Dylan Heard Jimi’s ‘Watchtower’ – OVERWHELMED, CRIED-Changed His Song Forever – ‘I Wish He Was Here’

Dylan heard Jimi’s Watchtower, was overwhelmed, cried, changed his song forever. “I wish he was here.”

September 1968.

Bob Dylan was living quietly in Woodstock, New York, far from the chaos of the music industry.

He had retreated there after a motorcycle accident in 1966, seeking peace and time with his young family. The wild tours, the screaming fans, the pressure to be the voice of a generation — all of it felt distant.

Now he was writing differently.

More introspectively.

Creating music that felt personal rather than revolutionary.

In late 1967, he recorded an album called John Wesley Harding.

It was sparse, acoustic, and almost biblical in its imagery.

One of the songs on that album was something he had written during a thunderstorm — a cryptic three-verse piece with just twelve lines about a joker and a thief.

He called it All Along the Watchtower.

Dylan knew it was a good song.

The imagery was strong. The mystery was compelling.

But it was also small and quiet — almost a sketch of an idea rather than a fully realized composition.

When the album came out in December 1967, the song barely made an impression.

Critics mentioned it briefly.

A few people liked it.

For most listeners, it was simply another Dylan track on another Dylan album.

What Dylan didn’t know, sitting quietly in Woodstock, was that across the Atlantic someone was listening to that song with an intensity that bordered on obsession.

Jimi Hendrix had received an advance copy of John Wesley Harding before its official release.

Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, had distributed copies to a few artists in hopes they might record some of the songs.

When Hendrix got the album in London, he played it repeatedly.

Over and over.

Something about All Along the Watchtower gripped him.

Years later, he tried to explain why.

“The songs Dylan usually gives me are so close to me that I feel like I wrote them myself. With ‘Along the Watchtower,’ I had that feeling.”

In January 1968, only a month after Dylan’s version had been released, Hendrix walked into Olympic Studios with an idea.

He wasn’t planning a cover.

He was planning a transformation.

Dylan’s acoustic meditation would become an electric prophecy.

The recording sessions turned obsessive.

Hendrix worked for weeks, recording take after take.

Nothing sounded quite right.

He kept hearing something in his head that the tape still wasn’t capturing.

Dave Mason of Traffic was brought in to play twelve-string guitar.

Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones appeared drunk and enthusiastic, attempting percussion.

After two unusable takes, engineer Eddie Kramer reportedly had to remove him from the session.

But the real magic came from Hendrix himself.

Using a Gibson Flying V, he carefully planned his solos while leaving room for spontaneous inspiration.

For slide effects, he grabbed whatever was nearby.

Knives.

Beer bottles.

His Zippo lighter.

Even his rings.

The result wasn’t just music.

It was architecture.

A vast sonic landscape built from hints Dylan had only suggested.

Even then, Hendrix wasn’t satisfied.

He took the recordings to New York and continued layering guitars, textures, and details.

The song kept evolving.

Growing larger.

Darker.

More urgent.

What had begun as a folk meditation became a rock apocalypse.

A soundtrack for the anxiety and upheaval of 1968.

In September 1968, Hendrix released All Along the Watchtower as a single from Electric Ladyland.

The reaction was immediate.

The song reached No. 5 in the United Kingdom and No. 20 in the United States.

Radio stations played it constantly.

People who had never paid attention to Dylan’s original were suddenly mesmerized.

But the person most stunned by the recording was Bob Dylan.

Nobody knows the exact moment Dylan first heard Hendrix’s version.

Most accounts place it in late September or early October 1968 at his home in Woodstock.

Someone brought over the record.

Or perhaps played it for him.

Maybe a friend.

Maybe Albert Grossman.

Whoever it was understood that Dylan needed to hear it.

Imagine the scene.

Bob Dylan, the greatest songwriter of his generation, sitting in his living room listening to someone else interpret one of his songs.

He had heard countless covers before.

Some were good.

Some were bad.

Most were forgettable.

Then the needle dropped.

For the next four minutes, Dylan listened as his song became something entirely different.

Something bigger than he had imagined.

What happened next changed his relationship with his own music forever.

In 1995, Dylan reflected on the experience during an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

The memory remained vivid.

“It overwhelmed me. Really overwhelmed.”

Not impressed.

Not pleased.

Not flattered.

Overwhelmed.

The word carries weight.

It suggests something so powerful that it alters your understanding.

Something that forces you to rethink what you thought you knew.

Speaking about Hendrix, Dylan continued:

“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.”

Then came perhaps the most remarkable admission.

“He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using.”

Improved upon it.

Coming from Bob Dylan, those words were extraordinary.

Dylan was famously protective of his work.

Rarely did he praise covers in such terms.

Yet here he was openly acknowledging that another artist had taken his song and made it better.

But what happened afterward was even more remarkable.

Dylan didn’t simply admire Hendrix’s version.

He adopted it.

“I took license with the song from his version actually and continued to do it to this day.”

Think about that.

The original songwriter changed the way he performed his own composition because of someone else’s interpretation.

It’s almost unheard of.

A creator learning from an interpreter.

An author accepting that another artist had discovered something hidden inside the work.

In 1974, Dylan returned to touring after an eight-year absence.

Expectations were enormous.

His first show took place on January 3 at Chicago Stadium.

And when he played All Along the Watchtower, it no longer sounded like the version he had recorded in 1967.

It sounded like Hendrix.

The tempo was faster.

The guitars were louder.

The energy was more urgent.

The folk meditation had become a rock anthem.

Music historians would later describe Dylan’s approach as “Hendrized.”

He was effectively performing a cover of a cover of his own song.

Some critics found it strange.

Others found it beautiful.

Dylan didn’t seem concerned either way.

For him, it was something simpler.

A tribute.

A recognition of what Hendrix had revealed.

In the liner notes for his 1985 compilation Biograph, Dylan offered another glimpse into his feelings.

“I liked Jimi Hendrix’s record of this. And ever since he died, I’ve been doing it that way. Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it’s a tribute to him in some kind of way.”

Those words carry a quiet sadness.

Because Hendrix had died on September 18, 1970.

He was only 27 years old.

And from that moment onward, every performance of All Along the Watchtower became an act of remembrance.

The tragedy at the heart of this story is simple.

Dylan never got the chance to tell Hendrix what the song meant to him.

Never got to properly thank him.

Never got to sit down with him and ask what he had heard in the music that Dylan himself had missed.

They had met only once.

In 1966.

At a Greenwich Village bar called The Kettle of Fish.

Both men were intoxicated.

“Stoned out of our minds,” Hendrix later recalled.

Mostly they laughed.

Talked very little.

Then went their separate ways.

At the time, Dylan was already a superstar.

Hendrix was still largely unknown.

Neither could have imagined how deeply their artistic legacies would become connected.

After that meeting, they never crossed paths again.

Hendrix moved to London and became a phenomenon.

Dylan withdrew to Woodstock after his accident.

Their lives unfolded in parallel.

Close, yet strangely separate.

What makes the story even more astonishing is that in 1968 and 1969, Hendrix actually lived in Woodstock.

At one point he stayed less than a quarter mile from Dylan’s home.

They were practically neighbors.

Hendrix drove around town in a red Corvette, fascinated by Dylan’s transformation and searching for some of the peace Dylan seemed to have found.

Yet somehow they never met.

Never talked.

Never had the conversation both men deserved.

Then Hendrix died.

And that conversation became impossible forever.

In 2015, Dylan was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year.

During his acceptance speech, he reflected on artists who had recorded his songs.

He mentioned several performers.

Several interpretations.

But when he spoke about Hendrix, something changed.

Witnesses said emotion broke through Dylan’s normally reserved delivery.

Then he said:

“We can’t forget Jimi Hendrix.”

His expression reportedly carried both gratitude and sadness.

“He took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and brought them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere, turned them all into classics.”

Small songs.

That’s how Dylan described them.

Songs few people had noticed.

Songs that Hendrix transformed into something timeless.

Then Dylan delivered a line that still resonates today.

“I have to thank Jimi. I wish he was here.”

Just four words.

But they contain decades of gratitude, regret, admiration, and loss.

Not “I wish I could have thanked him.”

Not “I wish we could have talked.”

Simply:

“I wish he was here.”

By then, Dylan had been performing All Along the Watchtower as a tribute to Hendrix for more than four decades.

He continues to play it.

And it has become the most performed song in his entire catalog.

More than Blowin’ in the Wind.

More than Like a Rolling Stone.

More than any song that originally made him famous.

More than 2,250 performances and counting.

And according to Dylan himself, every time he sings it, he feels Hendrix’s presence.

The story of All Along the Watchtower is not really about a cover song.

It’s about recognition.

It’s about the rare moment when an artist realizes someone else understood their creation more deeply than they did.

It’s about humility.

The willingness to admit that your sketch became a masterpiece in another person’s hands.

But most of all, it’s about absence.

The conversation that never happened.

The gratitude that arrived too late.

The thank-you that could never be spoken face to face.

Bob Dylan heard Jimi Hendrix’s version of All Along the Watchtower and was overwhelmed.

It changed how he heard the song.

It changed how he performed the song.

And for more than fifty years, every time he steps on stage and plays it, he is honoring the man who transformed it.

The man he never truly got to thank.

The man he still wishes was here.