Bob Dylan kicked off his Outlaw Tour set at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, by playing “All Along the Watchtower” for the first time since 2018. As always, the arrangement of the 1967 song was heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix’s famous cover.

Dylan has played “All Along the Watchtower” more times than any other song in his extensive catalog, at least 2,285 times. The very first time was on January 3, 1974, at the start of his reunion tour with the band, which will be released on September 20 as part of the 27-CD box set. Bob Dylan – The live recordings from 1974.

In a 1993 interview with Greg Kot of the Chicago-TribuneDylan spoke about the impact he had when he first heard Hendrix cover the song. “It really blew me away,” Dylan said. “He had so much talent, he could find things in a song and develop them vigorously. He found things that other people wouldn’t have thought of. He probably made it better with the spaces he used. I actually took liberties with his version on the song and I still do to this day.”

For a long time between 1992 and 1996, “All Along The Watchtower” was the third song in the set at almost every Dylan concert. In the 2000s, it landed on the encore slot, but disappeared from rotation completely after the November 29, 2018 show at the Beacon Theater in New York City. It is one of many songs he revived on the Outlaw tour, including “Silvio,” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” and “Highway 61 Revisited.”

Dylan’s US tour continues Friday night at the Pavilion at Star Lake in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania. It ends on September 17 at the Darien Lake Amphitheater in Buffalo, New York. He then heads to Europe in early October for a long run of shows that conclude on November 14 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He should be in the US when the upcoming Dylan biopic A complete unknown Premieres. That said, there’s a tiny chance we’ll see Timothée Chalamet and Dylan side by side on the red carpet at the premiere. But it’s still extraordinarily unlikely.