Composition - examples of note

[Mike McCarty]

I think Jimi Hendrix was from the Seattle area.

That song - All Along the Watchtower, which is one of my favorites, was written by Bob Dylan. Word around the campfire was that when Dylan heard the Jimi Hendrix rendition he was so blown away that he proclaimed that from that moment on it belonged to J. H., and didn't perform it anymore.

Dylan produced an album in 1970, the year Hendrix died, called "Self Portrait." The album cover (below) is explained by Dylan in an interview:

"We moved to New York. Lookin' back, it really was a stupid thing to do. But there was a house available on MacDougal Street, and I always remembered that as a nice place. So I just bought this house, sight unseen. But it wasn't the same when we got back. The Woodstock Nation had overtaken MacDougal Street also. There'd be crowds outside my house. And I said, 'Well, * * * * it. I wish these people would just forget about me. I wanna do something they can't possibly like, they can't relate to. They'll see it, and they'll listen, and they'll say, 'Well, let's get on to the next person. He ain't sayin' it no more. He ain't given' us what we want,' you know? They'll go on to somebody else. But the whole idea backfired. Because the album went out there, and the people said, 'This ain't what we want,' and they got more resentful. And then I did this portrait for the cover. I mean, there was no title for that album. I knew somebody who had some paints and a square canvas, and I did the cover up in about five minutes. And I said, 'Well, I'm gonna call this album Self Portrait.'"