I have always liked listening to Bob Dylan. I like the way he phrases and I like his music a lot. I just don’t have much of a clue to what he is singing about. For instance, what is All Along the Watch Tower about. Is there a web page where his lyrics are discussed.
Thanks,
Bob G
This one is so easy that I’m simply not going to do the work for you. Have you put “Bob Dylan lyrics discussion” or some such into Google? You couldn’t have.
No, no one is online discussing perhaps the most famous lyricist of the past 40 years. Of course not.
Ok, so now I’ll be a bit nicer about it.
People around here really hate to get the questions that could be answered with a simple Google search or three. It’s kind of a waste of time.
Now you know. It really is a good place. Welcome.
Welcome to SDMB bokap, from another Dylan fan.
If I may make a suggestion: Why not take Cardinal up on ]his suggestion (brusque as it may have been;)), then come back and start a thread about Watchtower and what you think it means, and see if we agree or disagree?
Anyway, welcome. Good to have you with us.
Quasi
Administrator speaking: Y’know, y’all need to lighten up. A Google search on “Bob Dylan” gave me about 668,000 hits, and the first few pages were not relevant. When I refined the search by adding “lyrics discussion Watchtower”, I had over 400 hits, and the first three I looked at were crapola. I get discouraged when I get too many hits, and coming here to ask for discussion (or to ask for a website that others have found useful) is perfectly appropriate.
You who are experts in Google searches: not everyone is. Don’t jump down someone’s throat because their searches haven’t been productive, or because they didn’t know how to refine their searches.
And, since when have we forbidden discussion here, simply because it’s discussed elsewhere? We’d wipe out the entire Great Debates forum at a blow. You mean to say that Buffy or Star Trek or Lord of the Rings are discussed in our forum? Oh, no, Cardinal, I’ll wipe 'em all out because they’re discussed in great detail in other websites.
Bullshit.
bokap, you are welcomed here, and I hope that some members will respond to your question and ignore Cardinal’s rude and unthinking comments.
I personally am not a big Dylan fan, or I’d start the ball rolling.
Welcome to the boards, bokap. Have you been listening to Bob for long? Do you like other songs he’s done?
I’ll always be a fan of Desolation Row and She Belongs to Me, personally.
“You mean to say that Buffy or Star Trek or Lord of the Rings are discussed in our forum? Oh, no, Cardinal, I’ll wipe 'em all out because they’re discussed in great detail in other websites.”
Promises, promises.
I absolutely adore Dylan. The man is seriously an amazing poet.
As for the meaning of “All Along the Watchtower”…I always assumed it was about the loss of something, probably the traditional ways of life.
for instance: “Business men, they drink my wine,
plow and dig my earth.
None of them along the line,
know what any of it is worth”.
Perhaps I’ve been to one too many Farm Aids, but to me, it sounds like he’s bemoaning the loss of traditional living and farming.
“All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.”
The preceeding lines, as near as I can tell, mean that everyone is serving someone (and not in the sense that you find in Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody”). Everyone’s a foot-servant for the prince, who watches what he’s taken like a hawk.
So yeah…my take on the “…Watchtower” is that people (businessmen and princes) came and took the traditional life and incorporated it and its people into something different. But then again, it is Dylan. It could just be a random smattering of words that happen to rhyme.
–greenphan
The reason I like Watchtower is the reason I like most of Dylan’s work: No wasted words: We create things, but have no idea of their worth, and no one’s listening to the voice trying to tell us this.
That said, I also like the “story” songs such as The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll and Lily, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts to name just two.
Dantheman, She Belongs To Me is also one of my favorites. You can just feel the admiration and the wonder at how this woman can evoke all these emotions from the singer, and how befuddled he is at being such a fool over her.
Dylan is like an abstract painter, his words can mean whatever you think they should mean, and they can be personalized to your taste.
Gonna go post another Dylan thread. Hope to see y’all post in it.
Thanks
Q
I’ve been a Dylan fan for nearly forty years, and half the time I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. But you know what? It doesn’t matter! I just love the way he puts words together. One of my favorite Dylan tunes is “Highway 61 Revisted.” Consider this verse:
“Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King
I got forty red white and blue shoe strings
And a thousand telephones that don’t ring
Do you know where I can get rid of these things
And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son
And he said yes I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61.”
WTF?? But I love that lyric! I wouldn’t change a word of it.
Or consider these verses from two of the tunes on Dylan’s latest, Love and Theft
“My mother was a daughter of a wealthy farmer
My father was a traveling salesman, I never met him
When my mother died, my uncle took me in - he ran a funeral parlor
He did a lot of nice things for me and I won’t forget him” (from “Poor Boy”)
“My grandfather was a duck trapper
He could do it with just dragnets and ropes
My grandmother could sew new dresses out of old cloth
I don’t know if they had any dreams or hopes” (from “Floater (Too Much to Ask)”)
What beautiful little vignettes ! Just kind of a stream of consciousness thing in the songs as the narrator thinks about his family. But why was granddad a duck trapper? Why did the uncle run a funeral parlor? Who knows? But it doesn’t matter.
It felt like a great weight had been lifted from me the day I quit trying to figure out what songs like “Drifter’s Escape” were about. I just let Bobby Z’s words flow over me like a refreshing stream.
The other day, my wife and I were driving along and had Love and Theft in the cd player. She said to me, “What’s wrong with you? You’ve got such a goofy grin on your face!” And I said, “Oh, nothing. I’m just listening to Dylan’s words.”
But then again, it is Dylan. If the words don’t rhyme on their own, he can just mangle the pronunciation until they do.
I’ll see your Desolation Row and She Belongs to Me and raise you Idiot Wind and You’re Gonna Make me Lonesome When You Go.
It’s not that hard to find a discussion of the lyrics in “All Along the Watchtower.” Here’s one, admittedly a not very good one, from the page page of Google.
At least this guy gets the lyrics right. Compare: the correct version
to the close but no cigar (http://www.lyricsdomain.com/lyrics/21365/):
to (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jimi-hendrix/17571.htm):
to (leoslyrics.com):
to (http://www.kamakuranet.ne.jp/~hendrix/all_along.html):
No wonder nobody can figure them lyrics out. 
Hey, I just realized something: Almost every phrase Dylan has written/sung can be used as a sig line, ya’ll! 
Okay! Dylan Festival! My house. Sunday. BYOB. (For me, it’ll be Boone’s Farm Strawberry (SHUP, dammit!) or Old Milwaukee beer (in the can) turned upside down and opened with an old-fashioned beer can opener, then turned right-side up, pop-top flipped and drunk down fast.
Solid food: Ramen Noodles or White Castles.
For those who can afford it, Domino’s, but we gotta give 'em the wrong directions so that the pizza will be free when they get here.
Special guests other than Bob?
The Byrds
Rick Nelson
The Hollies
The Box Tops (“I Shall Be Released”)
The Dead
Thunderclap
The Turtles
Jimi (of course!)
The Stones
Okay, okay! I’ll even include Mouse and The Traps for the song Your Public Execution, and you get extra credit if you can tell me why I even included this group when that isn’t even a Dylan tune!
Okay, Barry MacGuire and Kingston Trio (all versions): Y’all are invited too!
Man! Did I just hijack a thread, or what??? :D:D:D
Thanks, bokap!
Quasi
Oh yeah… forgot. Funny lookin’ cigarettes are allowed too.
Q
To be fair, since that’s from a Jimi Hendrix lyric site, that is what Hendrix sings in his version.
Postcards of the hanging?
Please! Don’t tell me I stumped y’all with the above tease just because I’m old?
Okay, I’m not being exact: The name of the tune from Mouse and The Traps is A* Public Execution*, not Your Public Execution, sue me! But ya still gotta tell me why I included them in my invitation!
Give Y’all till midnight.
Q
Are you looking for something more specific than that the song is a Dylan pastiche (notable ripping off “Like a Rolling Stone”)?
Biffy got it with 2 and a half hours to spare!
That’s right, it was a big controversy years ago, because ol’ Mouse sounded so much like Bob, that people were wondering if it might have been Bob!
Thanks, Biffy, and welcome (late) to SDMB!
So who you bringin’ to the party? 
Q
There’s a beautiful, simple, black-and-white video of three members of the Grateful Dead performing this song acoustically (of course). It’s magnificent.
By the way, I’m reminded now of what Bruce Springsteen once said of Bob, perhaps during the latter’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Something like: “The way Elvis freed your body, Bob freed your mind.”