In 1969, even before the end of his Top 40 band the Box Tops, singer Alex Chilton started making his first solo album. In 1970, he abandoned it to co-found Big Star, the Memphis version of the Beatles. Free Again finds Chilton, not yet 20, in fast bloom. The title track, "The EMI Song (Smile for Me)" and "Every Day as We Grow Closer" are ravishing, original amalgams of the Beach Boys, the British Invasion and country soul. There are also raunchy why bother covers of the Archies and the Rolling Stones, an eerie preview of Chilton's subsequent career – confident in his gifts, always chafing against them.

Listen to "The EMI Song (Smile for Me)":

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“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."