The Basement Tapes is a studio album by Bob Dylan and The Band, released in 1975 by Columbia Records.

All of the sixteen Dylan compositions are thought to have been recorded eight years earlier in the basement of Big Pink, Heylin, Clinton. Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions, 1960–1994 (New York: St. Martin's Press 1995), p. 55–56. Griffin, Sid. Million Dollar Bash: Bob Dylan, the Band, and the Basement Tapes (London: Jawbone 2007) p. 293-303. a house shared by three of the members of the Band, while the eight Band songs were recorded at various times and locations between 1967 and 1975; overdubs were also added in 1975 to some of the Dylan songs. As Bob Dylan recovered from a motorcycle accident during 1967, he called on the Band to help him experiment with themes of traditional folk music and Americana; these explorations, and their possible links with the earlier Anthology of American Folk Music, are explored in rock writer Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic (later reissued as The Old, Weird America).

The sessions laid the foundation both for the approach of Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding, and for the Band finding their own voice on 1968's Music From Big Pink. The Dylan LP, a critically-acclaimed departure from the surrealist rock and roll he had recently pioneered on his milestone trio of albums from 1965 and 1966, was as much of a shock to his fans as were those records to his earlier folk audience. Both it and Music From Big Pink would greatly influence the turn, by many contemporary popular musicians, away from the psychedelic music that reached its height in 1967, toward an embrace of country-influenced folk styles.

Material from the sessions had been heavily bootlegged since 1968, with the most famous being 1969's Great White Wonder.

The Basement Tapes peaked at #7 in 1975 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart and reached #8 in the UK.