You Know wouldn't even know if his arse was on fire.
Here is Bobs take on the song, as published in Sing Out in 1968:
"These melodies on the John Wesley Harding album lack this traditional sense
of time. as with the third verse of the 'Wicked Messenger,' which opens it
up, and then the time schedule takes a jump and soon the song becomes wider.
One realizes that when one hears it, but one might have to adapt to it. But
we are not hearing anything that isn't there; anything we can imagine is
really there. The same thing is true of the song 'All Along the
Watchtower,' which opens up in a slightly different way, in a stranger way,
for here we have the cycle of events working in a rather reverse order."
All Along the Watchtower is based on Isaiah and deals with the end of the world.
If any of you cats don't get it, then you weren't meant to.
The Pope