"Wallflower's Leader Makes A Career Without Trading On His Famous Name"
By Tom Moon
Philadelphia Inquirer (Newspaper)
December 4, 1997

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Jakob Dylan has a slightly bemused, slightly exasperated look on his face. He and his band the Wallflowers have finished another sound check in another echoey gym, and now he's secluded in the Muhlenberg College athletic director's office, trying to explain his uneasy adjustment to the life of a rock star.
Just as he's talking about music as a craft rather than the path to fame, a chorus of ardent female voices starts to serenade him through the window. They sing his songs back to him, almost mocking his earnestness - not just the hits, but also the album tracks and cuts from the band's relatively obscure 1992 debut.

Dylan slides lower in his chair. If he's trying to hide, his wool cap, leather jacket and work boots are a woefully insufficient disguise.

"How do they even know it's me?" he wonders, asking a visitor to peer through the tightly shut venetian blinds. Then, he's apologetic: "My interviews are usually done in more seclusion." Finally, as the singing persists, he cracks a smile: "It's kind of sweet," he admits.

Dylan knows he has crossed the line: It's impossible to avoid this kind of attention anymore. He has made his peace with it. "Hey, look, I grew up knowing exactly what fame was," says the son of Bob Dylan, implying that it might have been easier for him to choose a different line of work. "I started because I was driven to play music. We all know there are a lot of people who are driven to be stars. Their craft is stardom. That's not my craft. But if you get successful," he says, gesturing out the window, "these things come with it. If you pretend you didn't know that, you're lying."

The first thing you learn about Jakob Dylan, the singer and composer who has emerged as one of the most promising rock stars of the decade, is this: He views his music as a job. It's not a dreary job, by any means, but one that comes with responsibilities. Having grown up in close proximity to one of the music world's iconic figures, he knows that his work is not yet the genius some have proclaimed. When he says he wants to spend all his time writing and playing, it's because he wants to get better. He intends to grow into the job.

Indeed, Dylan has taken his time with everything. He avoided interviews in the beginning. He didn't do "Hard Copy." He let the music speak for him. As word spread from alternative-rock radio to more classic-leaning outlets, from MTV and VH-1 to the network talk shows, Dylan, 28, moved into the spotlight with extraordinary focus and determination. In the process, the youngest of the five Dylan children managed something nearly impossible in this celebrity age: He built a thriving career without exploiting the family name.

Not that he ignored the old man: His father's constant touring and experimentation are the model for Jakob Dylan's own work ethic. The Wallflowers have been on the road practically nonstop for 18 months, since before the June 1996 release of their second album, "Bringing Down the Horse." They've played all sorts of backwaters and third-tier college towns, mixing club dates with opening slots on theater and arena tours. One month it was a string of shows with Sheryl Crow. Last month, it was Dodger Stadium with the Rolling Stones. Now, the group is headlining at colleges and mid-size venues.

The younger Dylan's philosophy: In the long campaign to build a following, every night matters.

"You've got to play for anybody. A lot of people in my position are particular about who they play with, who they're seen with. I don't think that represents anything about you. I want to play for as many people as possible. When you open for a larger group, you get exposed to different people."

Touring has also given the Wallflowers time to grow musically. "We've been playing a lot, and the band is in a really comfortable place," says Dylan, noting that the band had major personnel changes while recording "Horse."

The proof is right up on stage. Twenty-four hours after the Allentown gig, Dylan and his four-piece rhythm section are in front of another devoted crowd at Drexel Univeristy's cavernous phys-ed complex, kicking up a rock 'n' roll storm that stretches back to the Band and the earthy narratives of early Springsteen. It's a growling, six-cylinders-on-an-open-road sound, a magical blend of stomping backbeat, piping B3 organ, and graceful, eternally weepy guitar.

To the band, the songs are ancient at this point. But through the nightly rituals of work, the musicians have burrowed deep into them to match Dylan's aching, world-weary delivery. They support Dylan as he pours new sadness into the chorus of his breakout hit "6th Avenue Heartache," and help him make the impulse to flee , which saturates the last verse of "Three Marlenas," seem a matter of considerable urgency. No one is simply going through the motions. Dylan, in particular, is out there chasing something, striving for a moment of illumination, seeing just how compelling his songs can be.

It's a nightly struggle, Dylan admits, to make the compositions he calls "little diaries" come alive. "Sometimes [the songs] feel a little stale. Other times, you don't know who even wrote the song, because you don't feel like that anymore. But when you get in front of people who've never seen you play before and you see how excited they can be, you realize it means a lot to them. I go to a lot of shows, and if I look up and see a guy who's incredibly bored, like he wants to shoot himself, I feel terrible."

Sincerity is important to Jakob Dylan. It's the acid test he applies to the music he writes and listens to. (Right now, his personal heavy rotation includes country legend George Jones, the prototypical New Orleans funk band the Meters, and the latest from Brit-poppers Radiohead.) Asked to pick a composition of which he's particularly proud, he mentions the hit "One Headlight," an elliptical, fragmented tale of a damaged soul who needs to be reminded that there are brighter horizons. Its galloping chorus contains this bit of motivational wisdom: "C'mon try a little, nothing is forever, there's got to be something better than in the middle."

"That song, it felt like when I was writing, I was pushing a little further," he says, his eyes a cloudless-sky blue that might have been genetically engineered for seduction. "That's what you're always trying to do, and it's kind of set a standard I was hoping to meet with the whole record."

It took Dylan a long time to assemble "One Headlight" and the other songs that became "Horse." When the Wallflowers' eponymous 1992 record fizzled, both he and Virgin, his label at the time, were surprised. Following an acrimonious split, he grappled with rejection, wrote a bunch of pained, slightly bitter songs, and - with the help of keyboardist Rami Jaffee - went about rebuilding the band.

"What happened to me is what normally happens, it just doesn't get written about," contends Dylan, who was raised by his mother, Sara Lowndes, in Los Angeles. "All my friends have had two or three record deals. They've been hired and fired and gone through personal problems. I'd had a shot and it didn't happen.
"What was weird was, up until then, it was considered a shoo-in that guys in my position would sell 2 million records without even touring. I came along and threw a monkey wrench in that by failing. I'm sure a lot of 'sons and daughters of' were freaking out, going 'It's not going to work anymore.'"

Avoiding the family tie, Dylan maintains, was the only chance he had to be taken seriously. He seems slightly embarrassed by the fact that "Horse" has sold over 4 million copies, more than virtually every title in his father's catalog: "Look, one album is one album. What he's done is work and grow over a whole career. That's a far different thing."

And he resents talk of the mythical father-son rift that has swirled around him since the Wallflowers exploded late last year. He mentions a private show in San Jose, Calif., where they recently shared the bill.

"It was another day at the job - it wasn't difficult or strange for anybody involved. People have always asked me 'Will you play together?' And for me it's a stupid question. Like, when are Paul Simon and I going to play together? The truth is, no one made an offer before, and when one came up that was convenient for both of us, we did it. I don't think it deserves to be movie of the week or anything."

What is movie-of-the-week material is Jakob's persistence, his determination to establish his own identity, his commitment to rock 'n' roll not as a get-rich-quick scheme, but as a way to sort out tangled emotions, the tumult of the world.

He has just begun doing that, he says bluntly. "Let's be real. I don't think people care what I think about a lot of things yet. I want to get there. I want to be somebody interesting who has something to say. It seems to me I need to learn how to do this job first."


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