It joins a long list of songs he has recently revived, including “Silvio,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” and “Highway 61 Revisited.”
Bob Dylan kicked off his Outlaw Tour at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, playing “All Along the Watchtower” for the first time since 2018. As always, the arrangement of the 1967 song was heavily inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s famous cover.
Dylan has played “All Along the Watchtower” more than any other song in his vast catalog, at least 2,285 times. It was his first song to launch his tour with the Band on January 3, 1974, and will be released on September 20 as part of a 27-disc set. Bob Dylan – Live Recordings 1974.
In a 1993 interview with Greg Kot of Chicago TribuneDylan has spoken about the impact of hearing Hendrix sing the song for the first time. “It really blew my mind,” Dylan said. “He had such a talent, and he was able to find things within the song and develop them so powerfully. He found things that other people hadn't thought to find there. He probably enhanced it with the spaces he was using. I took a license for the song from his version, actually, and I still do to this day.”
For a long period of time between 1992 and 1996, “All Along The Watchtower” was the third song in the set at nearly every Dylan concert. It fell into re-encore territory throughout the 2000s, but was dropped out of rotation entirely after a November 29, 2018 show at the Beacon Theater in New York City. It is one of several songs he revived on the Outlaw Tour, including “Silvio,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” and “Highway 61 Revisited.”
Dylan's U.S. tour continues Friday night at the Starlake Pavilion in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania. The tour ends Sept. 17 at the Darren Lake Theater in Buffalo, New York. The tour then heads to Europe in early October for a long run of shows that concludes Nov. 14 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He's expected to be in the U.S. when the upcoming Dylan biopic opens. Totally unknown That means there's a very slim chance we'll see Timothée Chalamet and Dylan side-by-side on the red carpet at the premiere. But that's still highly unlikely.
