‘It Overwhelmed Me’: Bob Dylan on ‘All Along the Watchtower’ by Jimi Hendrix
‘200 Greatest 60s Rock Songs Vol. 2’ Book Excerpt
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Bob Dylan recorded “All Along the Watchtower” in Nashville for his 1967 LP John Wesley Harding. The song was released as a single but failed to chart. Dylan, who played acoustic guitar and harmonica, was accompanied by Charlie McCoy on bass and Kenneth Buttrey on drums.
Jimi Hendrix first heard Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” months before it was released. “The songs Dylan usually gave me are so close to me that I feel like I wrote them myself,” Hendrix said in Ultimate Classic Rock. “With ‘Along the Watchtower’ I had that feeling.” Hendrix, Noel Redding, and Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience began recording in January 1968 at London’s Olympic Studios with Traffic’s Dave Mason and Brian Jones of the Stones.
Redding, unhappy with the session, left and Mason took over on bass. Hendrix was dissatisfied with the mix of the first version and re-recorded and overdubbed guitar parts at the Record Plant in New York. “All Along the Watchtower” was released on 1968’s Electric Ladyland and was a №20 hit.
Hendrix’s version was a departure from Dylan’s acoustic original. In a 1967 interview, Hendrix said of Dylan, “I could never write the kind of words he does. But he’s helped me out in trying to write about two or three words ’cause I got a thousand songs that will never be finished. I just lie around and write about two or three words, but now I have a little more confidence in trying to finish one.”
“He loved Bob Dylan,” Hendrix producer Eddie Kramer told Sound on Sound. “He was fascinated by the color of the lyrics and the tone of the lyrics, and of course the chord sequences were wonderful. It was a very special song.”
“It overwhelmed me, really,” Dylan said of the Hendrix cover in Florida’s Sun-Sentinel. “He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day.”
In the booklet accompanying his 1985 album Biograph, Dylan added, “I liked Jimi Hendrix’s record of this and ever since he died I’ve been doing it that way . . . Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.”
Frank Mastropolo is the author of 200 Greatest 60 Rock Songs Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 and 200 Greatest 70s Rock Songs.
