For the month of November, I’ll be selecting songs in conjunction with the music Twitter challenge: #WelcomeToTheOccupation.
As legendary as Bob Dylan is, I understand that he’s not for everyone. Some people just can’t listen past Dylan’s nasal-infused vocal delivery. Jimi Hendrix wasn’t exactly the most vocally gifted musician either. But whatever he lacked as a singer he more than made up for as a guitar player. The thing about his rendition of the Dylan classic “All Along the Watchtower” is he lit every strand of folk and Americana roots from the song on fire, burned those elements to the ground and then made the fire rise even higher with an electric reboot.
Throughout my middle and high school years, I lived next door to a Jimi Hendrix fanatic. My brother introduced me to Jimi’s impressive catalog, which was incredibly prolific given his short life span. The thing that immediately drew me in to his music was a guitar playing style that almost sounded otherworldly. It wasn’t rock. It wasn’t blues. But it was this crazy blend of the two that seemed to be so effortless to Jimi but impossible for others to emulate. You can’t simply play the same notes that Jimi played and expect it sound the same. It was the way in which he navigated back and forth between those two genres so easily that makes “All Along the Watchtower” one of the greatest cover songs of all time.
“Business men, they drink my wine. Plowmen dig my earth.”