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The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded the definitive cover version of this song. Hendrix heard the track after being taken to a party by Traffic's Dave Mason. Hendrix, a longtime fan of Dylan's work, commented he would love to cover the track. Due to Noel Redding's absence over the tension created by Hendrix in the studio during the recording of Electric Ladyland, Hendrix played the bass himself with a righthand, shortscale Fender Mustang bass guitar.[6] Dave Mason initially played the 12-string acoustic part, but was unable to satisfy Hendrix's growing perfectionism and was moved to bass, then completely off the track, as Hendrix played everything except the drums. While Dylan's version had been minimalistic, Hendrix's spared nothing—his wailing electric guitar and vocal delivery were wholly different from Dylan's quiet folk performance. Hendrix rearranged the song to include several electric guitar solos, where the harmonica solos were in Dylan's version, and included it on the Electric Ladyland album (1968). The longest solo on the song (in between the second and final verses) features slide guitar, done with a cigarette lighter rather than a more traditional tubes of glass or metal. Hendrix settled on the lighter after frantically trying other objects to get the exact sound that he had in his head for that portion of the solo.[citation needed] The solo also features a wah-wah line, and an echo effect in its middle section (from the 'slide' part to the end of the wah-wah part). Overwhelmed by the reinterpretation, Dylan himself has since based his own performances of the song on Hendrix' version.
"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.
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