
After the tour, with Helm performing various trades in Arkansas,[14] Dylan retired to his Woodstock home to edit Eat the Document, a documentary with material from his European tour.Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson frequently travelled to Woodstock to work with Dylan and ended up acquiring a pink house called Affectionally called "Big Pink," to which they moved without Robbie Robertson, who decided to settle on Glasko Turnpike with his wife Dominique Bourgeois.[ The ]house, located in Parnassus Lane, had been built by Ottmar Gramms, who bought the estate in 1952.
Garth Hudson adapted the basement of "Big Pink" to create a recording studio by connecting two microphones to a two-track recorder and placing several speakers around.[ 6] Taking advantage of Dylan's professional retirement after suffering an accident with his motorcycle Triumph 500 in 1966, The Band members invited him to rehearse in his basement, composing a large number of songs that were recorded using Hudson's recorder.[ 17] Between March and December 1967, Dylan and The Band, still without Levon, met informally in that basement to play six days a week for two or three hours.[ 17] The recorded songs, despite not having a professional audio quality, were used as demos by Albert Grossman, the future manager of The Band, to get them a contract, and served as the basis for the group's future debut album, Music from Big Pink.[ 17]