- Definitive Version: Jimi Hendrix completely transformed the acoustic folk-rock track into a monumental psychedelic rock masterpiece. Even Bob Dylan famously acknowledged that Hendrix’s version was superior, stating it unlocked a new depth in the song.
- Musical Brilliance: The track features blistering guitar work and an incredible rhythmic groove that made the song permanently feel like a Hendrix original rather than a cover.
I couldn’t have put it better myself (which is why I quote it), but I think I might have added the fact that Dylan adopted not just the song, but the Hendrix concept of the song which seems (to me at least) to transform the meaning. Instead of the opening “There must be someway out of here” being a plaintive plea for help from one who is utterly lost and alone in an rural world he can’t understand the line becomes (for me if no one else) a cry from those trapped in an urban jungle.
And although AI gets that right, in my view, this is where AI starts to fall down somewhat, because a key point surely is the fact that Dylan’s version of his song is very much in keeping with the feel of the rest of the John Wesley Harding album, whereas of course the Hendrix version is nothing like that and gives a wholly new meaning to the lyrics. While the original JWH is a gentle reflection on the rural world, which concludes with the thought that even in this unchallenging land there are always threats (as in the last line) the Hendrix version, takes us into an urban wasteland, where society is falling apart and will soon be eliminated.
And yet, and yet, there is one musical factor both versions of the song keep the same – that endless repetition of three chords back and forth. It is at the heart of the calm, original rural version, as much as it is in the vibrant electric urban version. It says, wherever we are, whatever we try, we are trapped in this world of our making. And as such, this could well have been the last song Dylan would write.
Also of importance is the fact that the Hendrix version came out on record just some six months after Dylan’s album release, and immediately became a hit record. Furthermore it started to be ranked by the various publications that make lists of songs – top single, one of the 50 greatest songs of all time, and so on. And you don’t get that for a song unless the music resonates with the world you feel around you.
However I think Bob was not fully convinced, as witness the fact that he didn’t start using the song himself until some eight years after it was released and by then he was as heavily influenced by the Hendrix approach as by his own original concept of the song.
Heylin, who to my mind is generally right with tracing down factual issues such as when a song was written (even though I don’t rate his ability to understand what the music is doing or saying), really doesn’t seem to have too much grasp as to what is going on within the music Bob has written, merely noting that all the JWH songs were written within the space of around a month and a half in late 1967, while noting also that Dylan wrote the song either during or soon after a thunderstorm passed by.. And yes maybe the thunderstorm helped codify Bob’s notion of chaos, but I wouldn’t place that at the centre of my thoughts about the song.
And so now, going back to this original version, the sparseness of the recording can be quite a bump to those of us now more used to hearing a multiplicity of Dylan concerts end with the re-written Hendrix version. The endlessly repeated chord sequence and the minimalist variation in the melody opens the door to that feeling of isolation and repetition that many of us can feel in today’s world. And indeed it points to the collapse of society so that individuals with their own approach to life and their own thoughts are indeed left alone, which is for me at the very heart of the song. In Bob’s original version the individual is left sitting by himself in the midst of the forest. For Hendrix the individual is in an urban wasteland…
There is also a special poignancy about the fact that the action in terms of people only occurs at the end as the two riders approach and the sound of the wind is heard. Otherwise there is nothing, we are going precisely nowhere, for in effect there is nowhere to go. Everywhere is now the same.
This of course is the absolute opposite of the message within “Times they are a changin” and (equally of course) you may disagree with my view. There is nothing to say that Bob has to be consistent in what he says in his songs, so why not write songs of hope as well as songs of desperation. And indeed we might also add that the song written by Bob immediately before Drifter’s Escape was “Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” which appears to be a Kafkaesque surreal tale, and was followed by St Augustine (about those who live for ever) and it is only then that we get to the watch tower, which given that there seems to be no watch tower takes us back to the world of Kafka.
But we might also note that when Dylan finished writing the songs for this album he stopped. Which is to say stopped no just in writing songs for the album (for that was done) but in writing songs. And although I may well have missed some commentaries along these lines, it does seem to me to be that 1968 was a year of just one Dylan composition.
So Dylan wrote,
Outside, in the distance A wildcat did growl Two riders were approaching The wind began to howl
and that was it. He is there in this bleak world where everything is a threat and there is no escape. There is no rescue. There is no god. There are no friends.
And this is why the Hendrix version works so perfectly and I believe why Dylan then picked up on that aggressive electric approach rather than his own. Dylan’s original version of the song reflects the little man sitting alone and lost, as everyone else i lost, as the world falls apart. Now the focus of the song leaves us wondering about the two riders approaching.
When Dylan did write again, in the following year, he wrote “Lay Lady Lay” which appears to be a retreat from all these concerns about the world, what it is, what it means, and what our place is in it, as he instead sings a simple song of seduction. As I have noted elsewhere, “After over 100 songs in the past seven years, at a time when it looked as if everything from the arts to politics was changing forever, Dylan just stopped.”
Was the world falling apart, or were we about to enter a new phase? I genuinely think Bob was completely unsure.