In late 1966 throughout 1967, folk icon and legendary sing-songwriter Bob Dylan was recovering from a major motorcycle accident and spent 18 months at home resting and writing. All of the songs for Dylan’s eighth studio album, John Wesley Harding, were written during this period. “All Along the Watchtower” was inspired by a thunderstorm with the lyrics featuring a conversation between a joker and a thief in the style of a sonnet.
Dylan recorded two different takes that resulted in the final version for the 1967 album. While the recording of the track was released to mixed reviews, critics did note that the song “brought out Dylan’s talent for imagery.”
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Six months after Dylan’s album release, Jimi Hendrix his band, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, began working on a recording of “All Along the Watchtower” in January of 1968. Originally the band was going to record “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” but changed this to “All Along the Watchtower” after listening to reel-to-reel tapes of unreleased recordings by Dylan.
16 different tracks were recorded by The Jimi Hendrix Experience of what would eventually become the final recording. The song was released in September of 1968 as part of the studio album Electric Ladyland and reached number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would become Hendrix’s highest ranked single and only Top 40 hit.
Dylan was heavily moved by Hendrix’s interpretation of “All Along the Watchtower” saying in 1995, “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.”
Dylan has performed the song more like Hendrix’s version than to his own original in on tour and in live performances of the song. Dylan has performed “All Along the Watchtower” more than any songs in his catalog, over 2,250 times.
In 2001, the Jimi Hendrix version of the track was given a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. His version was also ranked at number 40 of Rolling Stones’ “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”
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