Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Lay Lady Lay
2. Baby Let Me Follow You Down
3. If Not For You
4. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
5. I'll Keep It With Mine
6. Times They Are A-Changin', The
7. Blowin' In The Wind
8. Masters Of War
9. Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll
10. Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
11. Percy's Song - (previously unreleased 1963)
12. Mixed Up Confusion
13. Tombstone Blues
14. Groom's Still Waiting At Altar
15. Most Likely You Go Your Way - (live 1974)
16. Like A Rolling Stone
17. Lay Down Your Weary Tune
18. Subterranean Homesick Blues
19. I Don't Believe You - (live 1966)

Disc 2:

1. Visions Of Johanna - (live 1966 version)
2. Every Grain Of Sand
3. Mighty Quinn, The (Quinn The Eskimo)
4. Mr. Tambourine Man
5. Dear Landlord
6. It Ain't Me Babe
7. You Angel You
8. Million Dollar Bash
9. To Ramona
10. You're A Big Girl Now
11. Abandoned Love - (previously unreleased)
12. Tangled Up In Blue
13. It's All Over Now Baby Blue - (live in 1966)
14. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?
15. Positively 4th Street
16. Isis - (live 1975)
17. Jet Pilot - (previously unreleased)

Disc 3:

1. Caribbean Wind
2. Up To Me - (previously unreleased 1974 song)
3. Baby I`m In The Mood For You
4. I Wanna Be Your Lover
5. I Want You
6. Heart Of Mine
7. On A Night Like This
8. Just Like A Woman
9. Romance In Durango
10. Senor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
11. Gotta Serve Somebody
12. I Believe In You
13. Time Passes Slowly
14. I Shall Be Released
15. Knockin` On Heaven's Door
16. All Along The Watchtower
17. Solid Rock
18. Forever Young - (previously unreleased demo)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9728 in Music
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2002-08-06
• Number of discs: 3
• Formats: Box set, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .89 pounds

Customer Reviews

A Bob Dylan box set? Spanning just three discs?
How to make a Bob Dylan box set...well, you could put out one with about a dozen CDs and still be blamed that somebody's favorite song was missing.
But the compilers at Columbia have doen a good job solving this rather impossible task. 1985's "Biograph" wasn't the first ever career-spanning rock box set (the late, great Buddy Holly was honored with that in 1979), but it was the most important by far, establishing the format and sparking new interest in Bob Dylan whose career was in decline at the time.

Unlike many box sets, this one actually offers something to both the casual and the dedicated fan. Most of Dylan's best-known songs are here, as well as a generous helping of unreleased songs, B-sides, alternates and demos. And almost everything gels, actually, making "Biograph" an excellent, if not definitive, summary of Bob Dylan's career from 1961-1985.
Many great songs are missing, of course, but with an artist as prolific as Bob Dylan that can't be helped. And the songs that are here are excellent (with the exception of a handful that are merely good).

This is an immensely varied compilation, very well annotated and boasting magnificent state-of-the-art fidelity. The track list includes early acoustic numbers, electric rock songs, blues-rock, folk-rock, country-rock, and lovely ballads. And the rarities and previously unreleased songs aren't rejects or filler, most of them are in fact excellent, from the acoustic "Up To Me" and the surreal "Quinn The Eskimo" to the quirky, upbeat pop of "On A Night Like This" and "Heart Of Mine", and the gorgeous ballads "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" and "I'll Keep It With Mine".
Casual Dylan fans may well find that there are too many unfamiliar songs here, and they should probably start somewhere else...Dylan's original "Greatest Hits" album and the two-disc "More Greatest Hits" (AKA "Greatest Hits vol. 2") still provide the best introduction to Bob Dylan in his prime, much better than the more recent "Essential Bob Dylan". Or start by picking up Dylan's three best band-backed records, "Bringing It All Back Home", "Highway 61 Revisited", and "Blood On The Tracks".

There is no such thing as a definitive Bob Dylan-compilation, and three CDs wouldn't contain it if there was. And besides, the wonderful 70s albums "Blood On The Tracks" and "Desire" in particular are being short-changed, which is a shame.
But "Biograph" is still 3½ hours of some of Dylan's greatest songs, and the rarities and unreleased tracks makes it a must-have purchase even for the dedicated fan who already has all the hits.
4 3/4 stars.

The best "best of Dylan" available
Putting together a "best of" collection for a musical artist whose work should be heard in the context of the albums on which it originally appeared is a difficult task, but the folks responsible for Bob Dylan's "Biograph" did themselves proud.

The sequencing may not make much sense in the CD era, but this was released in 1985 when vinyl records were still the dominant format. By 33 1/3 standards, the sequencing makes perfect sense with each side arranged (loosely) around a theme. The so-called protest songs were relegated to one side, love songs were given another, and difficult to catagorize tracks like "Every Grain of Sand" and "Visions of Johanna" were collected on another side.

With that in mind, "Biograph" is hard to beat. As an introduction to THE singer-songwriter of the rock era, "Biograph" makes previous "hits" packages obsolete by providing an exciting and varied overview of Dylan's brilliance as both a composer and performer. Whether protesting society's injustices in "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A Changin'," chronicalling the course of a love affair in "You're a Big Girl Now," professing a belief in the divine as in "Solid Rock" and "Every Grain of Sand," or just being inscrutably brilliant as in a previously unreleased live rendition of "Visions of Johanna," Dylan's songwriting genius is simply unrivaled in any genre of music.

For those who already own most of the official releases from Dylan's Columbia catalogue, the real treat here are the previously unreleased recordings, such as the breathtaking "Up to Me" (an outtake from 1974's "Blood on the Tracks") and the superb "Abandoned Love" (leftover from 1976's "Desire"), all of which prove that the scraps from the man's table are often every bit as tasty as the main meal.

Worth the Price for the Extra Songs Alone
Over the years a lot of Bob Dylan's studio work got left behind for one reason or another. Sometimes because you can only fit so much on a record and sometimes because Dylan didn't think the song was right for the particular record he was recording at the time. So, to celebrate his 24th year with Columbia, they released "Biograph" which aimed to plug a few holes in his career, or rather to release some of the good stuff that got left by the wayside.

It's nice that they did this, but it would have been better if all of the fifty-three tracks would have been new or different recordings. Still there were nine unreleased songs and four very hard to get singles included on the set and that was good. The rest of the set (five records when it originally came out) was a compilation of what they (Bob Dylan and/or Columbia) decided was representative of his career, not necessarily greatest hits. So this is really a good place for someone brand new to Dylan to start.

I might have preferred it if they put the stuff on in chronological order like they did with the Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 - 3, but that's just me. My good friend Sophie likes the album the way it is, with a different sounding Bob Dylan on song after song. Anyway, the extra songs alonE make this set a must own and as I said, if you're new to Bob Dylan, you won't be throwing money away here, because you will be playing these CDs over and over again, till you wear them out. Wait, I don't think you can wear out CDs, so you'll be playing this set for a long, long time and enjoying every minute of it.