Steel Bars by Bob Dylan and Michael Bolton

Bolton himself reports that, “While working in Los Angeles, he said, “I got a phone call from a woman named Suzanne Mann, who works with Bob. She said Bob was going to be in town for a few weeks and would I like to write with him? I said, `Are you serious?'” `Yeah, it’s serious. He’d like to work with you and if you want to work with him you’ll have to come up here [in Malibu]. He’s working with a few contemporary songwriters now. But they come and work up here. Bob doesn’t come down [to L.A.] and work other places.’

“I have a little porta-studio I work on,” Bolton went on. “So I wasn’t about to say, `Well if he can’t come down here . . .’   “I actually would have hitchhiked over there!”

Two days later he was on his way to Malibu, and the gravity of the situation began to weigh on him. “I got nervous thinking about … you know, Bob Dylan! Maybe she meant a different Bob Dylan. The legend. Who wrote all the lyrics, who made me wonder how anybody could put words like that together.

“And I became a little intimidated. And I thought: `How am I going to work with this guy? What if I don’t like one of his lyrics? What if I don’t like an idea he comes up with? What am I going to say? `No Bob, that’s not good enough?’ I didn’t know how I was going to write with him.”

His fears subsided soon after he pulled into Dylan’s Malibu compound. “We just hit it off right away, talking about mutual life experiences and laughing about it and just trying to cut through the ice.”

Bolton brought along a musical idea he had started at the time, which was then only a melody. It was something, Bolton said, “that I thought would be compatible with his musical sensibility….

“I started looking for verses and he started shouting out: `How about, `Turn around, you’re in my sleep’? “I almost started laughing, because it was so Dylan.”

Later he added, “With Bob we worked at two sessions, the first one about five hours long. And the second one, we worked about four hours.”

For the final tweaks to the song they faxed each other back and forth and suggests the line “Time itself is so obscene,” is one that Bob sent back in this way.

What makes the song particularly unusual is the chord sequence and the key changes – this is nothing like I have ever Bob Dylan ever do in song – which suggests Bob was limited to the lyrics.

The song starts in…. well not in a a key at all.  B flat as the opening chord and moves to Dsus4 – a chord that doesn’t exist within B flat.  That’s not to say you can’t use it but it mean we don’t know where we are.   The B flat becomes Bb9 and the alternation continues.

Then suddenly with the “I’ve tried running” section we are alternating Em and C, then Am C7 and D – all of which suggests we are in the key of G – without once having had the chord G played.  It certainly is unusual, and the reason it works is because the melody means these changes don’t feel forced.  They are certainly unusual and would make a musician think twice and then think again, but it works.  But it is not a song like a 12 bar blues where musicians could simply hear the start and then have a very good idea where it goes.

The chorus then clearly is in G and the middle 8 stays very much in that key.  But then having just got used to this as a verse in, well, no key at all really, suddenly it jumps up a semi-tone to A flat for the final verse.  Generally such a sudden shift without any musical need for it sounds very forced and is really just a way of extending a song by making the final chorus sound different – and when added to the unaccompanied verse before this chord jump it does begin to feel more like a production rather than a song.  It works ok on first or second hearing, but then, hmmm… for me at least it all sounds a bit forced and seriously reduces the impact of the song.

Added to this the singer (for me) is straining too hard on singing “Steel bars” – there really is too much production, too much forced pain, too much, “I’m hurting now – listen I am even singing it a semi-tone higher.

Here are the lyrics…

In the night I hear you speak
Turn around, you’re in my sleep
Feel your hands inside your soul
You’re holding on and won’t let go

I’ve tried running but there’s no escape
Can’t bend them, and (I know) I just can’t break these…

(Chorus) Steel bars, wrapped all around me
I’ve been your prisoner since the day you found me
I’m bound forever, till the end of time
Steel bars wrapped around this heart of mine

Trying hard to recognize
See the face behind the eyes
Feel your haunting ways like chains
‘Round my heart they still remain

I’m still running, but there’s nowhere to hide
My love for you has got me locked up inside these…

(Chorus)

And with every step I take
Every desperate move I make
It’s clear to me
What can all my living mean
When time itself is so obscene
When time itself don’t mean a thing
I’m still loving you

(Chorus)

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