My Ignatian song pick this week pays homage to one of the greatest songwriters. He’s Bob Dylan, and the song is the haunting and enigmatic classic “All Along the Watchtower.” Dylan wrote it and performed it in the sixties, and it’s been covered by Jimi Hendrix, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and other rockers.
The lyrics are evocative:
There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief,
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 reason to get excited, the thief, he kindly spoke,
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
There’s existential anguish (“there must be some way out of here”) and end-times prophecy (“the hour is getting late”). But then riders come. The lyrics refer to Isaiah 21. The watcher spies two horsemen in the distance, who come to announce that Babylon has fallen and God’s power has broken into the world. It’s the good news.
Might the thief be the good thief who was crucified with Jesus? Might he be talking to the other criminal–the joker–on the the other side of the Cross. These are suggestions made by Fr Robert Barron in his commentary on the song.
There are many versions of the song on YouTube by Dylan and others, but none of them suited me. Here’s the original, from the album John Wesley Harding, illustrated by the album cover.
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