Here's one rockin' Bob

"Cold Irons Bound" one late track that cuts

For those of us who love The Rock and Roll, there’s been a fleeting suggestion from time to time that the music Bob Dylan has been sending our way for all these years isn’t really rock and roll.

Certainly, Dylan’s brand of music is not rock in the sense of what you might hear from The Who or The Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin. Loud, rumbling guitar heroics really isn’t his thing. He did officially play one guitar solo on “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat,” and let’s just say it was a solo that won’t make anyone think of Eric Clapton or Jeff Beck.

Bob Dylan’s Grammy-winning album “Time Out Of Mind”

For true Dylan devotees, it’s probable that his single hardest-rocking track might well be “Blonde On Blonde’s” sizzling “Obvious Five Believers,” a track that flat-out roars, thanks to the searing guitar work of The Band’s Robbie Robertson.

According to Darryl Sanders book “That Thin Wild Mercury Sound,” even Nashville’s expert studio riffers took a step back from Robertson’s other-worldly playing on that particular number. If you take a listen to recordings from the 1966 World Tour, Robbie is blazing, night after night. Dylan knew what he was getting.

If you thought it was about time we added another unstoppable Dylan rocker to his resume, you’re right, It was a track and a performance distinctive enough to earn Bob a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal in 1998.

Yes, “Cold Irons Bound” is one of those songs that just leaps off the turntable or CD. And while there is often some unease hearing how Bob chooses to perform some of his compositions in concert for a while now, on this Daytona Beach stage at the end of January in 1999, the guy is on fire.

Bob Dylan was really rocking out “Cold Irons Bound” onstage at Daytona Beach, 1999.

All these years later, Bob is still touring but the chances are what you’ll hear in the concert hall will only vaguely resemble what you might have heard on his album.

Especially now, 27 years later, the guy is 84 and it’d be crazy to expect him to dig into a rocker the way he did back when he recorded his Grammy-winning album “Time Out Of Mind.” But looking back, it is fun to hear him really rock out with a song that is so original, I can’t think of another Dylan song like it. I bet you can’t, either.

According to a story in the great British magazine Uncut, the song came about after Dylan heard an unusual beat from drummer David Kemper and something clicked. Kemper explained how the Dylan magic happened.

“I heard this disco record with a Cuban beat, “ Kemper said. “and when I got to the studio, I sat back at the drums and I slowed the beat down, and turned it upside down, and I was just playing, and there was nobody there. No one was expected for a half hour.

“So I was playing this drum beat, and then Bob snuck up behind me and said, “What are you playing?” I said, “Hey Bob, how are you today?” He said, “No, don’t stop, keep playing, what are you playing?”

“I said, “It’s a beat, I’m just writing it right now”. “Don’t stop it. Keep doing it”. And he went and got a yellow pad of paper and sat next to the drums, and he just started writing. And he wrote for maybe ten minutes, and then he said, “Will you remember that?”

“And I said, yeah, I got it. And then he said, all right, everybody come on in, I want to put this down”.

“Well, I got it in my head, and by then everyone had arrived and tuned up. And take one, he stepped up to the microphone, and “I’m beginning to hear voices, and there’s no one around”. And I think we did two takes, and then he said, “All right, let’s move on to something else”.

Kemper said producer Daniel Lanois wasn’t happy about the track. Supposedly, he actually broke a guitar over it. Funny enough, Kemper said the next time he saw Lanois was at the Grammy Awards where Dylan was accepting an award for Male Vocal Performance of the Year — for “Cold Irons Bound.”

As for the song itself, why the lyrics are haunted, aren’t they?

“I’m beginning to hear voices and there’s no one around. Now I’m all used up…”

I think I read somewhere that a woman actually said that to Dylan. And as the song continues, you get the ominous feeling there was a murder somewhere and that unless there’s a town called “Cold Irons” somewhere, it sounds like Dylan is expecting he’ll be in handcuffs, locked up for what he did.

Well, the road is rocky and the hillside’s mud. Up over my head nothing but clouds of blood
I found my own, I found my world in you. But your love just hasn’t proved true. I’m 20 miles out of town, Cold Irons bound.”

On that Daytona Beach stage, Bob tears into that song in a way we don’t often hear. He’s been on so many stages for so many years, those moments when it all kicks in are precious, worth sharing.

For the longest time, it was really difficult to find unreleased Dylan stuff, concerts, too. No longer. When I think of the late Paul Williams, who used to write “You’ve Got To Hear This Tape,” about all these Dylan concert tapes he’d find, the poor guy could never have kept up.

It’s great that somebody grabbed this one. Bob rockin’ out at Daytona Beach. Whattya know?