Music from Big Pink

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Few debut albums have changed music as quietly, or as completely, as Music from Big Pink. Arriving in 1968 amid psychedelia and stadium volume, it offered the opposite: warm, weathered, communal songs that sounded like they'd always existed. A generation of musicians — Eric Clapton among them — heard it and changed course.

The house that named it

The album takes its name from “Big Pink,” the pink-sided house near West Saugerties, New York, where members of the group lived and made music with Bob Dylan in 1967. Much of the album's spirit was forged in its basement. The naive, dreamlike cover painting was made by Dylan himself.

The songs

Side for side it's remarkable: “The Weight”, the Dylan/Manuel collaboration “Tears of Rage,” the haunting “I Shall Be Released,” Garth Hudson's organ tour-de-force “Chest Fever,” and “This Wheel's on Fire.” Three lead singers, no star, just an ensemble in perfect sympathy.

The influence

Its impact was enormous and immediate — it's often credited with helping turn rock back towards roots, country and restraint, paving the way for the whole Americana tradition that followed. It's a foundational record, and the best place to begin.