Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation "All along the Watchtower"

Abstract

A comparison of recordings of Bob Dylan's "All along the Watchtower" by Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix offers a vivid case study of what Samuel Floyd characterizes as "the complementary oppositions of African- and European-derived musical processes and events." The song itself draws together elements of ballad and blues traditions; and the two recordings treat this synthesis in very different ways even as they share the common ground of late 1960s rock. Dylan's is a spare, acoustic folk-rock rendition, while Hendrix's is an opulent electric spectacle whose sonic and syntactic conception unpacks the latent drama only suggested by the original. In the process, Hendrix offers an alternative answer to the song's existential dilemma implied in its lyrics and emphasized in its musical setting. This paper examines the elements and the workings of the dialogic interaction represented first of all in Dylan's song, and then in the transformation it undergoes in Hendrix's version.