Band Cover Arts With a Clock Tower in It Cover Art With a Water Tower Falling in It
| "All Along the Watchtower" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Netherlands unmarried picture sleeve | ||||
| Single past Bob Dylan | ||||
| from the album John Wesley Harding | ||||
| B-side | "I'll Be Your Babe Tonight" | |||
| Released | Nov 22, 1968 (1968-11-22) | |||
| Recorded | November 6, 1967 | |||
| Genre | Folk rock | |||
| Length | 2:30 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Songwriter(due south) | Bob Dylan | |||
| Producer(south) | Bob Johnston | |||
| Bob Dylan singles chronology | ||||
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| Audio sample | ||||
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"All Along the Watchtower" is a song written and recorded by American vocalizer-songwriter Bob Dylan. The song initially appeared on his 1967 album, John Wesley Harding, and information technology has been included on most of Dylan's subsequent greatest hits compilations. Since the late 1970s, he has performed it in concert more than any of his other songs. Different versions announced on four of Dylan's alive albums.[1]
Covered by numerous artists in diverse genres, "All Forth the Watchtower" is strongly identified with the interpretation Jimi Hendrix recorded for the anthology Electric Ladyland with the Jimi Hendrix Experience.[2] The Hendrix version, released six months after Dylan's original recording, became a Top 20 single in 1968, received a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2001, and was ranked 48th in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004 (40th in the 2021 version).
Bob Dylan'due south original [edit]
Background [edit]
Following a motorcycle accident in July 1966, Dylan spent the adjacent xviii months recuperating at his home in Woodstock and writing songs.[3] According to Clinton Heylin, all the songs for John Wesley Harding were written and recorded during a vi-calendar week period at the end of 1967.[4] With i kid born in early on 1966 and another in mid-1967, Dylan had settled into family unit life.
Lyrics [edit]
David Stubbs in writing on Dylan summarized that the meaning of the vocal is that it "obliquely alludes to Bob Dylan's frustrations with his management and with CBS, whom he felt were offering him a royalty rate that was far from commensurate with his condition."[5] For Stubbs, the song "features a stand up-off betwixt the 'joker' and the 'thief', with the joker lament of businessmen who drink his vino, feeding off him but refusing to give him his due."[6]
Several reviewers have pointed out that the lyrics in "All Along the Watchtower" echo lines in the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5–nine:
Prepare the tabular array, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: ascend ye princes, and prepare the shield./For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Become set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth./And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much listen./...And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.[seven] [8]
Commenting on the songs on John Wesley Harding in an interview published in the folk music magazine Sing Out! in October 1968, Dylan told John Cohen and Happy Traum:
I haven't fulfilled the balladeer's job. A balladeer tin sit downward and sing 3 songs for an 60 minutes and a half... it can all unfold to yous. These melodies on John Wesley Harding lack this traditional sense of time. As with the 3rd verse of "The Wicked Messenger", which opens it up, and then the time schedule takes a leap and soon the song becomes wider... The same thing is truthful of the song "All Forth the Watchtower", which opens up in a slightly dissimilar way, in a stranger way, for nosotros take the bicycle of events working in a rather reverse order.[ix]
The unusual structure of the narrative was remarked on past English literature professor Christopher Ricks, who commented that "All Along the Watchtower" is an example of Dylan's brazenness at manipulating chronological time: "at the conclusion of the final verse, information technology is as if the vocal bizarrely begins at final, and as if the myth began again."[10]
Heylin described Dylan'south narrative technique in "Watchtower" equally setting the listener upwardly for an epic ballad with the first two verses, simply then, afterward a brief instrumental passage, the singer cuts "to the terminate of the song, leaving the listener to fill in his or her own (doom-laden) blanks."[4]
Critics have described Dylan'due south version every bit a masterpiece of understatement. Andy Gill said, "In Dylan'southward version of the vocal, it's the barrenness of the scenario which grips, the loftier haunting harmonica and simple forward move of the riff carrying understated implications of cataclysm; every bit subsequently recorded by Jimi Hendrix... that cataclysm is rendered scarily palpable through the dervish whirls of guitar."[xi]
Dave Van Ronk, an early supporter and mentor of Dylan, disagreed with the majority view when he made the following criticism:
That whole creative mystique is one of the great traps of this business, because down that road lies unintelligibility. Dylan has a lot to respond for there, because after a while he discovered that he could get away with anything—he was Bob Dylan and people would take whatever he wrote on faith. And so he could do something similar 'All Along the Watchtower', which is simply a fault from the title on downwards: a watchtower is not a road or a wall, and yous can't go on information technology.[12]
Music [edit]
The composition of the music of the song has been described by Albin Zak stating: "The song'southward entire harmonic substance consists of three chords repeated in an unchanging circadian pattern over the course of its three verses and instrumental interludes. The melodic pitch collection, shared by voice and harmonica, consists near entirely of the pentatonic C#, East, F#, Grand#, B, though each part is restricted to a iv-note subset. And the declamatory vocal melody gravitates throughout to one of two pitches".[13] Zak so summarizes the unabridged song as: "The song'southward musical elements, extraordinarily delimited in number and function, combine to create an impression of unrelenting circularity, which accumulates, in plough, to impart a sense not of musical progression, just of a hovering atmosphere."[14]
Zak also finds a potent blues influence in the song which Dylan developed from his affinity for the blues of Robert Johnson and quotes Dylan as stating a dedication in his volume Writings and Drawings by Bob Dylan to his meridian music influences: "To the magnificent Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson who sparked it off and to the nifty wondrous melodies spirit which covereth the oneness of us all."[15] Zak sees "Watchtower" as showing a combination of the influences of Guthrie'southward ballad writing and Johnson's blues influences on Dylan.[sixteen] Zak compares Dylan's lyrics in "Watchtower" directly to Johnson'due south "Me and the Devil Dejection" stating that: "Dylan probes such fearful fatalism (of Johnson's lyrics) by grafting a narrative of alienation and anticipation onto a musical frame of implacable stability."[17]
Recording and original release [edit]
Dylan recorded "All Along the Watchtower" on November 6, 1967, at Columbia Studio A in Nashville, Tennessee,[18] the same studio where he had completed Blonde on Blonde in the spring of the previous year.[19] Accompanying Dylan, who played audio-visual guitar and harmonica, were 2 Nashville veterans from the Blonde on Blonde sessions, Charlie McCoy on bass guitar and Kenneth Buttrey on drums. The producer was Bob Johnston, who produced Dylan's two previous albums, Highway 61 Revisited in 1965 and Blonde on Blonde in 1966.[twenty]
The final version of "All Along the Watchtower" resulted from 2 different takes during the 2d of 3 John Wesley Harding sessions. The session opened with five takes of the song, the 3rd and 5th of which were spliced to create the anthology track.[18] Every bit with most of the album's selections, the song is a nighttime, sparse work that stands in stark dissimilarity with Dylan's previous recordings of the mid-1960s.[ane] John Wesley Harding was released on December 27, 1967, less than two months after the recording sessions.[21] The song was the second unmarried from the album, released on November 22, 1968, but did not chart.
The Jimi Hendrix Feel version [edit]
| "All Forth the Watchtower" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 European single picture sleeve | ||||
| Single past the Jimi Hendrix Experience | ||||
| from the album Electric Ladyland | ||||
| B-side |
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| Released |
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| Recorded | January, June–August 1968 | |||
| Studio |
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| Genre | Hard rock, psychedelic rock | |||
| Length | 4:01 | |||
| Label |
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| Songwriter(s) | Bob Dylan | |||
| Producer(due south) | Jimi Hendrix | |||
| Experience US singles chronology | ||||
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| Experience Uk singles chronology | ||||
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The Jimi Hendrix Experience began to tape their version of Dylan'due south "All Along the Watchtower" on Jan 21, 1968, at Olympic Studios in London.[22] According to engineer Andy Johns, Jimi Hendrix had been given a tape of Dylan's recording by publicist Michael Goldstein, who worked for Dylan's manager Albert Grossman. "(Hendrix) came in with these Dylan tapes and we all heard them for the first fourth dimension in the studio", recalled Johns.[22] Stubbs writes that this was the second of Dylan's songs Hendrix had adapted to his ain way, the starting time being "Like a Rolling Stone" played before at Monterey.[23] A 3rd song Hendrix adjusted from Dylan is identified past Zak as "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window".[24]
Music [edit]
For Albin Zak, the Hendrix version of the song is more than than a simple transposition of Dylan'due south harmonica riffs into Hendrix playing riffs on his electric guitar, but information technology involves adding a tonal quality of a "self-proclaimed 'Voodoo Child,' raging and defiant in the guise of a lead guitar".[25] The layering Hendrix introduces in his version is further intensified and is "unlike the sonic reserve of Dylan'southward recording, hither the frequency space teems with dynamic activeness. From the highs of the cymbals and tambourines to the lows of the bass guitar and kick drum, the ongoing agitation of the frequency space heightens the track's sense of tumult".[26]
Zak summarizes the Hendrix adaptation of the Dylan song in three main points stating: "There are three bones strategies apparent in this transformation (of Dylan's version): (1) the intensification of essential musical gestures and formal divisions; (two) the introduction of pitch material anomalous with the pentatonic drove of the original; and (3) the tracing of a long-range, goal-directed melodic line over the call-and-response structure of the arrangement. It is in the latter that Hendrix asserts most forcefully his protagonist claim."[27]
Although Zak has written on both the Dylan and the Hendrix versions of the song as influenced by dejection players such every bit Robert Johnson, he has stated that the Hendrix version is much closer in its blues manner to the songs and style of Dingy Waters stating: "If Dylan's crying blues is reminiscent of Robert Johnson, Hendrix'south shout calls to mind Muddy Waters and his 'deep tone with a heavy beat'."[28]
Recording [edit]
According to Hendrix's regular engineer Eddie Kramer, the guitarist cut a large number of takes on the kickoff day, shouting chord changes at Dave Mason who had appeared at the session and played an additional twelve-string guitar. Halfway through the session, bass player Noel Redding became dissatisfied with the proceedings and left. Mason then took over on bass. According to Kramer, the final bass role was played by Hendrix himself.[22] Hendrix'due south friend and Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones played a percussion instrument on the track.[22]
Kramer and Chas Chandler mixed the first version of "All Forth the Watchtower" on Jan 26,[29] but Hendrix was chop-chop dissatisfied with the result and went on re-recording and overdubbing guitar parts during June, July, and August at the Record Found studio in New York City. Engineer Tony Bongiovi has described Hendrix becoming increasingly dissatisfied as the song progressed, overdubbing more and more guitar parts, moving the master tape from a four-rails to a twelve-track to a xvi-track machine. Bongiovi recalled, "Recording these new ideas meant he would have to erase something. In the weeks prior to the mixing, we had already recorded a number of overdubs, wiping rail after track. [Hendrix] kept saying, 'I think I hear it a trivial bit differently.'"
Release, charts, and certifications [edit]
In the US, Reprise Records issued the song every bit a unmarried on September 2, 1968,[30] over a month prior to the anthology release on Electric Ladyland. It reached number twenty on Billboard ' Hot 100 chart, Hendrix's highest ranking American unmarried.[xxx] Rails Records released the single on October 18 and it reached number 5 in the British charts,[31] becoming the start Uk stereo-only single to practice and then.
Legacy [edit]
Legacy after 1974 [edit]
A alive recording of "All Along the Watchtower" from the album Before the Flood appeared as the B side of "Well-nigh Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Become Mine)" in 1974. The recordings came from separate concerts before that year at the Forum adjacent to Los Angeles, both with Dylan backed by the Band.[34] Dylan first performed the song live on Jan 3, 1974, in Chicago on the opening nighttime of his 'comeback tour'.[ane] From this first alive performance, Dylan has consistently performed the song closer to Hendrix'southward version than to his own original recording.[1] In The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, critic Michael Gray wrote that this is the most ofttimes performed of all of Dylan's songs. Past Gray's count, Dylan had performed the song in concert i,393 times past the finish of 2003.[i] According to Dylan's own website, through 2015 he had performed the song two,257 times.[35]
In recent years, Dylan in live performances has taken to singing the first verse again at the stop of the vocal. As Grey notes in his Bob Dylan Encyclopedia:
"Dylan chooses to terminate in a style that at once reduces the song'due south apocalyptic bear on and cranks up its emphasis on the artist's ain axis. Repeating the commencement stanza as the last means Dylan now ends with the words 'None of them along the line/Know what whatsoever of it is worth' (and this is sung with a prolonged, dark linger on that word 'worth')."[1]
Dylan maybe was post-obit the atomic number 82 of the Grateful Expressionless in last the song by repeating the showtime verse; the Dead covered the song in this fashion, both with and without Dylan.[36] [37]
The original recording of "All Along the Watchtower" appears on most of Dylan's later on released "greatest hits" albums, likewise every bit his 2 box prepare compilations, Biograph, released in 1985, and Dylan, released in 2007. In addition, Dylan has released live recordings of the song on the following albums: Earlier the Alluvion (recorded February 1974); Bob Dylan at Budokan (recorded March 1978); Dylan & The Expressionless (recorded July 1987); and MTV Unplugged (recorded November 1994).[ane] [38]
Legacy after 1995 [edit]
In 1995, Dylan has described his reaction to hearing Hendrix's version: "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 practice information technology to this day."[39] In the booklet accompanying his Biograph album, Dylan said: "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way... Foreign how when I sing it, I always feel it'southward a tribute to him in some kind of way." Stubbs states that Dylan eventually made a "more than heavy-duty arrangement of it on his 1974 album Before the Overflowing, practically conceded that Hendrix made the song his own".[40]
Hendrix'southward recording of the vocal appears at number 40 on Rolling Stone'due south 500 Greatest Songs of All Time,[41] and in 2000, British magazine Total Guitar named it top of the list of the greatest comprehend versions of all time.[42] Hendrix's guitar solo is included at number five on Guitar Earth 's listing of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos.[43] Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along The Watchtower" was listed by Billboard in 2015 equally one of the "Most Overplayed Songs in Movies".[44] In 2020, Far Out ranked the song number ii on their listing of the 20 greatest Jimi Hendrix songs,[45] and in 2021, American Songwriter ranked it number one on their list of the 10 greatest Jimi Hendrix songs.[46] It has been used in dozens of films including Forrest Gump, Rush, Watchmen and A Bronx Tale.[44]
References [edit]
Citations [edit]
- ^ a b c d due east f yard Gray 2006, p. 7
- ^ Bush-league, John. "All Along the Watchtower". AllMusic . Retrieved January 14, 2011.
- ^ Sounes 2001, pp. 215–8
- ^ a b Heylin, 2009, Revolution in the Air, The Songs of Bob Dylan: Volume 1, pp. 364–369.
- ^ The Stories Behind Every Song. Past David Stubbs. Thunder'south Mouth Press. 2003. Page 76.
- ^ The Stories Backside Every Song. By David Stubbs. Thunder's Mouth Printing. 2003. Page 76.
- ^ Heylin 2003, p. 285
- ^ Gill 1999, pp. 130–1
- ^ Cott 2006, p. 122
- ^ Ricks 2003, p. 359
- ^ Gill 1999, p. 131
- ^ Van Ronk, Dave (2006). The Mayor of Macdougal Street. ISBN978-0-306-81479-2.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". By Albin J. Zak III. Journal of the American Musicological Gild, Vol. 57, Issue iii, p. 620.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". By Albin J. Zak III. Periodical of the American Musicological Lodge, Vol. 57, Issue 3, p. 620-621.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". Past Albin J. Zak Iii. Periodical of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 57, Effect 3, p. 624.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". By Albin J. Zak 3. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 57, Issue 3, p. 624.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". By Albin J. Zak 3. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 57, Issue three, p. 624.
- ^ a b Bjorner, Olof (October xviii, 2020). "2nd John Wesley Harding session, vi November 1967". Still on the Road . Retrieved December ii, 2020.
- ^ Bjorner, Olof (Feb 28, 2017). "The 13th and last Blonde On Blonde session, ten March 1966". Still on the Road . Retrieved December ii, 2020.
- ^ Gray 2006, pp. 356–seven
- ^ Grey 2006, p. 350
- ^ a b c d McDermott, Kramer & Cox 2009, p. 87.
- ^ The Stories Backside Every Song. By David Stubbs. Thunder's Mouth Press. 2003. Page 76.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". Past Albin J. Zak III. Journal of the American Musicological Club, Vol. 57, Issue 3, p. 630.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". By Albin J. Zak 3. Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 57, Issue 3, p. 630.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". Past Albin J. Zak III. Periodical of the American Musicological Gild, Vol. 57, Issue three, p. 630.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". By Albin J. Zak Iii. Journal of the American Musicological Order, Vol. 57, Issue three, p. 631.
- ^ "Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation". By Albin J. Zak 3. Journal of the American Musicological Guild, Vol. 57, Issue 3, p. 632.
- ^ McDermott, Kramer & Cox 2009, p. 88.
- ^ a b Shapiro & Glebbeek 1990, p. 531.
- ^ Shapiro & Glebbeek 1990, p. 534.
- ^ "Italian unmarried certifications – Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watch Tower" (in Italian). Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana. Retrieved January 3, 2022. Select "2021" in the "Anno" drib-downwardly menu. Select "All Forth The Watch Tower" in the "Filtra" field. Select "Singoli" under "Sezione".
- ^ "British single certifications – Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Lookout Belfry". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved September 10, 2021.
- ^ "The Long, Enduring History of 'All Along the Watchtower'". By Corey Irwin, Feb 2, 2018. [1]
- ^ "Bob Dylan Songs". bobdylan.com . Retrieved Jan eighteen, 2017.
- ^ Cf. "Dylan and the Dead".
- ^ "The Long, Enduring History of 'All Forth the Watchtower'". By Corey Irwin, February two, 2018. [2]
- ^ "Bob Dylan Albums". bobdylan.com. May 21, 2012. Archived from the original on May 25, 2012. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
- ^ "A Midnight Chat with Bob Dylan". Fort Lauderdale Dominicus Lookout man. September 29, 1995.
- ^ The Stories Behind Every Song. By David Stubbs. Thunder'south Rima oris Press. 2003. Page 77.
- ^ "#40, All Along the Watchtower". rollingstone.com. September 15, 2021. Retrieved September xviii, 2021.
- ^ "The Best Cover Versions E'er". Total Guitar. Future Publishing. August 2000.
- ^ "100 Greatest Guitar Solos: 5) "All Forth the Watchtower" (Jimi Hendrix)". Guitar Globe. October 14, 2008. Archived from the original on November xviii, 2010. Retrieved August xiii, 2011.
- ^ a b "The 22 Nearly Overplayed Songs in Movies". Billboard. Feb x, 2015.
{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: url-condition (link) - ^ Whatley, Jack (November 27, 2020). "Jimi Hendrix'due south xx greatest songs of all time". Far Out Mag . Retrieved March 24, 2022.
- ^ Uitti, Jacob (November 27, 2021). "Tiptop ten Jimi Hendrix Songs". American Songwriter . Retrieved March 24, 2022.
Bibliography [edit]
- Blake, Marking, ed. (2005). Dylan: Visions, Portraits, and Dorsum Pages. Mojo/DK Publishing. ISBN978-0-7566-3725-5.
- Cott, Jonathan, ed. (2006). Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN0-340-92312-i.
- Gill, Andy (1999). Classic Bob Dylan: My Back Pages. Carlton. ISBN1-85868-599-0.
- Grayness, Michael (2006). The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia. Continuum International. ISBN0-8264-6933-vii.
- Heylin, Clinton (2003). Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited. Perennial Currents. ISBN0-06-052569-X.
- McDermott, John; Kramer, Eddie; Cox, Billy (2009). Ultimate Hendrix. New York Metropolis: Backbeat Books. ISBN978-0-87930-938-1.
- Ricks, Christopher (2003). Dylan'south Visions of Sin. Penguin/Viking. ISBN0-670-80133-X.
- Shapiro, Harry; Glebbeek, Cesar (1990). Jimi Hendrix: Electric Gypsy. New York City: St. Martin'due south Press. ISBN0-312-05861-half dozen.
- Sounes, Howard (2001). Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan. Grove Press. ISBN0-8021-1686-8.
Further reading [edit]
- Marqusee, M. (2002). Chimes of Liberty: The Politics of Bob Dylan'due south Art. New Press.
External links [edit]
- Lyrics at bobdylan.com
- "All Along the Watchtower" – Jimi Hendrix Experience (official audio) on Vevo
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Along_the_Watchtower
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