All Along the Watchtower [Jimi Hendrix] - Rockabout Aces - YouTube All Along the Watchtower [Jimi Hendrix] - Rockabout Aces 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 Nov 18, 2015 2015. Live Cover of All Along the Watchtower. Originally written by Bob Dylan and covered by Jimi Hendrix. Recorded at the 'Burgfest' in Dilsberg, Germany. For more information check or visit us at Facebook. Category 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 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 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.

Fantastic Cover Of Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” | Society Of Rock Fantastic Cover Of Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement “All Along the Watchtower” was written and originally performed by Bob Dylan. Though it was covered by plenty of musicians, Jimi Hendrix’s is among the most popular. In fact, it was included in the Rolling Stones’ 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and even ranked number 47! Advertisement From SongFacts, Hendrix said: “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.” 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 | Rolling Stone artists > J > Jimi Hendrix > Bio Jimi Hendrix Bio Hailed by Rolling Stone as the greatest guitarist of all time, Jimi Hendrix was also one of the biggest cultural figures of the Sixties, a psychedelic voodoo child who spewed clouds of distortion and pot smoke. A left-hander who took a right-handed Fender Stratocaster and played it upside down, Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source.

Players before Hendrix had experimented with feedback and distortion, but he turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began. But while he unleashed noise with uncanny mastery — see: the hard-rock riffs of "Purple Haze," "Foxy Lady," and "Crosstown Traffic" — Hendrix also created tender ballads like "The Wind Cries Mary," the oft-covered "Little Wing," and "Angel," as well as haunting blues recordings such as "Red House" and "Voodoo Chile." Although Hendrix did not consider himself a good singer, his vocals were nearly as evocative as his guitar playing. Hendrix's studio craft and virtuosity with both conventional and unconventional guitar sounds have been widely imitated. His songs have inspired several tribute albums, and have been recorded by a jazz group (1989's Hendrix Project), the Kronos String Quartet, and avant-garde flutist Robert Dick. Hendrix's musical vision had a profound effect on everybody from Miles Davis to Sly Stone and George Clinton to Prince and OutKast.

Hendrix's theatrical performing style — full of unmistakably sexual undulations and showman tricks like playing the guitar with his teeth and behind his back — has never quite been equaled. Beyond his virtuosic guitar playing, gifted songwriting, ahead-of-his-time attention to studio production, and electric stage presence, Hendrix was also an icon that transcended music; nobody else from his era wore an afro better. In the decades since Hendrix's death, pop stars from Rick James and Prince to Lenny Kravitz and Erykah Badu have evoked his look and style. Born November 27, 1942, in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix taught himself to play guitar as a teenager, listening to records by blues guitarists Muddy Waters and B.B. King and rockers such as Chuck Berry and Eddie Cochran. He played in high school bands before enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1959. Discharged in 1961, Hendrix began working under the pseudonym Jimmy James as a pickup guitarist. By 1964, when he moved to New York, he had played behind Sam Cooke, B.B.

King, Little Richard, Jackie Wilson, Ike and Tina Turner, and Wilson Pickett. In New York he played the club circuit with King Curtis, the Isley Brothers, John Paul Hammond, and Curtis Knight. In 1965 Hendrix formed his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, to play Greenwich Village coffeehouses. Chas Chandler of the Animals took him to London in the autumn of 1966 and arranged for the creation of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, with Englishmen Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums. The Experience's first single, "Hey Joe," reached Number Six on the U.K. chart in early 1967, followed shortly by "Purple Haze" and its double-platinum debut album, Are You Experienced? (Number Five, 1967). Hendrix fast became the rage of London's pop society. Although word of the Hendrix phenomenon spread to the U.S., he was not seen in America (and no records were released) until June 1967, when, at Paul McCartney's insistence, the Experience appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival. The performance, which Hendrix climaxed by burning his guitar, was filmed by D.A.

Pennebaker for the documentary Monterey Pop. Hendrix's next albums — Axis: Bold as Love (Number Three, 1968), Electric Ladyland (Number One, 1968) — were major hits and he quickly became a superstar. Stories such as one reporting that the Experience was dropped from the bill of a Monkees tour at the insistence of the Daughters of the American Revolution became part of the Hendrix myth, but he considered himself a musician more than a star. Soon after the start of his second American tour, early in 1968, he renounced the extravagances of his stage act and simply performed his music. A hostile reception led him to conclude that his best music came out in the informal settings of studios and clubs, and he began construction of Electric Lady, his own studio in New York. Hendrix was eager to experiment with musical ideas, and he jammed with jazz fusionists John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, and members of Traffic, among others.

Miles Davis admired his instinctiveness (and, in fact, planned to record with him), and Bob Dylan — whose "Like a Rolling Stone," "All Along the Watchtower," and "Drifter's Escape" Hendrix performed and recorded — later returned the tribute by performing "Watchtower" in the Hendrix mode. As 1968 came to a close, disagreements arose between manager Chas Chandler and co-manager Michael Jeffrey; Jeffrey, who opposed Hendrix's avant-garde leanings, got the upper hand. Hendrix was also under pressure from Black Power advocates to form an all-black group and play to black audiences. These problems exacerbated already existing tensions within the Experience, and in early 1969 Redding left the group to form Fat Mattress. Hendrix replaced him with an army buddy, Billy Cox. Mitchell stayed on briefly, but by August the Experience was defunct. In summer 1969 the double-platinum Smash Hits (Number Six) was released.

In August 1969, Hendrix appeared at the Woodstock Festival with a large, informal ensemble called the Electric Sky Church, and later that year he put together the all-black Band of Gypsys — with Cox and drummer Buddy Miles (Electric Flag), with whom he had played behind Wilson Pickett. The Band of Gypsys' debut concert at New York's Fillmore East on New Year's Eve 1969 provided the recordings for the group's only album during its existence, Band of Gypsys (Number Five, 1970). (A second album of vintage tracks was released in 1986.) Hendrix walked offstage in the middle of their Madison Square Garden gig; when he performed again some months later it was with Mitchell and Cox, the group that recorded The Cry of Love (Number Three, 1971), Hendrix's last self-authorized album. With them he played at the Isle of Wight Festival, his last concert, in August 1970, a recording of which would see release in 2002. A month later he was dead.

The cause of death was given in a coroner's report as inhalation of vomit following barbiturate intoxication. Suicide was not ruled out, but evidence pointed to an accident. In the years since his death, the Hendrix legend has amplified through various media. Randi Hansen (who appeared in the video for Devo's 1984 cover of "Are You Experienced?") became the best known of a bunch of full-time Hendrix impersonators, even re-forming the Band of Gypsys with bassist Tony Saunders and Buddy Miles, who, briefly in the late Eighties, was replaced by Mitch Mitchell. Well over a dozen books have been written about Hendrix, including tomes by both Redding and Mitchell; David Henderson's 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky is generally considered to be the most authoritative bio, while Charles R. Cross's Room Full of Mirrors delves deepest into Hendrix's early years in Seattle. Virtually every note Hendrix ever allowed to be recorded has been marketed on more than 100 albums, some of which mine his years as a pickup guitarist; various bootlegs and legitimate live concerts and jam sessions; and even taped interviews and conversations.

A controversial series produced by Alan Douglas, who recorded more than 1,000 hours of Hendrix alone at the Electric Lady studio in the last year of his life, garnered attention through the mid-Nineties. With the consent of the Hendrix estate, Douglas edited the tapes, erased some tracks, and dubbed in others, with mixed results. Radio One collected energetic live-in-the-studio performances by Hendrix and the Experience recorded for British radio in 1967; the later BBC Sessions mined the same material more thoroughly. In 1990 the first of several Hendrix tribute albums, If Six Was Nine, was released. Former Free/Bad Company/Firm vocalist Paul Rodgers released another tribute (The Hendrix Set, 1993) and appeared on the all-star Stone Free, which featured Hendrix covers from musicians ranging from Eric Clapton and Buddy Guy to the Cure, Ice-T, and classical violinist Nigel Kennedy. In 1991 Hendrix's ex-girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, along with Mitch Mitchell and his wife Dee, began prodding Scotland Yard to reopen an investigation into their friend's death.

England's attorney general finally agreed to the request in 1993; in early 1994 Scotland Yard announced it had found no evidence to bother pursuing the case any further. In 1993 an audio-visual exhibit of Hendrix's work called "Jimi Hendrix: On the Road Again" toured college campuses and art galleries in the U.S., to enthusiastic — and predominately young — audiences. In 1994 a 24-year-old Swede named James Henrik Daniel Sundquist claimed to have been conceived by the guitarist and Eva Sundquist during a 1969 Stockholm sojourn. Sundquist legally challenged Hendrix's father, James "Al" Hendrix, as the sole heir to the Jimi Hendrix estate, which was estimated to be worth at least $30 million. A year earlier, Al Hendrix, who in the mid-Seventies had signed away the rights to portions of his son's work to various international conglomerates, had claimed that he'd been misled.

With the financial aid of Paul Allen, the billionaire Hendrix fan who'd cofounded Microsoft with Bill Gates, the elder Hendrix filed a federal lawsuit against those conglomerates and against the holding companies and lawyers connected to the estate. In 1995 he regained complete control of his son's estate, which included Jimi Hendrix's finished and unreleased recordings, as well as his musical compositions. This evolved into a series of CD reissues that were remastered from the original tapes. Having re-released CDs of the guitarist's entire catalogue, the Hendrix estate, under the Experience Hendrix imprint of MCA, also issued the album on which Hendrix was working at the time of his death, First Rays of the New Rising Sun (Number 49, 1997). South Saturn Delta (Number 51, 1997) delved further into the archives.

Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix (Number 133, 1998) followed, as did the double-CD BBC Sessions (Number 50, 1998), the Band of Gypsys-era Live at the Fillmore East (Number 65, 1999), Live at Woodstock (Number 90, 1999), and, in 2000, the four-CD/eight-LP Jimi Hendrix Experience box set. (Several other live discs were made available through an online imprint, Dagger Records.) Meanwhile Paul Allen amassed his cash to fund a modest Jimi Hendrix museum, which eventually blossomed into the $100 million Experience Music Project. Eight years in the making, the high-tech, interactive rock & roll museum — complete with a Jimi Hendrix Gallery — opened at the Seattle Center in 2000. When Al Hendrix died of congestive heart failure in 2002, discrepancies over his will pitted Hendrix's heirs against each other; in 2005, a judge assigned an independent trustee to oversee finances at Experience Hendrix.

Live albums and box sets containing previously released songs, alternate versions and outtakes have continued to surface from Experience Hendrix and Dagger including 2002's Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight (Number 113); 2003's Live at Berkeley; 2005's Live at the Isle of Fehmarn, recorded in Germany; 2009's Live at Woburn, another U.K. Date; as well as a 10-disc collection of singles containing two to four songs apiece. In early 2010, Experience Hendrix announced the upcoming release of Valley of Neptune, a 12-song collection of unreleased material, primarily drawn from early 1969 sessions. According to an Rolling Stone interview with Jimi's stepsister Janie Hendrix, who now runs his estate, more releases are planned: "In the past decade, we've discovered so much unheard audio and video that we'll be able to put out two discs a year for at least the next decade." Portions of this biography appeared in The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001). Mark Kemp contributed to this story.

Bob Dylan songs covered by Jimi Hendrix | All Dylan – A Bob Dylan blog All Dylan – A Bob Dylan blog Hallgeir “Sometimes I do a Dylan song and it seems to fit me so right that I figure maybe I wrote it. Dylan didn’t always do it for me as a singer, not in the early days, but then I started listening to the lyrics. That sold me.” – Jimi Hendrix, Beat International 1969 Though they were not close friends, Jimi Hendrix was a huge fan of Bob Dylan and covered five of his songs (to my knowledge), both live and in the studio. These tracks are “Like a Rolling Stone,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Drifter’s Escape” , “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” and “Tears of Rage” (by Dylan and Richard Manuel) From Seven Ages of Rock (BBC): “First time I saw him, he was playing with John Hammond. 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 a cannon…” -Bob Dylan (Biograph liner notes) Like a Rolling Stone: “I love Dylan. I only met him once, about three years ago, back at the Kettle of Fish 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.” – Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stone Magazine A tender cover of Bob Dylan and The Band‘s classic Tears of Rage from the 4cd set “West Coast Seattle Boy” (Spotify): Drifter’s Escape: “Oh, yeah, I liked that. ‘Help me in my’ — what’s that? That was groovy.

I want to do that one” Jimi Hendrix said. It was recorded in 1970 at Electric Lady Studios, Hendrix’s version, delivered with a funky groove, was first released on the 1974 Loose Ends compilation, and again on the South Saturn Delta collection of demos and alternate tracks. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window: The Jimi Hendrix Experience covered the song for BBC Radio. This version was later released on the BBC Sessions album. All along the watchtower, Isle of Wight version (the best!): In the booklet accompanying his Biograph box, 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.” The British magazine Total Guitar deservedly named it top of the list of the greatest cover versions of all time in 2000. – Hallgeir Bob Dylan - All Along the Watchtower Lyrics | SongMeanings Bob Dylan Nashville Skyline/New Morning/John Wesley Harding Before the Flood Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Vol.

2 The Essential Bob Dylan Bob Dylan: His Legacy of Songs The Best of Bob Dylan [Sony Direct] Essential Bob Dylan [Australian Bonus Tracks] The Very Best of Bob Dylan Bob Dylan [Limited Edition Hybrid SACD Set] The Essential Bob Dylan [Limited Tour Edition] Greatest Hits, Vol. 1-3 The Collection, Vol.

4: Nashville Skyline/New Morning/John Wesley Harding [2005 Reissue] The Best of Bob Dylan [Sony/BMG 2005] John Wesley Harding [Japan] Dylan [2007 3-CD Deluxe Edition] Dylan [2007 2 Disc] Playlist: The Very Best of Bob Dylan The Essential Bob Dylan [3.0] The Original Mono Recordings The Best of the Original Mono Recordings Nashville Skyline/John Wesley Harding 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", later covered by Jimi Hendrix?
Answer: Bob Dylan