 In October and November 1967 , Dylan returned to Nashville . Back in the studio after 19 months , he was accompanied by Charlie McCoy on bass , Kenny Buttrey on drums , and Pete Drake on steel guitar . The result was John Wesley Harding , a contemplative record of shorter songs , set in a landscape that drew on the American West and the Bible . The sparse structure and instrumentation , with lyrics that took the Judeo @-@ Christian tradition seriously , departed from Dylan 's own work and from the psychedelic fervor of the 1960s . It included " All Along the Watchtower " , with lyrics derived from the Book of Isaiah ( 21 : 5 – 9 ) . The song was later recorded by Jimi Hendrix , whose version Dylan acknowledged as definitive . Woody Guthrie died on October 3 , 1967 , and Dylan made his first live appearance in twenty months at a Guthrie memorial concert held at Carnegie Hall on January 20 , 1968 , where he was backed by the Band . 
