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Kalaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fisher and this is the
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Hit Maker Chronicles. We're at number three on our countdown
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of the top ten best cover songs of all time,
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as voted by the staff at Kalaroga Shark Media. We're
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in the final three now, and this week we're looking
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at something extraordinary. A cover that's so transformative, so definitive,
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that the person who wrote the song started performing it
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the way the cover artist did, a cover that the
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original artist openly acknowledged as better than his own version.
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All Along the Watchtower by Jimmy Hendrix. That opening, that
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guitar riff that sounds like it's cutting through reality itself,
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That psychedelic, electric, apocalyptic energy that makes the song feel
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like it's describing the end of the world. It's one
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of the greatest guitar performances ever recorded. It's one of
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Jimmy Hendrix's signature songs, and it was written by Bob
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Dylan as a sparse acoustic folk song on his nineteen
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sixty seven album John Wesley Harding. This is the story
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of how Jimmy Hendrix took a Bob Dylan song and
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transformed it so completely that Dylan himself said it wasn't
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his song anymore, it was Jimmy's. Let's start with Bob
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Dylan in late nineteen sixty seven. Dylan had been in
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a motorcycle accident in July nineteen sixty six and had
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spent over a year recovering and retreating from public life.
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He'd been at the center of the folk rock revolution,
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had gone Electric at the Newport Folk Festival in nineteen
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sixty five to massive controversy, had released Highway sixty one,
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Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, two of the most important
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albums in rock history, and then he disappeared. The motorcycle
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accident gave him an excuse to step away from the
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relentless touring, the media scrutiny, the pressure to constantly be
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Bob Dylan, the cultural icon. When he came back in
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December nineteen sixty seven with John Wesley Harding, the album
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was a complete departure from what anyone expected. No electric guitars,
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no elaborate production, just Dylan an acoustic guitar, a bass,
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and drums. The songs were sparse, biblical, mysterious, short versus
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cryptic lyrics, nothing explained all along the Watchtower was one
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of the shortest songs on the album, just three verses,
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no chorus. The imagery was biblical and apocalyptic, two writers
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approaching a watchtower, a joker and a thief having a
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conversation about the meaninglessness of modern life, a sense of
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impending doom. The song felt ancient and modern at the
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same time, like Dylan was channeling something from the Old
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Testament but setting it in the present moment. Dylan's version
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was recorded in Nashville with bass player Charlie McCoy and
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drummer Kenny Buttery. The arrangement was minimal, acoustic guitar playing
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simple chords, bass and drums keeping steady time, Dylan's voice
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delivering the verses in that distinctive nasal tone, not trying
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to make it pretty, just telling the story. The song
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lasted two minutes and thirty one seconds. It was over
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before you could fully process what it was about. It
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felt like a fragment, like part of a longer story
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that Dylan was only giving you a glimpse of. John
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Wesley Harding came out in December nineteen sixty seven. Critics
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loved it. The sparse production and cryptic lyrics felt profound
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after the psychedelic excess that had dominated rock music that year,
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but it wasn't a massive commercial hit. It was respected, studied, analyzed,
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but it wasn't burning up the charts. And then Jimmy
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Hendrix heard it. Jimmy was in the middle of recording
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his third album, Electric Ladyland. He was at the absolute
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peak of his creative powers. He'd already released Are You
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Experienced In Axis, Bold As Love, two albums that had
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redefined what the electric guitar could do, what rock music
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could sound like. He was experimenting with every effect, pedal,
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every studio technique, every possible way to make his guitar
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express things that had never been expressed before. When Jimmy
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heard Dylan's All Along the Watchtower, he understood something that
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Dylan maybe hadn't fully realized. This song could be massive.
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The imagery was powerful, the apocalyptic feeling was there, but
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the arrangement was holding it back. It was too quiet,
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too restrained. Jimmy heard it as electric rock. He heard
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the guitar riff that would become one of the most
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famous riffs in rock history. He heard the drums building intensity.
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He heard the whole thing exploding in January nineteen sixty eight,
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Jimmy went into Olympic Studios in London. He brought in
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Dave Mason from Traffic to play acoustic guitar. He had
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Noel Reading on bass and Mitch Mitchell on drums, and
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he started building his version of All Along the watch Tower.
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The recording process was meticulous. Jimmy recorded multiple guitar parts,
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layering them to create this dense, swirling sound. The famous
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guitar riff that opens the song that wasn't in Dylan's version.
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Jimmy created it. That descending figure that sounds like it's
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falling through space. That's pure Hendrix. The arrangement built tension
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in a way Dylan's version didn't. Where Dylan's version was
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steady and calm, Jimmy's version felt urgent. The drums were
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more aggressive, the bass was more prominent, and Jimmy's guitar
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work throughout the song was extraordinary. Not flashy solos for
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the sake of showing off, but melodic lines that heightened
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the apocalyptic feeling of the lyrics. And then there were
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the guitar solos, two of them. The first one comes
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after the first verse, and it's almost like Jimmy is
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commenting on and what Dylan just said, translating the words
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into pure sound. The second solo comes at the end,
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and it's even more intense, more searching, more like Jimmy
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is trying to find something just beyond reach. The song
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was longer than Dylan's version, four minutes instead of two
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and a half, but it didn't feel long. It felt necessary.
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Every second was building towards something. Jimmy's version of All
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Along the watch Tower was released on Electric Ladyland in
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September nineteen sixty eight. It was also released as a single,
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and it became a hit. It reached number twenty on
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the Billboard Hot one hundred in the US. It went
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to number five in the UK. It became one of
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Jimmy's most played songs on rock radio, and critically, it
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became the definitive version of the song. When people thought
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of All Along the watch Tower, they thought of Jimmy's version,
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the guitar riff, the psychedelic production, the sense of impending apocolyps.
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Dylan's version became a footnote the original, yes, but not
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the version people remembered. We'll be right back now. Here's
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where the story gets really interesting. Bob Dylan's response to
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Jimmy Hendrick's cover wasn't defensive or territorial. It was the opposite.
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Dylan started performing All Along the Watchtower live using Jimmy's arrangement,
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not his own acoustic version, but Jimmy's electric version. Dylan
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brought in electric guitars, tried to recreate that driving rhythm,
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played it the way Jimmy had reimagined it. In interviews
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over the years, Dylan has been remarkably candid about this.
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He said that when he heard Jimmy's version, he realized
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that's what the song should have been. That Jimmy had
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understood something about the song that Dylan himself hadn't fully
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grasped when he wrote it. Dylan has said it overwhelmed me. Really,
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he had such talent. He could find things inside a
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song and vigorously developed them. He found things that other
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people wouldn't think of finding in there. He probably improved
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upon it by the spaces he was using. I took
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license with the song from his version, actually, and continue
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to do it to this day. Read that again, I
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took license with the song from his version. Dylan one
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of the greatest songwriters in the history of popular music.
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Openly admitting that he borrowed from Jimmy Hendrix's interpretation of
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his own song. That's unprecedented. That's a songwriter saying you
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understood my song better than I did. You found something
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in it that I missed. Your version is the version.
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This isn't just about ego or humility. It's about recognizing
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that sometimes a song has potential that the person who
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wrote it doesn't fully realize. Dylan wrote the words, wrote
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the melody, created the foundation, but Jimmy built the house,
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and Dylan was secure enough and honest enough to acknowledge that.
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Jimmy M. Hendricks died in September nineteen seventy at age
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twenty seven. He only had two years to perform All
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Along the Watchtower live after recording it, but in those
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two years the song became one of his signature pieces.
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It showcased everything he could do with a guitar, melody, rhythm, texture, emotion.
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It proved he wasn't just a virtuoso showing off, but
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a musician who could serve a song while still making
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it his own. After Jimmy died, All Along the Watchtower
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became even more iconic. It was played constantly on classic
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rock radio. It appeared on Greatest Hits compilations. It was
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used in films, most famously in Battlestar Galactica, where it
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became a crucial plot point. The song took on a
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life beyond both Dylan and Hendrix, becoming part of the
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cultural fabric, and every time someone covered it after Jimmy's
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version came out, they were covering Jimmy, not Dylan. The
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acoustic folk arrangement disappeared, the electric arrangement became the standard.
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That's the power of a truly transformative cover. It doesn't
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just reinterpret the song, it becomes the song. So why
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did Jimmy's version work so much better than Dylan's? What
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did Jimmy understand that Dylan didn't. Part of it is
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the instrumentation. Dylan's acoustic version is introspective, mysterious, quiet. It
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treats the apocalyptic imagery as something distant, something to be
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observed calmly. Jimmy's electric version treats the apocalypse as immediate, urgent,
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something happening right now. The distorted guitars, the driving rhythm section,
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the intensity of the performance. It all matches the Biblical
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imagery in a way that acoustic folk can't. Part of
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it is Jimmy's guitar work. Those melodic lines between verses
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aren't just decoration their commentary. They're Jimmy processing what the
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lyrics are saying and responding with his guitar. It's like
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a conversation between Dylan's words and Jimmy's instrument. And part
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of it is just feel. Jimmy's version feels dangerous. It
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feels like something important is happening. Dylan's version feels like
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a guy telling you a story about something that happened once.
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Jimmy's version feels like you're living through it. The song
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structure helps two three verses, no chorus, cryptic lyrics. It's
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not a typical pop song structure. Dylan's version treats that
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as a reason to be minimal, to let the strangeness
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speak for itself. Jimmy's version treats it as a reason
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to build intensity, to make each verse feel more urgent
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than the last, to create momentum even without a traditional chorus.
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Both approaches are valid, but Jimmy's approach made the song
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a rock classic. Dylan's approach made it an interesting deep
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cut on a respected album. In the decades since, All
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Along the Watchtower has become one of the most covered
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songs in rock history. Dave Matthews Band, You Too, Neil Young, Pearl, Jam,
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The Grateful Dead, everyone done a version, and almost all
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of them base their arrangement on Jimmy's version, not Dylan's.
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Dylan himself continues to perform it live, and his live
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versions have evolved over the years, but they still owe
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more to Jimmy's arrangement than to his original recording. That's
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Dylan acknowledging, night after night, year after year, that Jimmy
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got it right. All Along the watch Tower is number
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three on our countdown because it represents the ultimate inartistic
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generosity and recognition. Bob Dylan didn't have to admit that
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Jimmy's version was better. He could have insisted on performing
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his original arrangement. He could have been defensive about it. Instead,
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he embraced it, He learned from it, He made it
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part of how he understood his own song. That's not
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just a great cover story. That's a great story about artistry,
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about ego, about being secure enough to recognize when someone
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else has improved on your work. It's also number three
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because Jimmy Hendrix's version is one of the greatest rock
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recordings ever made. That guitar work, that arrangement, that performance,
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it's everything that made Jimmy special distilled into four minutes.
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It's not showing off, it's not excess, it's just brilliant
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musicianship in service of a great song. And it's a
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reminder that the best covers don't just pay tribute to
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the original. They find something in the song that the
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original missed and bring it to light. Bob Dylan wrote
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All Along the Watchtower, but Jimmy Hendrix made it eternal.
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This is Garrett Fisher and this is the Hit Maker Chronicles.
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Join us next Sunday for number two on our countdown
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of the top ten best cover songs of all time.