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Bob Dylan, seen here in 1965, won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for writing songs such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “All Along the Watchtower.”
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50 years later, Bob Dylan’s 'All Along the Watchtower' still engenders much debate

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50 years later, Bob Dylan’s 'All Along the Watchtower' still engenders much debate

Though many other Dylan songs are more famous, none are as hard to decipher

All Along the Watchtower,” the much-lauded song from Nobel Laureate Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan, celebrated its 50th anniversary as a single on Nov. 22. And though many other Dylan songs are more famous, none are as hard to decipher, from the title all the way down to the last line.

Dylan fans are used to the occasional long song from the balladeer. “Desolation Row” and “Brownsville Girl” clock in at over 11 minutes. “Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” just as long, encompasses an entire side of his 1966 album “Blonde on Blonde.” Rumor has it “Highlands” from 1997’s “Time Out of Mind” is over 16 minutes, but no one I know has ever listened to the end. With the exception of “Desolation,” those songs are rarely, if ever, performed in concert.

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Conversely, the song Dylan has performed the most according to his own website, is one of his shortest compositions. “All Along the Watchtower,” with its spartan lyrics and tight 2:30 running time has been performed more than 2,200 times, about 200 more times than any other song in his long touring career.

Analyzing Dylan’s songs is as natural as the ivy that grows on Harvard and Dartmouth, two colleges that also happen to offer courses on his lyrics. Dylan “scholars” debate which journalist is being skewered in “Ballad of a Thin Man,” and whether “It Ain’t Me Babe” is about Suze Rotolo or Joan Baez. And for all the crazy imagery of “Like a Rolling Stone,” we all know the narrator is rubbing well-deserved comeuppance into someone’s face who fell off her pedestal. But trying to wrap your brain around the meaning of “Watchtower” is like trying to figure out the self-drawn cover of Dylan’s “Planet Waves” album.

Biblical and apocalyptic in tone, the song came during a strange time for Dylan. While he was riding high on the triumphant success of “Blonde on Blonde,” Dylan was also riding on his Triumph Tiger motorcycle to a more dubious end. Nobody knows exactly how bad the accident was (there are no records of ambulances called or hospitalizations), but Dylan ensconced himself in New York State for awhile and began his least prolific studio work (at least the stuff for immediate release) for the next six-plus years. The first album to come out of that seclusion was “John Wesley Harding” and, along with it, its most famous track.

“All Along the Watchtower” is quite intriguing because of what we know and what we do not know. First, let’s examine what we do know.

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Anyone with Wikipedia or a cool Sunday school teacher can point out that Dylan may have, like Harper Lee, taken inspiration from chapter 21 of the Bible’s Book of Isaiah, (Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield./…And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen ... And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.)

Many have also cited the song’s possible circular narrative. Might the “two riders approaching” in the song’s last line actually be the Joker and the Thief from the first line?

And, finally, most can agree that the Jimi Hendrix version is far cooler, a fact seemingly conceded by Dylan himself who largely abandoned his acoustic rendition and used a mostly electric arrangement from 1974, the first time he played the song live, until this past August, the most recent time he has played it.

But it is what we do not know that really drives the mystery of the song.

One beauty of the song is that Dylan pays a greater debt to Ernest Hemingway in “Watchtower” than in any of his other tunes. Dylan acknowledged Hemingway’s inspiration, among others, in his acceptance speech for the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. In this song, with its bare-bones imagery, we see a clear example of Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory,” which states that most of a writing’s meaning should remain below the surface — the literal subtext.

In short stories like “Hills Like White Elephants” or his novella “The Old Man and the Sea,” Hemingway showed true literary command with his minimalist imagery and the scarce use of adjectives. When he did use more descriptive language, it meant something. We only need look at “Watchtower’s” lyrics to see Dylan’s take on this.

Dylan’s first gift is the naming of the characters, the Joker and the Thief, who neither thieve nor joke within the song. In fact, it is ironically the Thief who states, “Life is but a joke.” And how is it that the Joker would have enough property that Businessmen and Plowmen have taken over? And if he is a Joker, how seriously can we take him?

The Thief, who seems to be the calmer of the two, speaks kindly and more philosophically. Does thievery do that to oneself? When the Thief says there is “no reason to get excited” and “let us not talk falsely now,” he preaches patience and honesty (this is a thief, right?) because apparently the time is at hand.

Quickly, the scene shifts and we are in some biblical rich man’s place with princes, women and barefoot servants. Where are we? A palace? A brothel? And how are they fitting into this watchtower? What’s going on there?

One final scene change and we are given just enough nouns and adjectives to vaguely inform. We’re outside (near this watchtower, we assume), we hear the hostile weather (howling wind), hostile environs (wildcat growling) and two riders approaching. Despite the lack of detailed description, we can still almost see two men on horseback, their riding cloaks flapping menacingly, racing in shadow toward the speaker.

Of course, who is to say that Dylan, still smarting from his own aforementioned vehicular trouble, did not mean a Wildcat motorcycle revving up with the Joker and Thief, riding tandem, approaching in the howling wind. Maybe a strange image, but this is the man who penned “If Dogs Run Free” three years later.

My favorite point about the whole song is that, like folk singer Dave Van Ronk said, Dylan hoodwinks us not just from the first line but the very title. One can go “along” a road or a wall, but not a watchtower. Sometimes we just have to render unto Zimmerman what is Zimmerman’s.

Released in November 1968, “All Along the Watchtower” did not chart. Perhaps it was the dark tone, or maybe the strange lyrics. Maybe with the “Hey Jude” juggernaut drowning out every other song in October or November of that year, no one even heard it. Or maybe people were already tired of the song; the Hendrix version was actually released months earlier. between the release of “John Wesley Harding” and “Watchtower’s” appearance as a single. By then, it had become a big hit for the Experience. Such is life.

There must be some way out of here. Let me know when you figure it out.

Mario Oliverio (sanrocco2005@hotmail.com) is an English teacher at Pine-Richland High School.

First Published: December 9, 2018, 11:00 a.m.

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Bob Dylan, seen here in 1965, won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature for writing songs such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “All Along the Watchtower.”  (Bettmann Archive)
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