All Along the Watch Tower [Jimi Hendrix / Bob Dylan] DEEP COVER
From the Vault … Nov 16, 2012
Hey new semi regular feature of the blog. The “Deep Cover.” What’s “Deep Cover?” you ask? You didn’t? Can we pretend? Okay great … “Deep Cover” is a cover song that’s so well known that the original version is all but lost to the sands of time, or more often than not mistaken for the original version by people less edumicated than I.
So the first “Deep Cover?” All Along The Watch Tower. It was Jimi Hendrix’s only Top 40 hit. It’s one of the greatest rock songs of all time. VH1 put it in it’s top 3, Rolling Stone put it at number 47, shockingly low if you ask me. Guitar World said it had the #5 greatest guitar solo of all time. And Total Guitar magazine called it the greatest cover song of all time.
The original was of course by Bob Dylan. And who doesn’t do a Dylan cover? The legend is that Dylan liked Hendrix’s version so much, it’s what prompted him to pick back up the electric guitar, which he had previously sworn off. I’m sure this set off all sorts of hippie protests. I can’t find anything to “verify” this on Wikipedia, so maybe not. Anyway Dylan did say about the Hendrix cover ”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.”
Sure the song has been covered a billion times by a billion artists, but they all play it more in the style of Jimi than of the Dylan original. And yes, that now includes Dylan himself.
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