ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
JIMI HENDRIX
SONGWRITER: BOB DYLAN
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: ELETRIC LADYLAND
LABEL: REPRISE RECORDS
GENRE: PSYCHEDELIC ROCK
YEAR: 1968
Electric
Ladyland is the third and final studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience and
the final studio album released in Hendrix's lifetime before his death in 1970.
Released by Reprise Records in North America and Track Records in the UK in
October 1968, the double album was the only record from the band produced by
Hendrix. By mid-November, it had charted at number one in the United States,
where it spent two weeks at the top spot. Electric Ladyland was the
Experience's most commercially successful release and their only number one
album. It peaked at
number six in the UK, where it spent 12 weeks on the chart.
Electric
Ladyland included a cover of the Bob Dylan song "All Along the
Watchtower", which became the Experience's best-selling single, peaking at
number six in the UK and 20 in the US. Although the album confounded critics in 1968, it has
since been viewed as Hendrix's best work and one of the greatest rock records
of all time. Electric Ladyland has been featured on many greatest-album
lists, including Q magazine's 2003 list of the 100 greatest albums and Rolling
Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, on which it was ranked
55th.
"All
Along the Watchtower" is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter
Bob Dylan. The song initially appeared on his 1967 album John Wesley Harding,
and it has been included on most of Dylan's subsequent greatest hits
compilations. Since
the late 1970s, he has performed it in concert more than any of his other
songs. Different versions appear on four of Dylan's live
albums.
Covered
by numerous artists in various genres, "All Along the Watchtower" is
strongly identified with the interpretation Jimi Hendrix recorded for the album
Electric Ladyland with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The Hendrix version,
released six months after Dylan's original recording, became a Top 20 single in
1968, received a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2001, and was ranked 47th in Rolling
Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.
James
Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix(born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942
– September 18, 1970) was an American rock guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Although his mainstream career
lasted only four years, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential
guitarists in history and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th
century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as
"the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music".
Born in Seattle,
Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the
US Army and trained as a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division, but he was
discharged the following year. He moved to Clarksville, Tennessee soon after
and began playing gigs on the Chitlin' Circuit, earning a place in the Isley
Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to
work through mid-1965. He played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before
moving to England in late 1966 after being discovered by Linda Keith, who
interested bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals in becoming his first manager. Within
months, Hendrix earned three UK top ten hits with the Jimi Hendrix Experience:
"Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary".
He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in
1967, and his third and final studio album Electric Ladyland reached number one
in the US in 1968; it was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and
his only number-one album. He was the world's highest-paid performer, and he
headlined the Woodstock festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in
1970. He died from barbiturate-related asphyxia on September 18, 1970, at age
27.
Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and
electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high
volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously
undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also one of the
first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in
mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe. He
was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Holly
George-Warren of Rolling Stone writes: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the
instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented
with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into
a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he
began."
In 1967,
readers of Melody Maker voted Hendrix the Pop Musician of the Year, and Rolling
Stone declared him the Performer of the Year in 1968. Disc and Music Echo magazine
honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969, and Guitar Player named him
the Rock Guitarist of the Year in 1970. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of
Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums among
the 100 greatest albums of all time, and ranked Hendrix the greatest guitarist
and the sixth greatest artist of all time.
There must be some kind of way out of here
Said
the joker to the thief
There's
too much confusion
I
can't get no relief
Business
men, they, they drink my wine
Plowmen
dig my earth
None
will level on the line
Nobody
offered his word, hey
No
reason to get excited
The
thief, he kindly spoke
There
are many here among us
Who
feel that life is but a joke
But
you and I, we've been through that
And
this is not our fate
So
let us not talk falsely now
The
hour's getting late, hey!
All
along the watchtower
Princes
kept the view
While
all the women came and went
Barefoot
servants too
Outside
in the cold distance
A
wild cat did growl
Two
riders were approaching
And
the wind began to howl, hey!
(All
along the tower)
(Beware,
oh, beware)
All
along the watchtower.
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