"Cold Irons Bound" is a Grammy Award-winning song written by Bob Dylan, recorded in January 1997 and released on September 30, 1997 as the eighth track on his album Time Out of Mind. The song was produced by Daniel Lanois.
Dylan was inspired to write the song in the studio after hearing drummer David Kemper, who had arrived early one day, playing an unusual beat. As Kemper explained in an interview with Uncut:
I heard this disco record with a Cuban beat, 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". I remember Daniel Lanois wasn’t happy; he didn’t like it. It was one of his guitar breaking incidents. He said to Tony [Garnier] and I: "The world doesn’t want another two-note melody from Bob". And he smashed a guitar. So I thought, well, there goes my chance of being on this record. Next time I saw Daniel was at the [Grammys] because we had performed that night, and all of a sudden, Male Vocal Performance of the Year, came from that song – the one that Dan was adamant wouldn’t get on the record.