Rolling Stone Live: Justin Townes Earle Channels His Dark Past in New Songs

Justin Townes Earle, the son of legendary country singer Steve Earle, recently came by the Rolling Stone office to play a few songs and talk about his new record Harlem River Blues. Earle is incredibly candid in this interview, citing Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York album as his gateway to discovering Leadbelly and classic blues, and explaining how his father's advice to write only about what he knows led him to pen songs about a rough period in his early 20s when he was a homeless drug addict and hustler on the streets of Nashville.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

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."

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