Dylan went to work on "John Wesley Harding" in the fall of 1967. By then, 18 months had passed since the completion of "Blonde on Blonde". After recovering from the worst effects of his motorcycle accident, Dylan spent a substantial amount of time recording the informal basement sessions with The Band in West Saugerties, New York. During that time, he stockpiled a large number of recordings, including many new compositions. He eventually submitted nearly all of them for copyright, but declined to include any of them in his next studio release (Dylan would not release any of those recordings to the commercial market until 1975's "The Basement Tapes", by which time some of them had been bootlegged, usually sourced from an easy-to-find set of publisher's demos). Instead, Dylan used a different set of songs for "John Wesley Harding".