[8] According to Gray, as with most of the album's selections, the song is a dark, sparse work that stands in stark contrast with Dylan's previous recordings of the mid-1960s.

[12] Musicologist Wilfrid Mellers, noting the biblical references "All Along the Watchtower", wrote that the song "heroically confronts, in grandly swinging Aeolian melody, deeply oscillating bass and thrusting rhythm, the chaos of fallen man".

[14] Mellers considered that the sense of threat expressed in the lyrics was "not exterior to the tune which remains, in its noble arches over its gravely descending bass, unruffled".

The melodic pitch collection, shared by voice and harmonica, consists almost entirely of the pentatonic C#, E, F#, G#, B, though each part is restricted to a four-note subset.

"[18] The original lyrics are in twelve lines, which the Financial Times writer Dan Einac commented, make it "akin to a truncated sonnet".

[24] The general theme of justice is commented upon by Lisa O'Neill-Sanders, who states that Watchtower presents a "thief in the song... who consoles the victimized and exploited joker.

[25] Journalist David Stubbs interpreted the song as "obliquely allud[ing] to Bob Dylan's frustrations with his management and with CBS, whom he felt were offering him a royalty rate that was far from commensurate with his status".

[11] In The New York Times, Robert Palmer expressed his opinion that as artists like Dylan "were finding that serving as the conscience of a generation exacted a heavy toll.

The same thing is true of the song "All Along the Watchtower", which opens up in a slightly different way, in a stranger way, for we have the cycle of events working in a rather reverse order.

[28]The unusual structure of the narrative was remarked on by English literature scholar Christopher Ricks, who commented that "All Along the Watchtower" is an example of Dylan's audacity at manipulating chronological time, noting "at the conclusion of the last verse, it is as if the song bizarrely begins at last, and as if the myth began again".

"[31] Dave Van Ronk, an early supporter and mentor of Dylan,[32] made the following criticism:[33] That whole artistic mystique is one of the great traps of this business, because down that road lies unintelligibility.

The singing is utterly straightforward, as if recounting a simple parable about the nameless joker and thief; Dylan is not about to disclose a hint of any deeper meaning...".

[37] Peter Johnson of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the track "brings out Dylan's talent for imagery", but felt the recording seems "fragmented and unfinished".

[39] This sentiment was shared by Troy Irvine of The Arizona Republic, who felt that John Wesley Harding was better than any of Dylan's earlier albums.

[5] Journalist Paul Williams regarded the song as "an extraordinarily successful interaction" between Dylan, McCoy, and Buttrey, featuring "some of the best cinematography in modern song-writing".

[43] Rapper Kanye West identified it as his "favorite song of all time" in a 2022 interview in which he also expressed a desire to work with and write with Dylan.

[44] The track was released as the B-side to "Drifter's Escape" in Italy on March 1, 1968, and as an A-side, backed with "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight", in the Netherlands and Germany on November 22, 1968.

[52] Dogget described the interpretation of the song: "Hendrix used the sound of the studio to evoke the storms and the sense of dread, creating an echoed aural landscape.

"[52] The layering Hendrix introduces in his version is further intensified and, "unlike the sonic reserve of Dylan's recording, here the frequency space teems with dynamic activity.

From the highs of the cymbals and tambourines to the lows of the bass guitar and kick drum, the ongoing agitation of the frequency space heightens the track's sense of tumult.

"[52] Zak summarizes the Hendrix adaptation of the Dylan song in three main points, stating: "There are three basic strategies apparent in this transformation (of Dylan's version): (1) the intensification of essential musical gestures and formal divisions; (2) the introduction of pitch material dissonant with the pentatonic collection of the original; and (3) the tracing of a long-range, goal-directed melodic line over the call-and-response structure of the arrangement.

According to Hendrix's regular engineer Eddie Kramer, the guitarist cut a large number of takes on the first day of recording in January in London, shouting chord changes at Dave Mason who featured at the session and played an additional 12-string guitar.

[47] Hendrix's friend and Rolling Stones multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones contributed the dry rattles featured in the intro, played on a vibraslap.

[51] Kramer and Chas Chandler mixed the first version of "All Along the Watchtower" on January 26 in 1968,[54] but Hendrix was quickly dissatisfied with the result and went on re-recording and overdubbing guitar parts during June, July, and August at the Record Plant studio in New York City.

[50] Engineer Tony Bongiovi has described Hendrix becoming increasingly dissatisfied as the song progressed, overdubbing more and more guitar parts, moving the master tape from a four-track to a twelve-track to a sixteen-track machine.

[50] In the US, Reprise Records issued the song as a single on September 2, 1968, with the B-side featuring "Burning of the Midnight Lamp",[56] over a month prior to the album release on Electric Ladyland.

"[12] Scholar of English Sukanya Saha cites the original conclusion, "two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl" as an example of Dylan's talent for providing satisfying endings for songs.

[12][74] The track has been covered by dozens of artists, including Bobby Womack on Facts of Life (1973), XTC on White Music (1978), Billy Valentine for the Sons of Anarchy television show (2015) and U2 on Rattle and Hum (1988).