Bob Dylan: All Along the Watchtower

SONG All Along the Watchtower 

WRITTEN BY Bob Dylan 

PERFORMED BY Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix 

APPEARS ON John Wesley Harding (1967); Electric Ladyland (1968) 

NOTE 1 Dylan was so taken with the Hendrix rendition that he performs that arrangement in concert to this day. NOTE 2 The melody and lyrics to "All Along the Watchtower" played a critical role in the final season of the SciFi channel series Battlestar Galactica. NOTE 3 Sony has removed from YouTube all videos all Dylan's original acoustic arrangement, so I can't include that here.

Many Dylan fans and scholars conclude that "All Along the Watchtower" is a middling song that achieved classic status only because of Jimi Hendrix' epic cover version. The lyrics, they argue, are impenetrably cryptic and depend on metaphor that makes no sense: Dave Van Ronk wrote -- irrelevantly and incorrectly, it seems to me -- that "a watchtower is not a road or a wall, and you can't go along it." Van Ronk believed that Dylan's reputation allowed him to get away with lyrics that anyone else would have pilloried over.

Unsurprisingly, I disagree, starting with the obvious point: The lyrics are quintessential Dylan and no one else could have written them. Dylan recorded "Watchtower" in Nashville as part of the sessions that produced John Wesley Harding, the first album released after his 1966 motorcycle accident. Although the details of the accident remain obscure, it apparently inspired Dylan to turn to the Biblical and apocalyptic imagery that populates both John Wesley Harding and The Basement Tapes, the sessions for which actually preceded Harding. The succinctness and directness of "All Along the Watchtower" stand out on an album of songs notable for their elliptical symbolism and elusive meanings that often seem just barely out of reach.

Dylan's original acoustic version (unavailable for linking) is ominous and evocative, with its last line ("the wind began to howl") giving way to a stark and icy harmonica solo.  The song emphatically rejects the nihilism that Dylan sees at the heart of commerce:

Businessmen, they drink my wine. Ploughmen dig my earth.
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth

The joker and thief are outsiders who recognize that modern life creates "too much confusion,"  Cassandras warning the rest of us that "the hour is getting late." In fact, the song is laden with portent: "There's too much confusion," "let us not talk falsely now," "princes kept the view," "a wildcat did growl."

Who are the mysterious two riders? I see them as a tabula rasa upon which listeners can impose their worst fears of a society that defines success by wealth and position. For no reason supported by the lyrics, I've always imagined Dickens' children Ignorance and Want grown up, mounted, and on the offensive. But that's the marvel of the song: It conjures your most acute dread, which in turn impels you to not talk falsely and to pace the watchtower of your existence, ever alert for the two horsemen.

LYRICS
"There  must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion. I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine. Ploughmen dig my earth.
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief he kindly spoke
"There are many here among who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate.
Let us not talk falsely now; the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching; the wind began to howl.

Bob kicks butt around the mid-90s:


Jimi at the Isle of Wight in 1970:


Battlestar Galactica Watchtower montage here...

Born Under a Bad Sign - Albert King and others

SONG Born Under a Bad Sign

WRITTEN BY Booker T. Jones (music) & William Bell (words)

PERFORMED BY Albert King, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Cream, Jimi Hendrix

APPEARS ON Albert King, Born Under a Bad Sign (1967); Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw (1967); Cream, Wheels of Fire (1968); Jimi Hendrix, recorded with the Band of Gypsies in 1970 but not released until the compilation Blues (1994)

This song reached iconic status from it's first release by Albert King in 1967. As a Blues number it's pretty straightforward; while there's really nothing special about the lyrics (I can think of maybe 10 other Blues tunes with almost the same lyrics right off the top of my head), that driving pentatonic bass line is hypnotic, almost threatening, much like the driving bass loop of Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy". Still, though, it's fairly straightforward. What's special about this number is its delivery; this song was blessed with performers who took the song and ran with it.

Let's do the lyrics first, and afterward explore what the performers did with it.

Lyrics:

Born under a bad sign

I been down since I begin to crawl

If it wasn't for bad luck,

I wouldn't have no luck at all

Hard luck and trouble is my only friend

I been on my own ever since I was ten

Born under a bad sign
I been down since I begin to crawl

If it wasn't for bad luck,

I wouldn't have no luck at all

I can't read, haven't learned how to write

My whole life has been one big fight

Born under a bad sign

I been down since I begin to crawl

If it wasn't for bad luck,

I wouldn't have no luck at all

I ain't lyin'

If it wasn't for bad luck

I wouldn't have no kind-a luck

If it wasn't for real bad luck,
I wouldn't have no luck at all

Wine and women is all I crave

A big legged woman is

gonna carry me to my grave

Born under a bad sign

I been down since I begin to crawl

If it wasn't for bad luck, 

I wouldn't have no luck at all

Yeah, my bad luck boy

Been havin' bad luck all of my days, yeah

So, what did the individual interpreters do with this song that made it such an icon. Albert King had a pretty workmanlike approach, but he drove the song, to a point where it feels like he's pushing it ahead of himself. It has the typical Chicago-style horn line-up and even some back-up singers, but you feel as if they're trying hard to keep up with King. King puts a lot into his voice; you believe him when he sings that bad luck follows him everywhere. And of course there's the inimitable Albert King guitar style, played on his signature Flying V. Here he is in 1980 in Sweden:

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is a different story. Butterfield slows it down some and makes it even bluesier, if that's possible. Elvin Bishop's guitar is less flashy than it is impulsive here, and like Albert King he seems to be pushing the band along. Butterfield's expressive voice fits this song well, and the horn section seems so much more lush than King's. This is a classic track, but there was nothing on YouTube with it, so here's the original album track from The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw:

Cream's treatment of "Born Under a Bad Sign" was how many in my generation first heard the song. They slow it down much more than Butterfield did, and under Jack Bruce's voice and Eric Clapton's guitar this song becomes almost menacing, even spooky. Their treatment makes this sound as if the subject of the song isn't just a guy who can't get any breaks, he's a downright harbinger of doom. Here's Cream at their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame:

Finally, there's the Jimi Hendrix version. He never released this on an album, although he played it at the two live gigs with the Band of Gypsies. This is an instrumental, and like the Cream version it's slow, menacing, and spooky; Hendrix was good at setting that kind of mood. On this tune Jimi's more into creating that mood than playing guitar gymnastics. As I said, it was never released on an album in Jimi's lifetime; this YouTube video uses the track from the 1994 CD Blues, a compilation of Jimi playing Blues covers.

So there you have it - one of the iconic tunes of the Blues and the four performers who made it the icon it became.