Song: All Along the Watchtower
Artists: Jimi Hendrix Experience
Original artist: Bob Dylan
I feel this is Hendrix’s finest track, especially given the quality of the guitar work.
Couldn’t be much more different when compared with Dylan’s original.
A whole cult grew up around Hendrix which hasn’t let up since he died very young at the
age of 27 in 1970. He was undoubtedly a highly talented guitarist though I confess that I
never got the playing with his teeth bit. To me, that was just, well… weird and maybe
even dangerous
In the US it reached No 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart while in the UK it fared better
peaking at No 5. In 2021 the song appears at No 40 on Rolling Stone’s Greatest Songs
of All Time. Much earlier, in 2000, British magazine Total Guitar named it the greatest
cover version of all time. The guitar solo on the track made it to No 5 on Guitar World’s
list of the 100 greatest guitar solos. It has been featured in many movies including
Forrest Gump and Rush.
I think it is fair to say that Bob Dylan was very impressed by the Hendrix version. When
performing the song live he would mimic the Hendrix approach – a cover of a cover!
The song was included on Dylan’s eighth studio album, John Wesley Harding. Many
feel that Watchtower had Biblical influences, saying that it echoed lines in the Book of
Isiah.
Dylan has performed the song live more than any other of his compositions, 2,250-plus
times. Rapper Kayne West called it his “favourite song of all time”.
