On June 23, Michael Bolton released his latest album ‘Spark of Light’ and recently talked about it in an interview with Rolling Stone Deutschland. During the chat, he also discussed working with Bob Dylan on his 1991 track ‘Steel Bars’ and how Dylan acted behind the scenes, saying:
“He was down to earth. He was not what I expected. He was a pleasure and easy to work with. He kept coming up with different lyrical ideas and chiming in if he liked the melody I sang. He would say, ‘I like that. I like that.”
Bolton then recalled how he received the offer to work with Dylan in the first place, stating:
“What I remember most about working with him was that he was a pleasure to work with. I was nervous about working with him. I was a huge fan of his pretty much my whole life, and I thought someone was playing a practical joke on me, telling me they worked for Bob Dylan and he wanted to write with me, and they were his publisher.”
The singer then went on to explain what happened afterward:
“When I found out it was for real, I canceled my week [to] make room for the session, apologized, and explained that I had the opportunity to write with Bob Dylan, and everyone said, ‘Oh, you have to do that.’ Everyone seemed to be very understanding.”
He continued by detailing how it felt to collab with Dylan, recalling:
“I think that something that I’ll never forget was the feeling while I was sitting at a table waiting to start writing. It was in Bob’s garage, where he had his home studio, a set of drums, and a bunch of various equipment, various recording equipment. He was talking to me, and he probably thought I was listening to him, but I was actually just thinking, ‘Oh my God! This is Bob Dylan! Yes, it’s still Bob Dylan.’ I couldn’t shake the fact that I was working with Bob Dylan.”
After these meetings, the two came up with ‘Steel Bars,’ which Bolton released as a part of ‘Time, Love & Tenderness.’ With the 1991 album, it sold over 8 million copies just in the US.
But, way before that point, Bolton had doubts about the track’s creation, mainly due to Bob Dylan. The same year the record debuted, he told Hartford Courant:
“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.”
You can listen to the song and watch Bolton’s interview in the videos below.