"Cold Irons Bound" is a Grammy Award

Grammy Award

A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

-winning song written by Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, released in 1997 on his critically acclaimed album Time Out of Mind

Time out of Mind

Time Out of Mind is the 30th studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on September 30, 1997 on Columbia Records. It is his first double studio album since 1970's Self Portrait...

. An alternate version was released on the Masked and Anonymous

Masked and Anonymous

Masked and Anonymous is a 2003 comedy-drama film directed by Larry Charles, who is better known for his writing on successful TV sitcoms, Seinfeld and Mad About You and for executive producing episodes of The Tick and Dilbert. The film was written by Larry Charles and Bob Dylan, the latter under...

soundtrack in 2003. A live version was released in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 on the compilation Live 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances

Live 1961-2000: Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances

Live 1961–2000 ~ Thirty-Nine Years of Great Concert Performances is a live compilation album by Bob Dylan, released only in Japan on February 28, 2001.-Track listing:All songs by Bob Dylan, except where noted:...

in 2001. Since its composition, "Cold Irons Bound" has been a regular in Dylan's live setlists.
Oliver Trager describes "Cold Irons Bound" as "biting" with "ricocheting guitar licks, rockabilly

Rockabilly

Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music, dating to the early 1950s.The term rockabilly is a portmanteau of rock and hillbilly, the latter a reference to the country music that contributed strongly to the style's development...

 drums, distorted organ, and [a] voice floating in a blimp of its own echo," in which "one can still hear, to paraphrase "Visions of Johanna

Visions of Johanna

"Visions of Johanna" is a song written and performed by Bob Dylan on his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. Dylan first recorded the song in New York City in November 1965, under the working title of "Freeze Out", but was dissatisfied with the results...

," the ghost of electricity howling from the bones of Dylan's face..." Michael Gray also describes this song in detail:

Covers

"Cold Irons Bound" has been covered by:

• Druha Trava
  Druhá Tráva
  Druhá Tráva is a bluegrass band from the Czech Republic, formed in 1991 by Robert Křesťan. As of August 2005, they have released eighteen studio albums either as a group or as side projects....
  
   & Peter Rowan: New Freedom Bell (1999)
• Jing Chi: Jing Chi Live (2003)
• Tom Verlaine
  Tom Verlaine
  Tom Verlaine is a singer, songwriter and guitarist, best known as the frontman for the New York rock band Television.-Biography:...
  
   & The Million Dollar Bashers: I'm Not There
  I'm Not There (soundtrack)
  The soundtrack album for the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There was released as a double CD on October 30, 2007. It features only one recording by Dylan himself—his previously unreleased recording of the title song "I'm Not There" recorded during The Basement Tapes' sessions in 1967—plus...
  
  (2007)