Love this . . . .
January 21, 1968, Jimi Hendrix recorded his version of the Bob Dylan song "All Along the Watchtower" at Olympic Studios in London. Rolling Stone Brian Jones (percussion) and Dave Mason from Traffic (twelve-string guitar) both played on the session. The track was released in the US as a single in 1968, peaking at No. 20.
The song first appeared on Dylan's late 1967 return to folk roots album John Wesley Harding. Hendrix claimed he had a natural gravitation toward the track. "The songs Dylan usually gave me are so close to me that I feel like I wrote them myself," he added. "With 'Along the Watchtower' I had that feeling." Less than two months after Dylan recorded the original, Hendrix was in the studio laying down his version.
In a 1995 interview with the Sun Sentinel, Dylan described his reaction to hearing Hendrix's version.
"It overwhelmed me, really," he said. "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."
I don’t think I should ever not post this . . . . . . . . . a favourite track, [album, artist(s)] and still cannot imagine what on earth it must have been like for Bobby to hear this for the very first time! Can you put yourself in his shoes and know that someone has taken a song you wrote and transformed it thus!? After two months!?
Not the quietest song on John Wesley Harding but the whole album was a such a signature statement that for Jimi to take it make this song his own and to have influenced the man who actually wrote it so that he forever plays his own tune differently is little short of staggering.
We miss Jimi, imagine what world musics of the universe he would have created had only the technology been able to keep up (it couldn’t!)
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