All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix Songfacts All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix Songfacts Songfacts This was written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan in 1967, but it was the Jimi Hendrix cover that made the song famous. Many other artists have covered it, including Eric Clapton, Neil Young, U2, Dave Matthews Band and The Grateful Dead. Dylan was so impressed with Jimi's version that Dylan for years played it the way that Jimi had recorded it. >> Suggestion credit: Jamie - Sydney, Australia This was Hendrix' only Top 40 hit in the US, where his influence far outpaced his popularity. He charted a few times in the UK, where he rose to fame before making a name for himself in America. This was recorded while Hendrix played with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hendrix on guitar, Noel Redding on bass, and Mitch Mitchell on drums. For this song, however, Redding was not on bass; Hendrix did it. Redding was also the guitar player for his band Fat Mattress, which Hendrix referred to as Thin Pillow.

Hendrix often felt that Redding did not put his heart into the bass and was concerned that Redding concentrated more on Fat Mattress than he did on the Experience. Things like these led to him being replaced by Billy Cox. >> Suggestion credit: Ethan - Ridgely, MD The original version of this song is very slow. Jimi Hendrix' version had a large impact on Dylan which made him make his own version "heavier." >> Suggestion credit: Ben - Manchester by the Sea, MA Hendrix: "All those people who don't like Bob Dylan's songs should read his lyrics. They are filled with the joys and sadness of life. I am as Dylan, none of us can sing normally. Sometimes, I play Dylan's songs and they are so much like me that it seems to me that I wrote them. I have the feeling that Watchtower is a song I could have come up with, but I'm sure I would never have finished it. Thinking about Dylan, I often consider that I'd never be able to write the words he manages to come up with, but I'd like him to help me, because I have loads of songs I can't finish.

I just lay a few words on the paper, and I just can't go forward. But now things are getting better, I'm a bit more self-confident." >> Suggestion credit: Bertrand - Paris, France Hendrix had been working on and off with the members of the band Traffic as he recorded Electric Ladyland. Traffic guitarist Dave Mason caught Hendrix at a party and the two discussed Bob Dylan's newest album, John Wesley Harding, containing "All Along The Watchtower." Hendrix, long fascinated with Dylan, decided to cover the song on the album. On the resulting track, Mason plays rhythm on a 12-string acoustic guitar. In our interview with Mason , he explained: "Hendrix just happened to be sitting in one of those semi-private clubs in London. He was there one night just sitting alone, and it was like, "F--k, I'm just going to go over and say hi and talk to him." Mason recorded the song himself in the Hendrix arrangement for his 1974 self-titled album. He also made the song a mainstay of his concerts.

Mason says it's a deceptively simple song: "It's just the same three chords, and they never change." This was used in an episode of The Simpsons when Homer's mother was telling him a story that took place in the '60s about why she had to leave him. >> Suggestion credit: Jonathan - Toronto, CA In a 2008 poll conducted by a panel of experts in the Total Guitar magazine, this was voted the best cover song of all time. The Beatles' rendition of "Twist and Shout," first recorded by the Top Notes, came second, followed by the Guns N' Roses version of the Wings song "Live and Let Die" in third place. ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER - JIMI HENDRIX (New Video) - YouTube ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER - JIMI HENDRIX (New Video) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Apr 22, 2012 ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER (NEW VIDEO) *Vocal Cover and Performance By: KayDesn *Song Cover Produced By: Dalibrium Entertainment Company *Video Directed and Edited By: JM Knudsen *All footage shot in Sacramento, California *Stone Reliefs: California Vietnam Military Memorial, California State Capital Video Rights Belong to: Dalibrium Entertainment Company ©2012 *THIS VIDEO IS DEDICATED TO THE SOLDIERS AND THE CIVILIANS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA* ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER CREDITS: Song Written By: Bob Dylan 1967 Song Covered By Jimi Hendrix 1968 HISTORY (WIKIPEDIA) The Jimi Hendrix Experience began to record their cover version of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" on January 21, 1968, at Olympic Studios in London.[19] According to engineer Andy Johns, Jimi Hendrix had been given a tape of Dylan's recording by publicist Michael Goldstein, who worked for Dylan's manager Albert Grossman.

"(Hendrix) came in with these Dylan tapes and we all heard them for the first time in the studio", recalled Johns.[20] According to Hendrix's regular engineer Eddie Kramer, the guitarist cut a large number of takes on the first day, shouting chord changes at Dave Mason who had appeared at the session and played guitar. Halfway through the session, bass player Noel Redding became dissatisfied with the proceedings and left. Mason then took over on bass. According to Kramer, the final bass part was played by Hendrix himself.[20] Kramer and Chas Chandler mixed the first version of "All Along The Watchtower" on January 26, but Hendrix was quickly dissatisfied with the result and went on re-recording and overdubbing guitar parts during June, July, and August at the Record Plant studio in New York.[21] Engineer Tony Bongiovi has described Hendrix becoming increasingly dissatisfied as the song progressed, overdubbing more and more guitar parts, moving the master tape from a four-track to a twelve-track to a sixteen-track machine. Bongiovi recalled, "Recording these new ideas meant he would have to erase something.

In the weeks prior to the mixing, we had already recorded a number of overdubs, wiping track after track. [Hendrix] kept saying, 'I think I hear it a little bit differently.'"[22] The finished version was released on the album Electric Ladyland in September 1968. The single reached number five in the British charts,[23] and number 20 on the Billboard chart, Hendrix's only top 20 / top 40 entry there.[24] The song also had the #5 spot on Guitar World's 100 Greatest Guitar Solos.[25] Dylan has described his reaction to hearing Hendrix's version: "It overwhelmed me, really. 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."[26] In the booklet accompanying his Biograph album, Dylan said: "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." This version of the song appears at number 48 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,[27] and in 2000, British magazine Total Guitar named it top of the list of the greatest cover versions of all time. Category The Story Behind Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" - Cover Me The Story Behind digs deep into how an iconic cover song came to be. Brian Jones was in bad shape. The Rolling Stone had staggered into London’s Olympic Studios, where Jimi Hendrix was trying to record a new Bob Dylan song, “All Along the Watchtower.” Though Jones could barely stand upright, he demanded to play on the track. There had already been many takes and the arrangement was just starting to come together, but Hendrix, ever accommodating to his friends, sat Jones down at a piano. Jones jumped right in, not letting inebriation limit his enthusiasm, and began producing off-beat clunks and clangs that caused Hendrix to stop the take in frustration after only 23 seconds.

What would become known as the greatest cover song ever recorded was quickly falling apart. Where Hendrix first heard “All Along the Watchtower” is a matter of some debate. His publicist at the time, Michael Goldstein, says he played it for him at a Greenwich Village party before Dylan’s album John Wesley Harding was even released. “I went to dinner with [Dylan’s manager] Albert Grossman in an awful Mexican restaurant around 46th Street,” he says. “He gave me this cassette and said, ‘Here’s a sample of Dylan’s latest songs.’ I had a party a week or so later and Jimi was there. I said, ‘How would anybody like to hear something from Dylan that you haven’t heard?’ and I played the tape. Jimi came up to me and said, ‘Hey Mike, can I take that home with me? I really want to listen to that again.’ I said, ‘Sure you can have it, what the hell do I care?'” Hendrix’s girlfriend Kathy Etchingam, who he was living with in London at the time, says he first heard it like any other Dylan fan would have: he bought a copy of the record.

“It was soon after he came back [from the States],” she recalls. “I remember him having the album when he came back along with a bottle of duty-free American whiskey. We played it over and over again. He just loved it.” There are other stories as well. Dave Mason of Traffic has described a party he threw in London as Hendrix’s introduction to the song. And Michael Fairchild, in the Electric Ladyland reissue liner notes, points to a session Hendrix played on with Paul McCartney’s brother Mike McGear as a possible first exposure. It may not really matter though, because there was no way Hendrix was not going to hear “Watchtower” sooner or later. Though it was certainly in vogue among musicians to namecheck Dylan, Hendrix was the type of superfan who carried a Dylan songbook in his travel bag, who once almost started a fight in a Harlem club after making the DJ play “Blowin’ in the Wind” (which, not surprisingly, cleared the dance floor), and who pestered Dylan’s guitarist Robbie Robertson with questions about how Bob wrote his brilliant songs (Robertson’s reply: “Usually on a typewriter”).

He even dumped a girlfriend using lyrics from Dylan’s kiss-off song “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine”). He had been covering Dylan songs himself as early as 1965, as a session player for Curtis Knight’s “Like a Rolling Stone”-ripoff “How Would You Feel,” and the actual “Like a Rolling Stone” became a staple of his early live shows. It was after hearing one such performance that Chas Chandler, bassist for the Animals (who had recently had their own hit with “House of the Rising Sun,” a song they had heard on a Dylan record), decided to sign him and become his manager. He would record a few Dylan songs in his career – “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window,” “Drifter’s Escape,” “Tears of Rage” – and toyed around with others. A Rolling Stone interviewer in 1969 described him idly strumming along to “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” while answering questions.

“It’s not a wonder to me that he recorded my songs,” Dylan himself wrote in 1988, “but rather that he recorded so few of them because they were all his.” Though stories differ, he met Dylan at least once, but any interactions were by all accounts inconsequential. In that same Rolling Stone interview, Hendrix reported “I only met him once, about three years ago, back at the Kettle of Fish [a folk-rock era hangout] on MacDougal Street. That was before I went to England. I think both of us were pretty drunk at the time, so he probably doesn’t remember it.” For his part, Dylan recalls another meeting, equally inauspicious. “First time I saw him, he was playing with John Hammond,” he wrote in the liner notes to career retrospective Biograph. “He was incredible then. I’d already been to England and beyond, and although he didn’t sing, I kinda had a feeling that he figured into things. The last time I saw him was a couple of months before he died. He was in that band with Buddy Miles. It was an eerie scene. He was slouched down in the back of a limousine. I was riding by on a bicycle.

I remember saying something about that song ‘Wind Cried Mary,’ it was a long way from playing behind John Hammond. That was my favorite song of his – that and ‘Dolly Dagger’… I don’t know, it was strange, both of us were a little lost for words, he’d gone through like a fireball without knowing it, I’d done the same thing like being shot out of cannon.” Perhaps the best story – though one confirmed by neither party – was told by friend Deering Howe in Charles Cross’s biography Room Full of Mirrors. Cross writes: One day that fall [Howe] was walking down Eighth Street in New York City with Jimi when they spied a figure on the other side of the road. “Hey, that’s Dylan,” Jimi said excitedly. “I’ve never met him before; let’s go talk to him.” Jimi darted into traffic, yelling “Hey, Bob” as he approached. Deering followed, though he felt uneasy about Jimi’s zeal. “I think Dylan was a little concerned at first, hearing someone shouting his name and racing across the street toward him,” Deering recalled. Once Dylan recognized Jimi, he relaxed.

Hendrix’s introduction was modest enough to be comic. “Bob, uh, I’m a singer, you know, called, uh, Jimi Hendrix and…” Dylan said he knew who Jimi was and loved his covers of “All Along the Watchtower” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” “I don’t know if anyone has done my songs better,” Dylan said. Dylan hurried off, but left Jimi beaming. “Jimi was on cloud nine,” Deering said, “if only because Bob Dylan knew who he was. It seemed very clear to me that the two had never met before.” Back in London, Hendrix and Etchingham spun John Wesley Harding over and over, and Hendrix knew which song he wanted to cover: “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine.” Then he had second thoughts. “He thought it was too personal,” Etchingham says. “It was Bob Dylan’s dream so he wasn’t going to take that, because he didn’t dream it himself.” (As John Perry notes in his book on Electric Ladyland, it also would have been an odd song for Hendrix to cover. The 3/4 waltz of “St.

Augustine” was a time signature Hendrix never attempted in his career – the closest he came was “Manic Depression”‘s 6/8.) After he got cold feet, someone, probably Etchingham (she admits she can’t remember for sure), nudged him towards “Watchtower.” “Sometimes I do a Dylan song and it seems to fit me so right that I figure maybe I wrote it,” he recalled later. “I felt like ‘Watchtower’ was something I’d written but could never get together. I often feel like that about Dylan.” Unlike the later Electric Ladyland sessions in New York – which featured such a large crew of leeches and hangers-on that a frustrated Chas Chandler walked out for good – the January 21 recording of “All Along the Watchtower” was relatively calm. The song was so new that many people in the room had never even heard Dylan’s version. There was no rehearsal either; Hendrix just shouted out the chord changes as they went. “When he was doing his own arrangement, he did it very quietly, without being plugged into an amplifier, so nobody knew what he was doing because only he could hear it,” Etchingham recalls.

Following Hendrix’s lead were Dave Mason on 12-string guitar, Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, and Experience bassist Noel Redding – briefly. After a row with Hendrix early on, Redding stormed off to the Red Lion pub across the street. “We were having a few problems with the band already, and I said I didn’t like the tune,” Redding said in a BBC documentary years later. “I prefer Dylan’s version.” Or as he put it another time: “I told Hendrix to fuck off.” Mason eventually took over bass duties for the London session, though Hendrix swapped in his own bass line later. “Initially there was no bass,” Kramer told recording magazine Sound on Sound in 2005. “Jimi just played a six-string acoustic guitar while Traffic’s Dave Mason played 12-string and Mitch was on drums. That’s how Jimi wanted to cut it, and as a result the track had a marvelous, light feel thanks to the acoustic guitars that were driving it.

Jimi not only loved the lyrics but also the chord sequences of ‘All Along The Watchtower,’ and he just gave them a terrific bed to do a nice solo.” Outtakes of that day in the studio confirm Kramer’s memory, offering an unusual way to hear the song – no electric guitar and no vocals, just a gentle rhythm jam. Hendrix was particularly concerned about getting the dynamics right. “Dave, make it more distinctive between the loud part and the soft part, okay?” he instructs Mason at one point with what sounds like growing frustration (this is not the first time on the tape you can hear him bring the issue up). Hendrix instructing the group on dynamics: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here . You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. “Watchtower” Take 11: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here . You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Though uncredited on the final LP due to tension with Hendrix’s new manager, Chandler produced the track, while Hendrix’s trusted engineer Eddie Kramer oversaw the proceedings. With credits including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks, Kramer was Hendrix’s right-hand man behind the boards. “Jimi really felt he had an ally in Eddie, because he would always listen to his ideas,” drummer Buddy Miles said in the reissue liner notes. “Nothing was more important to Jimi than his music and Eddie was always pushing him.” Take 14 is the first with a drunk Brian Jones fumbling around on the piano, and in the 23 seconds they make it before Hendrix cuts it off, you can already hear this is a bad addition. “He was completely out of his brain,” Kramer recalled. “Poor Brian, he was a good mate of Jimi’s and we all loved him. Jimi could never say no to his mates, and Brian was so sweet.

He came in and said ‘Oh, let me play,’ and he got on the piano…and we could just hear ‘clang, clang, clang, clang, clang…’ It was all bloody horrible and out of time, and Jimi said ‘Uh, I don’t think so.’ Brian was gone after two takes. He practically fell on the floor in the control room.” “Watchtower” Take 14 (with Brian Jones): Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here . You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Jones was eventually switched to percussion – that’s him playing the thwack you hear at the end of each bar in the intro, on an instrument called a vibraslap – and the session wound down after 27 takes. The song did not yet have vocals or most of the electric guitar parts, but the basic rhythm track was in the can, for Hendrix to tinker with and overdub later. And overdub he did. Endlessly.

After a lengthy break for Hendrix to take on a slate of tour dates, the Electric Ladyland sessions had moved to New York’s Record Plant, where the majority of the album was cut (the only other songs with Olympic roots were “Crosstown Traffic” and “Burning of the Midnight Lamp”). Hendrix tinkered with “Watchtower” for months, upgrading the master tape from the original 4-track offered at the London studio to take advantage of the state-of-the-art 12-track machine at the Record Plant. When 16-track came in the picture, he upgraded again, adding more parts each time. What had started as an impromptu jam session with some friends became an obsessive endeavor. “Hendrix would stop the tape, pick up his guitar or the bass, and go back out and start re-overdubbing stuff,” said Record Plant engineer Tony Bongiovi. “Recording these new ideas meant that he would have to erase something. In the weeks prior to the mixing, we had already recorded a number of overdubs, wiping track after track – and I don’t mean once or twice – he would overdub the bass and guitar parts all over, until he was satisfied.

He would say, ‘I think I hear it a bit differently.'” The sessions continued throughout the summer of 1968, six months after he had laid down the basic track in one day. At some point, he decided he could do a better bass track than Dave Mason had, and swapped it out. “Jimi was a fine bass player,” Mitch Mitchell said in the reissue liner notes, “one of the best, very Motown-style… Even being left-handed he had no problem picking up a right-handed bass – he just had that touch.” During that time he also laid down the song’s most iconic moment: the guitar solo. And he didn’t just record one; he tried out many versions. Eddie Kramer has said by the end he had seven great guitar parts to choose from, not counting the countless others that got taped over. Early mix that includes an unused solo (no vocals): Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here . You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Hendrix divided the main solo into four discrete sections.

The first he plays straight, flashing up and down the neck of the guitar for thrilling waterfalls of notes. Second comes the slide guitar, which was apparently so spur of the moment he didn’t have a slide with him. “I saw Jimi, frustrated, running around, trying to get a sound out that he had in his head, but not being able to do it,” his friend Velvert Turner said in the BBC documentary. “[He grabbed] beer bottles, soda bottles, knives, and everything trying to get the middle section where there’s a Hawaiian guitar sound.” He ended up using a cigarette lighter. Eddie Van Halen has called this section one of his favorite guitar solos ever. After a yell of “Hey!”, the psychedelic wah-wah section begins. Hendrix was in fact one of the pioneers of the wah-wah, with Electric Ladyland marking one of the pedal’s first appearances on a major record (“Burning of the Midnight Lamp” features it even more heavily). For the last eight bars, Hendrix reins it back in for what might be thought of as the “rhythm solo,” mirroring and embellishing on the chords more directly before wrapping with a quick ascension.

Hendrix’s isolated guitar tracks (other instruments/vocals bleeding through a bit): Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here . You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Hendrix also recorded his vocals at the Record Plant. As always, he hated this part. Many friends and collaborators have detailed his terrible insecurity about his singing voice. “He’d always face the other way [when recording vocals],” Kramer said. “He hated to be looked at. He was very shy about his vocals.” In fact, accordingly to his father Al Hendrix, a main reason the established guitar ace tried singing in the first place came from hearing Dylan, a sort of “if he can succeed sounding like that, why not me?” outlook. “I thought, you must admire that guy for having that much nerve to sing so out of key,” Jimi once said. He would in fact frequently defend Dylan’s voice in interviews, attacking those who accused him of sounding like a “broken-leg dog.” After the endless overdubs and re-recordings of guitars, vocals, and bass, it came time to mix the record.

By this point Chandler, who had produced the original London sessions, was long gone. His original mix had been relatively subdued, focusing heavily on the acoustic guitars and giving even the loud solos plenty of room to breathe. Chas Chandler’s original mix (from 1997 compilation ‘South Saturn Delta’): Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here . You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. The new version Hendrix mixed with Eddie Kramer went in the opposite direction. “It was a case of Jimi and I doing it together and just making it sound as commercial as we possibly could,” Kramer said. With 16 tracks at their disposable, they had plenty of room to add compression, reverb, chorusing, and other studio tricks to make the entire thing louder and more in-your-face. With many other tracks too long or too far out to ever take off, the goal for “Watchtower” was becoming clear: hit single. It worked.

Release as a single in the US on September 21, 1968, and backed with “Burning of the Midnight Lamp,” “All Along the Watchtower” became Hendrix’s first and only Top 40 single on the Billboard charts, climbing from #66 on its debut to a peak of #20 (it made #5 in the UK, where Hendrix had more of a track record). It in fact sold more than the group’s previous four singles combined – and that includes “Purple Haze” and “Foxy Lady.” It resonated particularly with troops in Vietnam. The army’s official radio broadcasts were tightly controlled, but GIs overseas had made a regular practice of setting up pirate radio stations in the field, and “Watchtower” began to get heavy airplay.

One veteran recalled in Stephen Roby’s Black Gold, “I just spun the dials…lo and behold there’s Midnight Jack broadcasting: ‘Midnight Jack, man, I’m deep in the jungle… What can I play for you, man?’ He’s gone for about 30 seconds and I imagine he’s putting a reel-to-reel tape on and here comes Jimi Hendrix…” Perhaps most importantly to him, Bob Dylan loved it too – though it’s not clear whether or not Hendrix ever knew, as all Dylan’s public comments occurred after Hendrix’s death. “It overwhelmed me, really,” Dylan told the Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1995. “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.” The version of “Watchtower” Dylan played on 1974 live album ‘Before the Flood’: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here .

You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. For his part, Hendrix seemed pleased that people liked the song but, true to form, didn’t say much. When asked if Hendrix ever commented on how he felt about the song’s success, Kathy Etchingham answers with a resounding no. “Jimi never sat down and talked about his music,” she says. “He just did it. He didn’t sit down and pick his music to pieces. He might have done it in his head privately, but he certainly didn’t do it [to others].” Three months later, he had dropped “Watchtower” from his set lists and started ignoring or declining audience requests for him to play it. “We recorded that a year ago and, if you heard it, we are very glad,” he told a Frankfurt crowd. “But tonight, we’re trying to do a musical thing, OK? That’s a single, and we released it as a single, thank you very much for thinking about it, but I forgot the words. That’s what I’m trying to say.” His fans were clamoring for the song, his first real hit, but Hendrix had already moved on.

Bob Dylan — All Along the Watchtower — Listen, watch, download and discover music for free at Last.fm 60s "All Along the Watchtower" is a folk song written and recorded by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Dylan has performed this song more often in concert than any of his other compositions. It has been estimated that as of the end of 2007, Dylan had sung the song 1,748 times on stage. It has been covered by other artists in different genres, most notably by The Jimi Hendrix Experience . Don't want to see ads? Subscribe now Similar Tracks Jimi Hendrix - All Along the Watchtower song facts and lyric meanings Jimi Hendrix - All Along the Watchtower lyric meanings and song facts All facts provided by Songfacts.com This was written and originally recorded by Bob Dylan (also in 1968), but it was the Jimi Hendrix cover that made the song famous. Many other artists have covered it, including Eric Clapton, Neil Young, U2, The Dave Matthews Band and The Grateful Dead. Dylan was so impressed with Jimi's version that Dylan for years played it the way that Jimi had recorded it.

This is about changing established society, starting in the middle of a conversation between two people (the Joker and the Thief). The Thief sympathizes with the Joker, who wants to escape his position in life and hates the values of society. The third verse suddenly shifts the scene, changing from a conversation to an almost unrelated verse filled with imagery of princes, women, and barefoot servants guarding a castle, establishing a place in the past. These figures are said to represent established society. Suddenly "Somewhere in the distance, a wildcat does growl" suggests danger is approaching, then suddenly "Two riders are approaching" links us back to the first two verses. The riders are the Joker and the Thief, coming to establish a different set of values. The guarded castle suggests there will be confrontation. (thanks, Jamie - Sydney, Belgium, for above 2) This was Jimi's only Top 40 hit in the US. He charted a few times in the UK, where he was popular before making a name for himself in America. This was recorded while Hendrix played with the Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hendrix on guitar, Noel Redding on bass, and Mitch Mitchell on drums.

For this song, however, Redding was not on bass; Hendrix did it. Redding was also the guitar player for his band Fat Mattress, which Hendrix referred to as Thin Pillow. Hendrix often felt that Redding did not put his heart into the bass and was concerned that Redding concentrated more on Fat Mattress than he did on the Experience. Things like these led to him being replaced by Billy Cox. (thanks, Ethan - Ridgely, MD) The original version of this song is very slow. Jimi Hendrix' version had a large impact on Dylan which made him make his own version "heavier." (thanks, Ben - Manchester by the Sea, MA) Hendrix: " All those people who don't like Bob Dylan's songs should read his lyrics. They are filled with the joys and sadness of life. I am as Dylan, none of us can sing normally. Sometimes, I play Dylan's songs and they are so much like me that it seems to me that I wrote them. I have the feeling that Watchtower is a song I could have come up with, but I'm sure I would never have finished it.

Thinking about Dylan, I often consider that I'd never be able to write the words he manages to come up with, but I'd like him to help me, because I have loads of songs I can't finish. I just lay a few words on the paper, and I just can't go forward. But now things are getting better, I'm a bit more self-confident." (thanks, bertrand - Paris, France) Hendrix had been working on and off with the members of the band Traffic as he recorded Electric Ladyland. Traffic guitarist Dave Mason caught Hendrix at a party and the two discussed Bob Dylan's newest album, John Wesley Harding, containing "All Along The Watchtower." Hendrix, long fascinated with Dylan, decided to cover the song on the album. On the resulting track, Mason plays rhythm on a 12-string acoustic guitar. (thanks, Joey - Athens, GA) All facts provided by Songfacts.com Jimi Hendrix: "All Along the Watchtower" | Readers' Poll: The 10 Best Bob Dylan Covers | Rolling Stone Readers' Poll: The 10 Best Bob Dylan Covers Hear Arcade Fire, Mavis Staples Team for Emphatic 'I...

Readers' Poll: The 10 Best Bob Dylan Covers See what song managed to top the Band's "I Shall Be Released" and Eddie Vedder's "Masters of War" Jimi Hendrix covered Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" and it improved the original version. All Stories 1. Jimi Hendrix: "All Along the Watchtower" The first time that Bob Dylan heard Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "All Along the Watchtower," he was blown away. "It overwhelmed me, really," he said in 1995. "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." Hendrix's version hit Number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the biggest hit of his career. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way," Dylan said in 1985.

All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix Slot Jimi Hendrix Slot All Along The Watchtower Net Ent Slot All Along the Watchtower is one of Jimi Hendrix´s most famous tracks- one that sent the crowds wild when he played it live, although he drifted off playing it in the latter stages of his short life, despite there being a big demand for it. He was covering it, of course- the song was written and first recorded by Bob Dylan . Jimi just made it into his own track- his rendition has arguably become the more famous over the years, as he injected so much energy into the song. The song first made an appearance on Dylan´s 1967 album John Wesley Harding. How did that make Dylan feel? Being a legend in his own right, and one of Jim Hendrix´s best known live songs was a cover of his? It doesn´t get any better than that, which Dylan redily admits. This song has to be included on the track listing on the the Jimi Hendrix slot, surely. Jimi Hendrix recorded All Along the Watchtower on Electric Ladyland with The Experience. His version was released 6 months after Dylan's original.

The band recorded their take on Dylan's masterpiece in January 1968, at Olympic Studios in London after Hendrix had been given a tape of Dylan’s recording by publicist Michael Goldstein. A Vibraslap Hendrix's soul brother, Rolling Stones Brian Jones played the percussion instruments in one of the studio sessions including one called a Vibraslap on the track. If you listen closely to the track, you can hear him "thwacking away" in the background. The founder of the Rolling Stones was in a pretty bad way at that time and had meandered into the studio- he could barely stand up he was so out of it, but insisted on playing. Hendrix sat him down on the piano, but quickly changed his mind - he was relegated to percussion. If you can get hold of Take 14, you´ll hear an inebriated Brian Jones smashing about on the piano. Jimi cuts him off after half a minute. Brian left after two takes. He collapsed on the floor in the control room.

After going backwards and forwards on the song (Hendrix was notoriously fussy on building out this track), the final version was pushed out on Electric Ladyland in September 1968 and it hit no. 5 in the UK charts, and no. 20 in the US. Another participant on the Watchtower sessions was Traffic guitarist Dave Mason who took over from Noel Redding after he split from the recording after getting frustrated with Jimi´s perfectionist streak. Hendrix himself laid down the bass guitar bit on a custom guitar that Bill Wyman had given to Andy Johns. Mitchell played the drums on the track. The rhythm guitar bits were completed first and then Hendrix focused on the 4 solo lines which were recorded separately. According to legend, he used a cigarette lighter for the slide guitar section. Incredibly, it was Hendrix's only top 20 entry. Guitar World later gave it an accolade and included it in their 100 Greatest Guitar Solos .

Bob Dylan later went on to say what an honour it was that Hendrix had covered the song, and that he loved the cover: "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way." Hendrix was a big fan of Dylan´s who carried a Dylan songbook in his bag. He was almost put a Harlem Club into meltdown after making a DJ play “Blowin’ in the Wind” (which didn´t go down too well on the dance floor). He also covered Like A Rolling Stone early on in his career (in fact he was signed by the Animals bass player Chas Chandler on to his new label after he´d heard his rendition of this other famous Dylan song. Hendrix went on to record a few other Dylan songs including Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window, Drifter’s Escape and Tears of Rage but none hit the heights of All Along the Watchtower. Well, Like a Rolling Stone became pretty famous. Hendrix claimed he only met Dylan once, and reckoned that both of them were pretty drunk at the time, so he said he doubted whether Dylan remembered it. The song was really popular with the troops in Vietnam.

Watchtower got heavy airplay on the pirate radio stations that were set up in the field by the GIs. Jimi´s Version of All Along the Watchtower has itself been covered many times (it goes round and round!), by all kinds of artists including Internet guitar sensation and Youtuber Jess Greenberg (although she has posted it as a cover of Dylan- you decide). All Along The Watchtower - (cover) Jess Greenberg Lyrics to All Along the Watch Tower "There must be some kind of way out of here, " Said the joker to the thief, "There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. Business men – they drink my wine Plowmen dig my earth None of them along the line Know what any of it is worth." "No reason to get excited, " The thief – he kindly spoke, "There are many here among us Who feel that life is but a joke But you and I we've been through that And this is not our fate So let us not talk falsely now The hour's getting late." The Day Jimi Hendrix Claimed 'All Along the Watchtower' Subscribe to Ultimate Classic Rock on On Dec.

27, 1967, Bob Dylan released his first album in more than a year with the understated classic John Wesley Harding . Among the great songs found on that LP was a tune called “All Along the Watchtower.” Before the album’s release, Jimi Hendrix obtained an acetate of the disc and fell in love with it. Less than two months after Dylan recorded it, Hendrix was in the studio recording his own take. On Jan. 21, 1968, Hendrix and the Experience settled in to make what would become the definitive reading of the song. “There was no real rehearsal,” said producer Eddie Kramer in an interview with Sound on Sound . “Jimi just played a six-string acoustic guitar while Traffic ’s Dave Mason played 12-string. Mitch [Mitchell] was on drums. That’s how Jimi wanted to cut it, and as a result, the track had a marvelous, light feel, thanks to the acoustic guitars that were driving it.” Hendrix’s arrangement of the song fit the Experience perfectly. Taking the subdued pastoral shades of the Dylan original, Hendrix turned it inside out to show “Watchtower”‘s underlying vibrant colors.

A simple three-chord song with an armload of brilliant lyrics meet head on with the firepower of Hendrix and band and, it’s pure gold. With Kramer behind the board, the recordings took shape quickly. The signature guitar sound was, apparently, easily obtained. “I’d stick a bloody mic in front of [the amp] and hope for the best,” Kramer said. “Recording was always a learning process for Jimi, so each take would be different.” Hendrix actually played bass on the recording after Noel Redding grew tired of the sessions. “Jimi was driving the train.” continued Kramer. “He always drove the train, whatever he was doing.” The song was not only a highlight of the double-album Electric Ladyland (released in October 1968), it was also released as a single, hitting No. 20 in the U.S. and No. 5 in the U.K. “He loved Bob Dylan,” Kramer added. “He was fascinated by the color of the lyrics and the tone of the lyrics, and of course the chord sequences were wonderful, too.

It was a very special song.” As for Dylan himself, in the liner notes to his Biograph collection, he writes, “Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way. I liked Hendrix’s record, and ever since he died, I’ve been doing it that way.” See Jimi Hendrix and Other Rockers in the Top 100 Albums of the ’60s Image of John Mayer – All Along the Watchtower | Society Of Rock John Mayer – All Along the Watchtower Advertisement Advertisement John Mayer pays tribute to Dylan and Hendrix Covered by many artist, most famously Jimi Hendrix, a lot of guitar players have amped up Bob Dylan’s famous original hit. “All Along the Watchtower” was written and recorded by Dylan and initially appeared on his 1967 album John Wesley Harding. Since the late 1970s, he has performed it in concert more than any of his other songs, and many different versions appear on multiple live albums. This song wasn’t made popular until Jimi Hendrix remade it. Dylan liked Hendrix’ version better than his own so much he started playing his version other than the original.

The song was sped up by Hendrix and the harmonica parts were switched out with guitar. Advertisement Dylan explains the song… “This is about changing established society, starting in the middle of a conversation between two people (the Joker and the Thief). The Thief sympathizes with the Joker, who wants to escape his position in life and hates the values of society.” Now, I LOVE John Mayer. I think he is one of the best guitar players of this generation. He is bluesy, emotional, and brings a vibe of authenticity. Something I feel we have somewhat lost since the majority of our Guitar Gods left us… Other covers include; Lenny Kravitz, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, U2, and Eric Clapton. Check out some fun facts about these three amazing guitarist! After High School graduation, John Mayer worked as a full service gas station attendant for $7/hour for 15 months. He used the cash he made at this job to buy a 1996 Stevie Ray Vaughan signature Stratocaster.

The phrase next to Bob Dylan‘s picture in the 1959 Hibbing High School Yearbook was “To join Little Richard.” Hendrix’ father encouraged his musical talents, buying his first $5 acoustic guitar when he was fifteen-years-old and setting him on the path to his future vocation. +++++LYRICS+++++ There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief, “There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth, None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.” “No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke, “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate, So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” All along the watchtower, princes kept the view While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too. Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl, Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

Question: Who originally wrote the song "All Along the Watchtower", famously covered by Jimi Hendrix?
Answer: Bob Dylan