as Bootleg recordings, and "This Wheel's On Fire" appeared on tapes labeled "Great White Wonder" and "Little White Wonder."
Band drummer Levon Helm's autobiography is called This Wheel's On Fire. In the book, he explains that the basement tapes sessions had a very loose feel - they didn't mind some bad notes and had to play relatively quiet, since they were really in a basement and too much sound echoing off the wall could be annoying. Helm adds that for this song, he was teaching himself to play the piano, and some of the music he wrote just seemed to fit with Dylan's lyrics.
Dylan's original version is much slower than The Band version on Music From Big Pink. When he recorded The Basement Tapes with The Band, many of the songs were covers of old Country or Blues tunes, and sometimes they jammed on different song ideas. "This Wheel's On Fire" was one of the few fully formed songs they came up with. Members of The Band credited Dylan with teaching them a great deal about songwriting during his time at Big Pink.
See your Spotify stats (with number of plays and minutes listened) and discover new music.
Music data, artist images, album covers, and song previews are provided by Spotify. Spotify is a trademark of Spotify AB.