Bob Dylan: All Along the Watchtower Meaning
Song Released: 1968
Covered By: Jimi Hendrix (1968)
All Along the Watchtower Lyrics
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."
"No...
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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Its a play using spectacular imagery creation [ my favourite on a bob song ]on the interprtive nature of religious belief. It uses biblical imagery or sentences that are to those from historically judeo-christian backgrounds likely to conjure images of the horsemen of apocolepse, jesus and the thief on the cross, the scene immediatly after the crucifiction etc etc.
Beyond this simply my own interpretation is that It references the in justices of western society in which we live, the injust authourity of the powers that be in the watchtowers, the expliotation of the people by those with power in princes and businessmen. The forced acceptance of life as a joke in the face of these expliotations and religious or otherworldly influence we cant understand. However justice is in the western religious tradition in hand with the writers who come to analyse this situation, the bad cat growl omen and the horsemen of the apocolepse.
I think it reflects bob at this time studying judeo-christian tradition and wanting to believe in something and truly believeing in some coming justice but not being truly convinced of the christian interpretaion.
but primarily as an image inducing poem it produces for me haunting biblical and apolcoliptic imagery. -
The wild cat would be satan. The two riders would be jesus, and the thief heading for paradise
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while all the Religious comments have merit, i was at a dylan concert in1991. it was in Danbury,Ct. on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Dylan was more talkative then i have ever heard before or after. Maybe it was because it was outdoors and the smell of burgers, etc, and a few illegal cigarettes made him talk. when the band started playing the intro Dylan said, this next song is from my prison years. it seemed to me that he was referring to the years when he lived in Woodstock, NY and fans would walk up to his door and start talking to him. the watch tower might have referred to the added security that would be needed until he moved the family back to NYC and they started pouring through his garbage. the joker is Dylan see American pie, and the thief were the press and fans who would follow him around like fleas on a dirty dog. He later sang another prison song "I shall be released" later in the show , introducing it as another prison song. as great as he is, the one thing he can never attain is privacy so in effect his whole life since '63 has been a prison for him
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The Joker and the thief are the same person, who sees things from two different perspectives: 1) one who sees the absurdity of our system, totally corrupt and misled, wasting resources in a system that's run on greed, politics, nepotism and wastefulness, and 2) one who realizes that the system is all there is and like it or not, he has a stake in it and must use it to get what he can for himself and those he supports.
The princes keeping the view are those who own the most and have it under control, watching two characters; probably the joker and the thief approaching the storehouse of their wealth. -
The watchtower refers to the enochian watchtowers that flow from god ie earth ,air,fire,water .The wild cat growling is a refrence to 2 things 1st: jesus coming when the lion of judea constellation touches the divine cup 2ndly jesus and his father use a panther as a symbol,often confused with the lion beast that is one of the 7 gnostic archons led by the demi-urge.the panther(messiah archetype breaks the 7 seals and opens the way for the riders of the appocolypse .To find out more you would probably have to know a rabbi/enochian magician or gnostic .....
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I would like to point out foremost that this is a bob Dylan song who when writing this was not of the christian faith . it is about capitalism and its war with communism the cold the riders at the end signify what he believed was the coming nuclear holocaust
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As the song opens, the thief comforts the Joker by telling him that, while many people think that life is but a joke, he and the Joker know that it is very wrong to consider life to be nothing more meaningful than that. So the first 'puzzle' in the song is: Why does the thief think that the Joker would find it revolting to equate life with jokes? Don't Jokers like jokes?
Who is the Joker, anyway?
In Tarot cards, the Joker card represents Jesus Christ, holding him up to ridicule as a fool. This corresponds to those who mocked Jesus before and during his crucifixion.
As the song begins, Jesus is on the cross next to the 'good thief' who recognizes Jesus as the Savior. Jesus is suffering his moment of doubt, talking about a "way out of here", "too much confusion", and complaining about the unworthy people he is about to sacrifice himself for ("Businessmen" who "drink his wine", "plowmen" who "dig his earth", and others who don't know "what any of it is worth".)
The thief reminds Jesus of their fate, using religious language ("Let us not talk falsely now"). He says that "the hour is getting late", that is, they are near death, but a death that will lead to resurrection and Judgment Day.
The final stanza shifts the scene to a city guarded by prices in a watch tower. To understand the song, it is necessary to understand the reference to the ancient city of Babylon (whose name means "confusion").
Babylon has long held a place among many religions as a symbol of excess and immoral power. Many references are made to Babylon in the Bible, both literally and allegorically.
The people in Babylon had believed that they were safe from attack because the city was protected, according to the historian Herodotus, by two sets of inner and outer walls. The fall of Babylon came suddenly when the Medes and the Persians overran the city in a night attack in 539 B.C., attacking during a festival celebrated by the city's lords, so that the normal watch kept on the walls was not observed.
The imagery in the song's final stanza regarding the "Watch Tower" and the "Princes" come from a biblical reference in Isaiah to the fall of Babylon:
Isaiah: 21-5
"Prepare the table,
watch in the watch-tower,
eat, drink:
Arise, ye princes,
and anoint the shield."
So, putting it all together, we have this:
Christ (mocked as a 'Joker' by unworthy people) and the thief are dying on the cross. After their death and Resurrection, Judgment Day is at hand, as intuitively sensed by nature itself ("A wildcat did growl. . .The wind began to howl"). Christ and the thief symbolically return ("Two riders were approaching") and destroy the city of man in an Apocalypse for its worldly excesses.
The song is a parable, a warning, about the type of life we choose to live. That choice, often made thoughtlessly and treated lightly, is not a joke; instead, deciding whether or not to follow the path of God is the most serious decision we have to make.
Some puzzles in the song remain. Note that the Joker (the Christ figure in my analysis) is speaking the language of a street person ("I can't get no relief") and is very agitated, while it is the thief who is "kindly", and who is talking in religious language (talking about "fate" and saying things like "let us not talk falsely now"). The identities of the Joker and the thief appear to be reversed. Perhaps this identity-reversal is part of the "confusion", or perhaps Dylan is saying that even a "common thief" can understand the righteous true path of God, something that totally eludes the "elite Princes" in society.
By the way, it is worth noting that in the version of this song recorded by Jimi Hendrix, Hexdrix musically depicts the death and resurrection after the second stanza by a falling and then rising guitar sound (it sounds like a metal spring dropping down and then bouncing back up). Hendrix then uses the ethereal sound made by a wah-wah petal to evoke the ascension of Christ into Heaven. Also, in the Hexdrix version, as the Apocalypse takes place (after all stanzas have been sung), Henxdrix plays a rising scale, culminating in a single high note played rapidly and repeatedly. This provides a "picture", in music, of the Apocalyptic events taking place, without having any explicit description of it in the lyrics. -
As the song opens, the thief comforts the Joker by telling him that, while many people think that life is but a joke, he and the Joker know that it is very wrong to consider life to be nothing more meaningful than that. So the first 'puzzle' in the song is: Why does the thief think that the Joker would find it revolting to equate life with jokes? Don't Jokers like jokes?
Who is the Joker, anyway?
In Tarot cards, the Joker card represents Jesus Christ, holding him up to ridicule as a fool. This corresponds to those who mocked Jesus before and during his crucifixion.
As the song begins, Jesus is on the cross next to the 'good thief' who recognizes Jesus as the Savior. Jesus is suffering his moment of doubt, talking about a "way out of here", "too much confusion", and complaining about the unworthy people he is about to sacrifice himself for ("Businessmen" who "drink his wine", "plowmen" who "dig his earth", and others who don't know "what any of it is worth".)
The thief reminds Jesus of their fate, using religious language ("Let us not talk falsely now"). He says that "the hour is getting late", that is, they are near death, but a death that will lead to resurrection and Judgment Day.
The final stanza shifts the scene to a city guarded by prices in a watch tower. To understand the song, it is necessary to understand the reference to the ancient city of Babylon (whose name means "confusion").
Babylon has long held a place among many religions as a symbol of excess and immoral power. Many references are made to Babylon in the Bible, both literally and allegorically.
The people in Babylon had believed that they were safe from attack because the city was protected, according to the historian Herodotus, by two sets of inner and outer walls. The fall of Babylon came suddenly when the Medes and the Persians overran the city in a night attack in 539 B.C., attacking during a festival celebrated by the city's lords, so that the normal watch kept on the walls was not observed.
The imagery in the song's final stanza regarding the "Watch Tower" and the "Princes" come from a biblical reference in Isaiah to the fall of Babylon:
Isaiah: 21-5
"Prepare the table,
watch in the watch-tower,
eat, drink:
Arise, ye princes,
and anoint the shield."
So, putting it all together, we have this:
Christ (mocked as a 'Joker' by unworthy people) and the thief are dying on the cross. After their death and Resurrection, Judgment Day is at hand, as intuitively sensed by nature itself ("A wildcat did growl. . .The wind began to howl"). Christ and the thief symbolically return ("Two riders were approaching") and destroy the city of man in an Apocalypse for its worldly excesses. The song is a parable, a warning, about the type of life we choose to live. That choice, often made thoughtlessly and treated lightly, is not a joke; instead, it is the most serious decision we have to make.
Some puzzles in the song remain. Note that the Joker (the Christ figure in my analysis) is speaking the language of a street person ("I can't get no relief") and is very agitated, while it is the thief who is "kindly", and who is talking in religious language (talking about "fate" and saying things like "let us not talk falsely now"). The identities of the Joker and the thief appear to be reversed. Perhaps this identity-reversal is part of the "confusion", or perhaps Dylan is saying that even a "common thief" can understand the righteous true path of God, something that totally eludes the "elite Princes" in society.
By the way, it is worth noting that in the version of this song recorded by Jimi Hendrix, Hexdrix musically depicts the death and resurrection after the second stanza by a falling and then rising guitar sound (it sounds like a metal spring dropping down and then bouncing back up). Also, in the Hexdrix version, as the Apocalypse takes place (after all stanzas have been sung), Henxdrix plays a rising scale, culminating in a single high note played rapidly and repeatedly. This provides a "picture", in music, of the Apocalyptic events taking place, without having any explicit description of it in the lyrics. -
there must be some way out of here,
said the joker to the theif...
an interpretation of this line could be that the joke is that the joker (jesus)
is the WAY out. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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