The Story Behind the Song The Band’s Rick Danko Wrote With Bob Dylan in a Basement

Between the release of his seventh album, Blonde on Blonde in 1966, a motorcycle accident shortly thereafter, and his next release John Wesley Harding, Bob Dylan retreated to his home in Woodstock, New York, and started playing with the Band. Sessions eventually moved to the basement of Big Pink, the home shared by the Band’s Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel. It’s where the Band would write their 1968 debut Music from Big Pink and eventually record The Basement Tapes with Dylan.

“That’s really the way to do a recording—in a peaceful, relaxed setting—in somebody’s basement, with the windows open and a dog lying on the floor,” said Dylan of the sessions, which were laid back and veered into covers by Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, John Lee Hooker, and others, at one point.

“With the covers, Bob was educating us a little,” recalled the Band’s Robbie Robertson. “The whole folkie thing was still very questionable to us. It wasn’t the train we came in on. He’d come up with something like ‘Royal Canal,’ and you’d say, ‘This is so beautiful! The expression!’ He remembered too much, remembered too many songs too well.”

Robertson added, “He’d come over to Big Pink, or wherever we were, and pull out some old song—and he’d prepped for this. He’d practiced this, and then come out here, to show us.”

[RELATED: The Band’s Rick Danko Plays His Final Show, Four Days Before His Death in 1999]

“This Wheel’s on Fire”

During one of their sessions, Dylan and the Band recorded a song that they would later record for Music from Big Pink, “This Wheel’s on Fire.” Written by Dylan and Danko, “This Wheel’s on Fire” reads as a conversation with someone, possibly about living fast, burning out, and a premonition of death.

If your memory serves you well
We were goin’ to meet again and wait
So I’m goin’ to unpack all my things
And sit before it gets too late
No man alive will come to you
With another tale to tell
And you know that we shall meet again
If your memory serves you well

Wheel’s on fire
Rolling down the road
Best notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode

If your memory serves you well
I was goin’ to confiscate your lace
And wrap it up in a sailor’s knot
And hide it in your case
If I knew for sure that it was yours
But it was, oh, so hard to tell
And you know that we shall meet again
If your memory serves you well

Though the majority of the tracks on The Basement Sessions in 1975 were written by Dylan, Robertson, and Manuel wrote two tracks together (“Katie’s Been Gone,” “Ruben Remus”)—and two individually—during the sessions, along with Danko, who co-wrote “Bessie Smith.” Dylan also penned “Tears of Rage” with Manuel.

‘Absolutely Fabulous’

In 1968, British singer and actress Julie Driscoll released her cover of “This Wheel’s on Fire,” which went to No. 5 in the UK. Driscoll revised the song by the ’90s and rerecorded it for the UK comedy Absolutely Fabulous with the show creator and star Jennifer Saunders’ husband actor and comedian Adrian Edmondson (The Young Ones).

By 2016, the song was revamped once again when Kylie Minogue recorded another version for Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.

Covered by everyone from the Hollies, Phil Lesh, and Elvis Costello, The Byrds also recorded a version of “This Wheel’s on Fire” for their 1969 album, Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde. Nearly two decades later Siouxsie and the Banshees released their cover on the 1987 album Through the Looking Glass.

Danko’s version of the song was released on his posthumous album Times Like These in 2000, along with the Band’s drummer Levon Helm and Neil Young‘s covers by the 2010s.

Photo: (L to r) Rick Danko, Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson performing live onstage (Gems/Redferns)