Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, the catalogue division of Sony Music Entertainment, will release Bob Dylan’s ”Bootleg Series Volume 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963” on 31st October 2025. “Through The Open Window” tells the story of Dylan’s emergence and growth as a songwriter and performer, from his childhood home in Minnesota to the Greenwich Village scene of the early 1960s. The collection includes rare Columbia Records outtakes, recordings made at club dates, in tiny informal gatherings, in friends’ apartments, and at jam sessions in long-gone musicians’ hangouts.
Many of the recordings are exceedingly rare; others have never been presented in any form. The set is a unique account of Dylan’s early years, when he honed his talent, and transformed traditional folk songs and lyric sketches into some of his most enduring songs, including ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ and ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.
It concludes with a previously unreleased recording, in its entirety, of Dylan’s landmark concert at Carnegie Hall on 26th October 1963. A culmination of Dylan’s exceptional early rise, that concert also marked the end of the beginning of Dylan’s long career.
“Of that time and those places, this collection is just a fragment,” writes author and historian Sean Wilentz in his 125-page liner notes essay. “Even so, as an aural record of an artist becoming himself—or in Dylan’s case, his first of many artistic selves—the collection aims to collapse time and space, not as a nostalgic reverie but as a living connection between the past and the present, the old and the new, which are never as distinct as we might think.”
The 8CD Deluxe set includes 139 tracks – 48 never-before released performances, as well as 38 super-rare cuts plus a hardcover book with extensive liner notes by Sean Wilentz and over 100 rare photographs. The 2CD and 4LP highlight editions include 42 tracks. Preorders can be accessed here.
A preview of a song from the album, ‘Rocks and Gravel’ is available now.
