Sunday Music – All Along The Watchtower – The Bob Dylan Series (Part 11)

Posted on Sun 06/13/2010 by

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Today’s music video is ‘All Along The Watchtower’ from Jimi Hendrix.

This video was posted to You Tube by ScooterTheHockeyCat

Consider this for a short time. In 1972, Neil Young released his ‘Harvest’ album. I heard his song from that album ‘Old Man’, and fell in love with it. After buying the album, and hearing all the wonderful songs on it, that one song gave me the idea to actually go out and buy a guitar, and learn to play. It took me a while to learn to play guitar, but I wanted to end up being able to play that song, and also the title song from that album, that song also called ‘Harvest’, which to this day, is far and away still my favourite song. I took lessons at the start and practiced, sometimes three hours a day, which is real pain on the tips of the fingers of your left hand. I never considered taking it on as a career. I just wanted to play for my own personal pleasure. I got a better guitar, and then later, a better one again, and expanded my repertoire to maybe hundreds of songs, all from other artists, with Neil still my favourite. I played to small crowds three or four times. My guitar playing was passable to good, and my singing was average to say the least, but I could get by. However, had I wanted to take it up as a career, and actually record something, which I never even considered, I would have had to get approval to record any cover songs from the composing artist who originally recorded that song. Then, a portion of whatever I might have made from the sale of that album or song would have to be returned to the composer of the song, royalties.

The same applied with Bob Dylan, except in reverse. He was the one who people were coming to for approval to record covers of his songs. By now he had recorded eight albums, and had his own list of many songs. Other artists and bands from across the whole spectrum of music were recording their own versions of Bob’s songs. In fact, many artists and bands had actually started long careers by recording hits with Bob’s songs. Literally hundreds of artists now had versions of Bob’s songs out there now, and some songs were being done numerous times in different genres of music, and even in different languages. With that large range of songs, and different versions of those same songs, Bob must have heard them everywhere he turned. Only he was there at the beginning of each song. Only he knew why he wrote it, the reasons behind it, the way he performed it, and the feeling he put into it. That is something that another artist or band cannot hope to reproduce, even though their version might sound similar.

There were just so many of them, that I would think Bob even now has probably not heard all of them, even though he gave his approval for that artist or band to record the cover version. Some he must have liked, some left him ambivalent, some he may have not particularly liked, and there would have been some he probably detested outright.

He’s been fairly noncommittal when asked, and that is understandable, not wishing to detract from another artist’s career. His thoughts on those songs of his are private, and so they should be. Some he actually did say he liked, The Byrds version of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ among them, which Bob said he really did like, commenting that the version they did was something you actually could dance to.

This song, ‘All Along The Watchtower’ came from Bob’s eighth studio album, ‘John Wesley Harding’, released in December of 1967, the longest break between studio albums Bob had so far. This album was produced in the hiatus after his motorcycle accident, and also after the sessions that later morphed into ‘The Basement Tapes’. Some of the songs recorded during those sessions appeared on this album. With this album, Bob returned to his acoustic roots somewhat, and the album was well received, and critically acclaimed, and it also sold well, reaching Number 2 on the album charts in a long stay there, not an easy thing as Bob didn’t allow the record label to publicise it all that much. It was even considered to be the early part of what is now understood as Bob’s semi religious phase, with strong lyrics, and to this day, this album remains as one of Bob’s most enduring, and remembered albums. He released this song as a single, but it didn’t chart for him.

Jimi Hendrix recorded his version not long after the album’s release. Hendrix was in the middle of a brief stellar career. He pioneered playing the guitar for many reasons, and is arguably one of the greatest guitarists to have played that instrument. The sound he produced was not well received at the beginning of his career, mainly because he liked it loud, and different. That ‘different’ included the effective use of feedback, long considered a negative by bands and guitarists. He liked to experiment with the sound, using foot pedals a lot to change the effect of the guitar sound, and amplification techniques not many others would even consider. A big part of that sound was actually the guitar, obviously, but not in the way you may think. Jimi played guitar left handed, and while there are left handed guitars out there, he used right handed guitars and played them upside down, but still with the same stringing arrangements, with the thicker base string at the top. This meant that the thick base string was connected to the far ‘peg’ and so on down the six strings. Using mostly Fender Stratocasters, this meant the stringing arrangement was the opposite to the Fender design. This gave that base thick top string a more mellow sound, and the lower thin string a ‘brighter’ sound, even though the tuning setup was still the same. The notes were still the same, just sounding a little different, if you can see that point.

Hendrix worked on this song, ‘All Along The Watchtower’, but he never really seemed happy with it in his own mind. He overdubbed newer guitar versions and the song evolved and then evolved even further, as he continually came back to the song for further work. It took him eight months and still not really happy with it, the song was released as part of his album ‘Electric Ladyland’. Oddly, this song became his biggest hit in the U.S. and why I say oddly is that, as revered as Jimi Hendrix is now, during his career, he only had one song in the Billboard Top 40 in the U.S. this one, and it only got to Number 20 on that chart. His songs did better in the UK where he had 5 Top Ten Hits, including one Number One song, ‘Voodoo Child’. This Dylan song, ‘All Along The Watchtower’ made it as high as Number 5 on UK charts.

Two years later Hendrix was dead, after a brief but stellar career.

When Bob heard this Hendrix version, he enthused over it, saying that Jimi had such a talent. He saw things in the song that he, Bob, had not thought were there. Bob said that of all his songs, this Hendrix version actually improved upon his original, a rare thing for a composer to say of a cover version. Bob then changed the way he performed the song to more reflect Hendrix’ version of it, and after Jimi died, whenever Bob performed the song, he played it in that Hendrix style, and he has said that whenever he does perform the song, it’s more as a tribute to Jimi.

This song has been covered by many other artists, but whenever this song is mentioned, only this one Hendrix version comes to mind.

A rare talent composed this song, and then an even rarer talent came along and actually improved upon that original. Other Dylan covers have sold better, performed better on the charts, made careers of those artists and bands, but this one song is the best Dylan cover of them all.

There are numerous versions of this Dylan cover being performed by Jimi, but none are anywhere near as good as the studio version, and that is why I selected the above video ahead of those live versions, and anyway, the true experience of this song is not to watch Jimi performing it, but to hear his wonderful guitar playing.

There’s a lot to like about Jimi Hendrix’s body of work, and in the same breath, most of that material is not to the liking of a lot of people. One of his earlier songs is perhaps one of the most beautiful of his songs. Jimi wrote this next song, ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ in 1967, a year and a half before his Dylan cover came out.

This live version was recorded in Stockholm, Sweden in 1967.

Note the subtle change in wording of the verses.

“The wind ‘whispers’ Mary”.

“The wind ‘cries’ Mary”.

“The wind ‘screams’ Mary”.

“Somewhere a Queen is weeping. Somewhere a King has no wife”.

This video was posted to You Tube by criak22

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Posted in: America (USA), Music, Videos