‘All Along The Watchtower’: The Jimi Hendrix cover that might just be the greatest of all time
Crafting the perfect cover is a difficult thing to achieve. It’s not as simple as performing the notes and singing the lyrics on the page in front of you, or even as easy as paying homage to the track’s originator in an unusual way. No, the best covers, the greatest in fact, use a combination of all this compressed together with idiosyncratic flavour, artistic intent and unique delivery to create something transient yet connected, a tribute that stands alone, a complete reworking into a piece that could only be created by the new artist. Over the years, many have tried to achieve such a delightful balance, but only Jimi Hendrix has truly completed the task.
Hendrix isn’t just one of rock and roll’s most original creators. He was also an avid fan. Often sharing a collection of his most loved songs or artists of the day, Hendrix routinely paid homage to his heroes through a series of covers. While his most famous might be the unique reworking of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, the guitarist also doffed his cap to The Beatles with a tyrannical retelling of their song ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and took on established folk songs like ‘Hey Joe’. However, there was one cover in his repertoire that he quickly made his own: Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along The Watchtower’.
Written in 1967, as Bob Dylan endured a self-imposed exile following a motorcycle accident, ‘All Along The Watchtower’ is one of his finer creations from the period. At the time, he was working closely with The Band and manifesting a slew of country-tinged and copyrighted bits of material that would rarely see the light of day. Drenched in the fatigue of his fame and dripping with the rallying cries of a man who had been too frequently pigeonholed, Dylan used this number to break out of his comfort zone and take aim at the crumbling world around him.
However, rather than providing his fans with simple instructions on how to feel or suggesting ways in which revolution can begin, the author of his particular ditty guides his audience not to simply sit on the watchtower and wait for the world to fall but to find peace within and be content with whichever way in life you wanted to wander. It feels fitting then that one of the decade’s more gifted sonic auteurs should take up this forgotten song and carry it on a new journey.
Swirling with the talent Hendrix possessed within his guitar-playing hands, ‘All Along The Watchtower’ took on new life. It may not have needed much of Hendrix’s unique vocal tone, which sits somewhere between breathy late-night smoke and the musical morning dew, but his work on the axe is spellbinding. It lifts and drops like a benevolent angel, rarely allowing its passengers to fear for too long that it will once again hit the heights of musical heaven.
Dylan said of 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 do it to this day.”
The track has had a fair few renditions from famous faces over the years. Whether it’s from Eddie Vedder’s Pearl Jam, the smoother-than-smooth tones of Bryan Ferry, the salt of the earth Neil Young, or even the Irish pop-rock poster boys U2. But none hold a candle to Hendrix’s. Cosmic, connected and dripping with prestige, this is undoubtedly the ultimate cover.
“All those people who don’t like Bob Dylan’s songs should read his lyrics. They are filled with the joys and sadness of life,” Hendrix said when talking about the fated number. “I am as Dylan, none of us can sing normally. Sometimes, I play Dylan’s songs, and they are so much like me that it seems to me that I wrote them. I have the feeling that ‘Watchtower’ is a song I could have come up with, but I’m sure I would never have finished it.”
While he may not have possessed the wherewithal to have a mystic masterpiece like ‘All Along The Watchtower’ finished on the page, given the chance to make the song into something that was him, that directly conflated the imagery given by Dylan with the sentiment of the work, Hendrix entirely completed the original creator’s vision.
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