Pop Anthology (147): Jimi Hendrix: "All Along the Watchtower"

Bob Dylan, young and famous, had just released his double album Blonde on Blonde when he was involved in a motorcycle accident in July 1966.

From one day to the next, the adored idol with a tight schedule becomes a quiet convalescent who has fled to the countryside, who devotes himself to his family, studies the Bible and writes poems -

, not

, which can already be seen from the fact that the lyrics have no refrain.

Nevertheless, he makes them the basis of a new album, which he records in November 1967 at Columbia Studios in Nashville.

The album "John Wesley Harding" will be released on December 27th, "All Along the Watchtower" is the fourth title.

The echo is ambivalent: "Blonde on Blonde" showed Dylan on the way to becoming a rock star, "John Wesley Harding" seems like a return to conservative folk: simple melodies, sparse instrumentation, slow delivery.

The accident also changed Dylan's voice, it sounds flat and nasal.

Meanwhile, Jimi Hendrix is ​​on the road to musical experiments after initial successes.

He is looking for usable material for the major project of a double LP.

When his friend Michael Goldstein, who works for Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, gave him the new Dylan tapes before they were released, he was immediately fascinated by the "Watchtower".

In the London Olympic Studios, the "Jimi Hendrix Experience" (Hendrix, Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell) begins to develop its own version.

The sessions are chaotic, visitors flood the rooms, quite a few want to take part.

According to legend, Jimi's friend Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones, contributes all sorts of percussion elements and a piano solo, which is later mixed out again.

January 26th is the end for now,

but the "Experience" continued the work in New York in the early summer of 1968, for months, until "Electric Ladyland", the milestone, finally appeared in the fall.

It is Hendrix's last studio album and his most successful.

"All Along the Watchtower", the penultimate number, was released as a single and reached number 5 in the United Kingdom charts, and number 20 in the "Top Forty Hits" in the USA.

A month later, Dylan sent his original to the racetrack, also as a single, but it flopped, which he endured with equanimity.

Hendrix's version "wowed" him, and in his live performances after 1974, "All Along the Watchtower" figures in pretty much every playlist.

Today, Bob, the longtime wonder, is still on the Never Ending tour, while Jimi, the fire that burned himself, greets forever young from the voodoo jungle - both cherishing themselves and honoring the other without envy.