Bob Dylan remains a singular artist whose songs are uniquely his while also being standards. Can anyone else sing a better How does it feel? than him?
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Yet, “Like a Rolling Stone” seems as much a part of the Great American Songbook as anything by Irving Berlin or George Gershwin.
His songs are endlessly studied and interpreted. An exercise Dylan must enjoy following a lifetime throwing people off his tracks with mischievous deception and careful fiction.
Though countless covers exist, this list features three artists who made a Bob Dylan song their own.
“All Along the Watchtower” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience from Electric Ladyland (1968)
Between releasing Blonde on Blonde and John Wesley Harding, Dylan holed up in the basement of a rented house in New York and jammed with The Band while isolating from the public eye. He’d already left folk diehards in knots by playing electric guitar. But as the garage blues of songs like “Obviously Five Believers” became familiar, Dylan zagged back to roots music.
He recorded John Wesley Harding in Nashville, and the album marked his return to a more acoustic sound. “All Along the Watchtower” describes the anxiety of feeling trapped. There must be some way out. Its clean and sparse arrangement feels worlds apart from Big Pink’s noisy basement. Then Jimi Hendrix got a hold of it and shot Dylan’s poem into outer space. The Hendrix version became the definitive one and even Dylan referenced it in his live performances.
“I Shall Be Released” by The Band from Music From Big Pink (1968)
A great cover can make you think the covering band wrote the song. This one closes The Band’s debut album but they’d already recorded it with Dylan during the 1967 sessions that became The Basement Tapes. Though Dylan sang the original, The Band’s version with Richard Manuel singing endures as a signature song for the group.
There’s a haziness to the “Basement” jam, with the musicians discovering the song’s DNA while the tape rolls. But The Band’s album-closer fully realizes Dylan’s tune as a stunning anthem. Dylan released the original as part of The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 in 1991. He also included “I Shall Be Released” on a 1971 greatest hits collection.
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Warren Zevon from The Wind (2003)
Warren Zevon knew he was leaving the land of the well when he recorded his final album. Following a terminal cancer diagnosis, Zevon recorded The Wind, which includes his most heartbreaking song, “Keep Me in Your Heart.” But he also rescued Dylan’s classic from the reggae-rock clutches of Guns N’ Roses.
The lonesome electric guitar in Zevon’s version echoes Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” And with a tired voice, he sings with the freedom of acceptance. But Zevon faces his waning days with grace. His rendition shares Dylan’s outlaw gospel spirit and the lonesome guitar blends and swells within the track like a companion. By the end, the musicians become singular. A band. They celebrate a friend while he’s still around to receive it.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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