The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "All Along The Watchtower" : not just a cover

All AlongThe Watchtower is really special, even though, funnily enough, it’s not one of Hendrix’s songs. The arrangement is so striking and beautiful. When you listen to those acoustic guitars and the way it’s recorded, there’s something that’s so creamy and warm and enveloping. It’s the sound of that song and the way all the parts cross over. It’s just a fabulous example of Jimi Hendrix at his best.

Bob Dylan said All Along The Watchtower was “a small song of mine that nobody paid any attention to”.

Released in September 1968 as the lead single from Electric Ladyland, All Along The Watchtower was not so much a cover as a song entirely reinvented. To hear it was to almost forget the existence of the original, which now seemed a mere blueprint by comparison. The single reached No.5 in the UK and No.20 in the US, making it Hendrix’s breakthrough success in his homeland. To date it has been streamed on Spotify more than 560 million times - more than twice the total of the song in second place, Purple Haze.

As for Dylan, he was magnanimous. “It overwhelmed me, really. [Hendrix] 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 from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day.”