Bob Dylan might have gone electric by the time he released “All Along the Watchtower” on John Wesley Harding in 1967, but he was hardly as associated with raucous, rowdy, and abrasive rock ‘n’ roll as his one-time contemporary, Jimi Hendrix. That is to say, Hendrix’s reimagining of Dylan’s classic track transformed the song into something almost unrecognizable.
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Although Dylan would later argue the two versions were not as different as the casual listener might think, he admitted that he changed his approach to “All Along the Watchtower” after hearing Hendrix’s cover. The cover impacted Dylan so deeply, in fact, that it informed the way he played later songs, too.
Bob Dylan’s Reaction to Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower”
Bob Dylan originally released “All Along the Watchtower” on John Wesley Harding in late December 1967. Less than one year later, the Jimi Hendrix Experience released its version of the track the following September. The latter version skyrocketed up the charts, landing at No. 20 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and garnering Hendrix his only Top 40 hit. The general public wasn’t the only one taken by the rock ‘n’ roll version of Dylan’s track. The song made quite the impression on Dylan, too.
Speaking to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1995, Dylan said Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower” “overwhelmed” him. “He had such talent,” Dylan said. “He could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them…things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there [and] 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.”
In an earlier interview included in Nigel Williamson’s The Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, the songwriter said the impetus for following Hendrix’s example was the rock icon’s death in 1970. “Funny though, his way of doing it and my way of doing it weren’t that dissimilar. I mean, the meaning of the song doesn’t change, like when some artists do other artists’ songs. When I sing it, I always feel like it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.”
The 1968 Cover Helped Inform Another Classic Track From 1963
Jimi Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower” deeply affected its original songwriter, Bob Dylan—so much so that Dylan would use Hendrix’s approach not only in this 1968 track but also in music he had written years earlier. One example was “Masters of War”, which Dylan would later say he began playing the way he imagined Hendrix would have played it, per Nigel Williamson’s book. Dylan’s reimagining of “Masters of War” was an extension of the kinship he felt with the rock guitarist. “He’d gone through like a fireball without knowing it,” Dylan said. “I’d done the same thing, like being shot out of a cannon.”
Using Hendrix as his primary influence, Dylan transformed his acoustic track from Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan into a rousing electric number. He has almost exclusively played the electric version of “Masters of War”, with a notable exception being his 1994 performance in Hiroshima, Japan.
Dylan has long been vocal about his admiration for Hendrix, stating in his 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year acceptance speech, “I actually saw Jimi Hendrix perform when he was in a band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames—something like that. Jimi didn’t even sing. He was just the guitar player. He took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and pumped them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere and turned them all into classics. I have Jimi to thank. I wish he was here.”
Photo by Charlie Steiner – Highway 67/Getty Images
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