Now It Goes Like This: "All Along the Watchtower"
Tracking the song's live arrangements from 1974 through 2025
The sixth “Now It Goes Like This”—my series tracking all the different ways Bob Dylan has performed his songs live—tackles a big one: “All Along the Watchtower.”
Let’s get it out of the way right up top: The biggest “Watchtower” arrangement change was not made by Dylan himself. It was made by, of course, Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix’s cover (which I explored the history of here) set the template for almost every version performed subsequently, including the thousands by Dylan himself. Bob Dylan generally performs “Watchtower” like he’s covering Jimi Hendrix, not the other way around. The John Wesley Harding original now sounds like an alternate-version outtake, maybe something they’d unveil decades later on a Bootleg Series. “Wow, can you believe he once tried to record ‘All Along the Watchtower’ acoustically?”
Because he was off the road when John Wesley Harding came out, he never played a pre-Hendrix version. But he quickly made up for lost time. “All Along the Watchtower” has now been performed more than any other Bob Dylan song. Over two thousand times. Given that number, you’d expect an insane number of different arrangements. Nope! In the '90s especially, it felt like he performed it a million times the exact same way. The differences from night to night were how energetically he sung it, and how shreddy were the guitar solos (on a scale that ran from “quite shreddy” to “extremely shreddy”). The basic arrangement didn’t change much.
That consistency over the decades makes the unusual arrangements that do exist really stand out. And some are quite dramatic! Including the brand-new one that inspired this entry. Let’s dive in.
1974 - Began to Howl
Six years passed between Jimi Hendrix covering “All Along the Watchtower” in 1968 and Bob Dylan resuming touring—the comeback tour with The Band—in 1974. On that tour, it was an setlist staple. And of course it was. In the time he’d been away, this album cut had suddenly become a greatest-hit.
So it won’t be a shock to learn that the 1974 live versions sound little like John Wesley Harding and lots like Jimi Hendrix. Bob and the Band more or less lift the arrangement verbatim, giving Robbie Robertson a number of moments to solo. Garth Hudson wailing on organ in the background is a particular highlight (Bob should have let him take one of the solos).
1975 - Here comes the story of the joker and the thief
Bob Dylan did not perform “Watchtower” on the Rolling Thunder tour. Too bad—imagine a version where he gave all the shreddy solos to Scarlet Rivera. But they rehearsed an interesting version that included a bit of it as a tag at the end of “Hurricane.” A natural fit, as the chords are quite similar.
He only sings the first verse before things collapse on this recording from the Rolling Thunder box set, but there’s an interesting concept there. I wish they’d explored it further.
(Decades later, the Broadway musical Girl from the North Country made the same connection between the two songs).
1978 - Let us not flute falsely now
“This is from the Mojave Desert,” Dylan says on At Budokan to introduce his first really dramatic new “Watchtower” arrangement. The basic idea doesn’t veer far from the norm—lot of energy, lot of solos—but this band’s composition changes dramatically how that plays out.
The band has backing singers, so now “Watchtower” has backing singers.
The band has flute, so now “Watchtower” has flute.
The band has violin, so now “Watchtower” has violin. (I mentioned wanting to hear Rivera on this; you get an approximation here from David Mansfield.)
You’ve probably heard the At Budokan version before, so check out this outtake that features a longer intro. This one goes out to all you flute-fans:
1980-84 - Gospel-less gospel
Dylan still had a large band at the tail end of the gospel years, the part where he started bringing his old songs back in (though “Watchtower” is Biblical enough he could have performed it all along). But he didn’t incorporate all those extra players the same way he did in '78. This is more your typical “Watchtower” arrangement. I guess he told the backing singers to take a hike for this one.
There are some great versions—this one from New Orleans in 1981 is particularly hot—but it’s too bad he didn’t really incorporate the tour’s gospel element more.
PS. This is how you do a full-on gospel “Watchtower.”
I’m going to group the 1984 versions in this section too. Entirely different (and non-gospel) band, but same basic sound for this song. The main difference is that the performances are now even faster and more frenetic. Plus you’ve got Mick Taylor taking all those guitar solos, which is nothing to sneeze at.
There are also some '84 performances with two lengthy harmonica sections, one slow and spooky intro and a solo in the middle, which gives it a little of that John Wesley Harding feel (s/o Tim Edgeworth for letting me know about these):
1986 - All the women came and went
The backing vocalists, now dubbed the Queens of Rhythm, returned for the tours with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Once again, happily, they take center stage on “Watchtower.”
Their part is quite different than in the At Budokan era though. Instead, they offer a slow-burn into to the song, “ooo-ooo”-ing for a verse while the band plays. They continue when Dylan begins to sing, still keeping the energy level at a simmer. Things slowly build, louder and louder, faster and faster. It’s one of the most exciting arrangements the song has ever had. This one’s from that great new Bonner Springs soundboard:
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