5 in the UK that summer, Manfred Mann's take on "The Mighty Quinn" peaked at No. It worked: A cover version of "Wheel's" by English pop singer Julie Driscoll reached No. In a lead feature titled "Dylan's Basement Tape Should Be Released", Wenner reported- in a manner predicting modern music journalists filing copy after a leak-avoiding listening party- "Bob Dylan… made a rough but very listenable tape with thirteen songs… There is enough material- most all of it very good- to make an entirely new Bob Dylan record, a record with a distinct style of its own." Turned out that Dylan and the Band had set up shop to make a demo tape of new songs for other artists to record, and then circulated it privately. Its publisher Jann Wenner had written a June cover story advocating not just for the official release of "This Wheel's On Fire", but 12 other songs that Dylan had recently recorded in a basement in upstate New York. The small readership of upstart San Francisco rock magazine Rolling Stone were more clued in. It's likely that many hearing the song were under the impression that it was an advance single from a forthcoming Dylan LP. For many Dylanites, "Wheel's" suggested a return to the looser, harder-rocking Blonde on Blonde after the more reserved folk record John Wesley Harding, which was issued the prior December. Dylan, of course, was the most highly regarded solo musician since Elvis, though he'd been out of the public spotlight for two years after a motorcycle accident. At the time, the Band were mostly known for their Dylan affiliation- if they were known at all. A different version of the song was included on side B of Music from Big Pink, the debut album from the Band, which was released that July. KNAC in Long Beach, KPPC and KMET in L.A., KCSB in Santa Barbara, and KRLA in Pasadena were playing it in heavy rotation. If you were driving around certain parts of southern California in the summer of 1968, you may have heard Bob Dylan's version of "This Wheel's on Fire" on the radio.
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