Reflections of a Wallflower in Bloom
Album Network, 9/11/92
By Jim Nelson


"I find I hard sometimes to actually play with this band, admits Wallflowers lead guitarist Tobi Miller. "Everything sound so good, I'm not sure I should play at all. But then I'll look at Rami (keyboard player Rami Jaffee) and he'll inspire me and something great will come out."

Miller, along with singer/rhythm guitarist Jakob Dylan, is sitting in a cramped room backstage after a recent Wallflowers show in the band's hometown of Hollywood, describing the musical attributres of his bandmates. In addition to Miller, Dylan and Jaffee (his name is pronounced RAW-me JAF-fee), The Wallflowers consists of bass player Barrie MaGuire and drummer Peter Yanowitz.

"Barrie's got a really great sense of arrangement and he works off the melody very well, which is all you can hope for in a bass player," Miller continues. "He's pretty amazing at that. And Peter is just..."

"Nutty," Jakob cuts him off.

"Peter's nutty," Miller concurs. "We played with maybe 15,000 drummers before we met Peter. At least 15,000! He was definitely the most solid, and personality-wise, he fit right in with the band. He's always got a smile on his face. But let me just say right now that we fight a lot, too – the whole band. Me and Peter hated each other for a long time, and that kept the band from coming together for a few months, but now we're like brothers – we fight like cats and dogs."

As for the Wallflowers' tunes, that's Dylan's department. "I write the songs," Jakob allows, "but they would definitely not sound the way they do [if not for the band]. I write very basic; just a guitar or a piano – I'm not really concerned too much with arranging –so I depend on the band for their 50%. The song itself is obviously still important, but without even just one of [the band members] it would not sound like The Wallflowers."

Jakob Dylan strikes me right off as a very self-effacing young man. He's also very careful to guard himself from the dangers of outside intruders. He has to be, because as the son of Bob Dylan, he understands he'll never escape the inevitable comparisons. Those comparisons will come, and they will also be unjust, because even a cursory listen to The Wallflowers will show that Jakob only occasionally resembles –and never sounds exactly like – his father. Nonetheless, Jakob Dylan wisely prefers to deflect the unavoidable by discussing The Wallflowers, rather than his lineage.

The Wallflowers evolved over time, eventually becoming a four-piece called The Apples about three years ago. The Apples –Dylan and Miller, who had known each other since grade school, yanowitz and MaGuire—soon took up a regular Tuesday night residence at a Hollywood deli. Though the four had played together in different configurations, only Jakob and Tobi are natives of Southern California. MaGuire hails from Philadelphia, while Yanowitz called Utah home before moving West. Then, about this time last year, The Applies landed, as Dylan puts it, "the last available Hammond B3 player that exists who will sit between a piano and organ." Jaffee, also an Angeleno, was the final piece of the puzzle.

At some point, The Apples renamed itself The Wallflowers. Now, out of idle curiosity, I wonder out loud about the implications of this name. "We're pretty much shy people –this interview is pretty hard to deal with right now," Tobi states for the record. "So the name just seemed to fit really well."

"The name isn't necessarily a reflection of the band," Dylan points out, however. "It wasn't like, 'Jeez, we are wallflowers.' Every band needs a name and it just has a nice sound. A lot of people seem to think that we've ended up as wallflowers, but that wasn't really part of it." "Also," Tobi picks up again, "it's a name that's not in anyone's face, and there's something to be said about that. It's a subtle name."

The Wallflowers' self-titled debut album is a dozen new songs, comprising virtually 70 minutes of music that is quite different from the Metal and hard rock so prevalent in the LA scene these days. Its earthy, organic textures and propensity for the Hammond organ give songs like "Ashes To Ashes," "After the Blackbird Sings," "For the Life Of Me," "Shy of the Moon" and "Sugarfoot" a quality not unlike The Band of the early 70s. That, however, was not intended by The Wallflowers.

"We're not necessarily in love with old instruments or old records any more than we are with new records," Jakob wants it known. "We weren't going for an old sound, we just had an idea of recording the record in the studio the way we play it in rehearsal or a show. And that's what we got to do. It's like 70% live vocal. There's just a quality that comes through when you record it that way."

"So if it does sound like the 'R' word [retro], that's probably in other people's minds," says Dylan, perhaps wishing I hadn't brought it up.

"The thing is, we're not the only guys doing this kind of music," Miller adds. "It's just not getting out there right now."

"It isn't necessarily a kind of music – it's more of a mentality," Dylan concludes.

Cognizant of the importance of working with someone who understood their musical needs, the band met with several producers before settling on Paul Fox, a veteran of albums by 10,000 Maniacs, Robyn Hitchcock and the Sugarcubes. "It was hard to find a producer that would let us just play live and record it, because there's not a lot of safety there. But I guess he trusted us, so he let us do it," says Miller.

"A lot of producers were reluctant to try that with us," Dylan acknowledges. "Paul kept contacting the band, really wanting to work with us, and after meeting with him, we realized right away that he had such a good attitude towards everything. His track record may not have sounded like us, but it undoubtedly was the right decision."

"Paul's not very strict," Miler throws in. "[For instance], we all kind of agreed that mistakes are sometimes really a beautiful thing, and so, that helped us out, too, because that's all part of recording live."

The Wallflowers is a mature collection of songs, belying the youth of its members [each is in his early 20s] and lack of recording experience. Once again, Dylan shares the credit.

"Paul was the sixth creative force in the studio; he was very beneficial to the record," Jakob explains. "Even though he let us take our natural course and do what we wanted to do, he was very necessary for the sound of the record."



| Home | Back to Articles |