MUSIC: “All Along the Watchtower” – Bob Dylan, 1968

In late 1968 Bob Dylan was living in seclusion with his family near Woodstock, a small town in upper New York State. In late December of 1967 Dylan released an album of musically austere, Biblically influenced songs that were parables and allegories of Dylan’s own search for salvation against the backdrop of the moral landscape of a collapsing America. Dylan references the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21 verses 5-9: “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.”