Monday 13 January 2020


Jakob Dylan: 'My father doesn't own acoustic music'

38-year-old singer and songwriter Jakob Dylan
A fan of tradition: 38-year-old singer and songwriter Jakob Dylan 

Wallflowers frontman Jakob Dylan, son of Bob, has struck out on his own. He tells Neil McCormick why

There is a new Dylan album out next week.

Produced by the legendary Rick Rubin (the studio wizard behind the belated career revivals of Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond), Seeing Things feels like a real achievement, hewn from ancient stone; elegant, understated, quietly powerful. The careworn timbre of a slightly broken voice, delicately picked acoustic notes and the weave of words and melody is all there is to carry the full force of the songs.

It is the kind of record that, despite its apparent simplicity and austerity, opens up with repeated listens. And it is perhaps all the more remarkable because the Dylan in question is not Bob but his youngest son, Jakob.

"For the kind of work I'm in," says Jakob, weighing his words carefully, "if you're a songwriter, if you really mean business, it's inevitable you're gonna arrive at the place where you just want to pare it back and do something primitive.

"Its no secret that I grew up around records that are benchmarks for everybody, but if dad wasn't in the picture, people might say this kind of reminds them of (Paul Simon's) Rhymin' Simon or (Bruce Springsteen's) Nebraska. I'm aware of the inevitable comparisons but I also think, in the same breath, he doesn't own acoustic music. A lot of people have played acoustic guitar, before and after. I'm just being led by the music like everybody else."

At 38 years old, Jakob is extraordinarily handsome in a slightly feline way, the high cheekbones and piercing blue eyes owing as much to his mother (the model Sara Dylan ) as his father. Born in New York in 1969, the youngest of the Dylans' five children, he was the inspiration for the classic paternal love song, Forever Young. Although generally discreet to the point of evasiveness about his upbringing, he recalls a close, loving, protective family.

Outside the home, however, things got a little less normal. "The second you walked out the door, it was everywhere. Do most kids have people crash their bar mitzvah?" Remarking upon the bizarre activities of AJ Weberman, the infamous "garbologist," who raided the Dylan family's trash in an effort to glean insight into Bob's songs, Jakob once declared incredulously: "Those were my diapers!"

Following his parents' divorce in 1977, Jakob was raised by his mother in California, but remains close to both parents. For someone who grew up in the eye of a storm, he seems mature and well adjusted, if almost determinedly unstarry.

The son of the most revered singer-songwriter of our times, Jakob is firm in his conviction that he has nothing to prove. "Everybody's born loving music," he says. "It gets shaken out of you at some point, or you're supposed to get a real vocation - but I never considered anything else. That's how large it looms in my life. My approach has always been that it's nothing but a thrill, and nothing that I can stop anyhow."

Jakob is already a star in his own right. His band, The Wallflowers, released their first album of melodic, roots-tinted American rock in 1992 and went on to sell some six million copies of their powerful 1996 album Bringing Down The Horse (a bigger seller than any of his father's individual albums).

His pin-up looks made him an MTV favourite, but there was also poetic depth to the band's swirling, epic rock. The Wallflowers won two Grammys (for best rock song and rock group performance) on the same night in 1997 that his father's Time Out of Mind was named album of the year.

Beset by line-up changes, Jakob's frustrations with the band's slow creative process and commercial decline led him to want to go it alone. His solo debut conjures up a mythical America, where ordinary lives are set against a battleground of ethical struggle, and simple choices have profound consequences. "They are hard thought songs, and hard fought melodies," he says. "I stretched out as much as possible, made them a little sneaky, so they stick around for a while."

The much admired Rick Rubin proved an ideal collaborator. "He has an ability to figure out what the force is," says Jakob. "He said to me early on, 'There's nobody you're gonna have come play on this record that's gonna make it any better. You're gonna make it good, and that's it.' His best ability is to share with you when he is moved by the music. It sounds very primitive but music is primitive. It either reverberates in your soul and your heart or it doesn't, and no amount of knob-twiddling is gonna make it any more moving."

Jakob's lyrics have a literate, old-world flavour. "I don't want it to be heavy-handed, I want it just to weave seamlesly through your imagination, and that has to do with the shape of words, and comes probably more from literature and poetry and folk music than listening to rock and roll.

"I'm confused why people are so hung up on originality. Either you're born original or you're not: sitting around with your friends at art college brewing up ways to be different is, in my mind, a waste of time. I'm a huge fan of tradition. I like when I get to see people working hard, and working to the values of [music] as a real craft."

Bob Dylan is the elephant in the room of any conversation with Jakob, which is unfortunate. Like many before, Dylan Jr has followed a beloved and admired parent into his line of work, and has proven himself to be talented in his own right. And while you can't help but feel the long shadow cast when he describes his fastidious approach to his craft, it is hard not to admire the work ethic, or, indeed, be impressed with the end product.

"Very few people are just tapped for something unexplained; the rest of us have to apply ourselves," he says. "I work my tail off, I weed out a lot, and I sweat it, but there's no bigger thrill than when I hit the mark."

  • 'Seeing Things' (Sony BMG) is out Monday


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