This compilation culls eight years of live in-studio performances for the BBC, broken up with introductions by the smooth and hearty Beeb announcers. The early Who romp through covers with breathtaking confidence — there's nothing sedulous about the crashing, sugar-free "Good Lovin'." They turn the blues into a stately twist with James Brown's "Just You and Me, Darling" and play "Shakin' All Over" as properly spectral. Encompassing the Who's prime years, The BBC Sessions delineates how the band resolved social and musical anxieties of the age, youthful frustration careening like an American muscle car on "Disguises," "Substitute," "I'm Free" and a funkified "Relay" (after which Keith Moon must have collapsed); British eccentricity takes a droll promenade with "Happy Jack," "A Quick One (While He's Away)" and John Entwistle's "Boris the Spider." But more than anything, The BBC Sessions highlights how mad, bad and dangerous the Who were in 1965.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."