He's got a rather famous father but don't mention the B-word. Meet Jakob Dylan.

By Simon Cosyns

July 25, 2008

IT can't be easy forging a music career if your dad is Bob Dylan.

How could you possibly come up with era-defining songs to match Blowin' In The Wind or Like A Rolling Stone?

But music has always been the only option for Jakob Dylan, fourth and youngest child of Bob and ex-wife Sara.

"There's nothing else," replies the softly spoken 38-year-old when asked if an alternative ever beckoned.

Jakob appears laid-back, at ease with himself. He's long since learned to cope with the weight of expectation that comes with having an icon for a father but I quickly detect understandable reticence to talk about Dylan Snr at length.

"I've always withstood whatever kind of pressure I might have felt from any of that," he says. "It's funny how family traditions are admired in almost every other field except the arts.

"I was always aware of his stuff and I've always appreciated it - but I'm not a sycophant. I don't put any more interest into it than any other songwriter who's trying to do a good job." Growing up, his early inspirations included The Clash and Elvis Costello and, since 1992, Jakob has stood firmly on his own two feet as singer and songwriter in The Wallflowers.

The band's second album Bringing Down The Horse is a multi-platinum slice of classic American roots rock. Buoyed by hit songs One Headlight and 6th Avenue Heartache, it shifted twice as many copies as Blood On The Tracks - the searing masterpiece documenting Bob's split from Jakob's mother - sold in over 20 years. At the time, Bringing Down The Horse producer T-Bone Burnett (recently behind the Mercury-nominated Robert Plant and Alison Krauss album) said: "As far as Jakob is concerned, I can't imagine having larger footsteps to follow in. But Jakob's character is clearly defined and he handles success with grace, which also says a lot about Bob as a father. I don't think Jakob has sold a single record because he is Bob's son. “I wonder how many Wallflowers fans even know who Bob Dylan is."

Today, comparisons - and differences - to dad have been brought into even sharper relief with the release of Seeing Things, Jakob's first solo album. It's largely acoustic, full of crisp Dylanesque turns of phrase, and is appearing on Columbia, the label Bob joined as a fresh-faced 20-year-old back in 1961. It's also quite possibly the best thing he's ever done. The resonance of the situation is not lost on Jakob. "As far as labels go, when you see that black eye logo on a red background, it still feels powerful and it still feels mighty. "It has a lot to do with the time I grew up in. I don't know if young people today would recognise it but it still looks like class to me. They've always maintained that. I don't think they've ever jumped a shark or dropped the ball so I'm thrilled to be part of the camp." At the same time, he acknowledges that the label is part of a very different music scene from the early Sixties. "It's not like the same people who brought him (Bob) there, brought me there. There's no one from those days around.

"For me, the bigger question was: 'Do I even want to make records with these major labels anymore that everybody's running from?' When I got out of my deal with my previous label (Interscope), it was like getting shackles taken off."

I meet Jakob in the salubrious Sanderson Hotel, just off Oxford Street, in London's West End. Just us and a pool table with a purple cloth.

He saunters in, removes his shades and eases into the chair opposite. I'm instantly struck by his good looks (he once modelled for Gap) and a more than passing resemblance to the Bob we see in pictures from the turn of the Seventies, around the time Jakob was born. I'm aware he's a private family man, who lives in LA with wife Paige and their four young sons, but I find him open, friendly and happy to talk music.

With The Wallflowers on hold, he's passionate about his new solo direction and the album he's crafted with producer Rick Rubin (also co-head of Columbia and mastermind behind stripped-down albums by Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond). "I've known Rick for a long, long time," says Jakob. "We talked about working together before but nothing ever happened. "Coincidentally, he took up his role at Columbia around the time I wound up there so we got together to discuss the material I had. "It was my idea to do something acoustic and I think it's a misunderstanding that he takes all his artists and strips everything away. I mean he's even made a record for Slayer. Anyway, he really responded to what I was doing and encouraged it. Before I knew it, we were making the album together. He really loves and appreciates music and had no problem telling me whether something moved him or not. It's called having an opinion but he's right more often than most."

Seeing Things has a timeless quality, pondering the human condition against the backdrop of a 21st Century America which went to war in distant lands such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The pairing of Evil Is Alive And Well and Valley Of The Low Sun makes for an unsettled opening. The mood brightens with lovely efforts like Everybody Pays As They Go (featuring exquisite harmonies from The Like's "Z" Berg) and Something Good This Way Comes while This End Of The Telescope is a tenderly sung sign-off. Over its ten songs and 37 minutes, the album finds room for humour and grit, light and dark with Jakob's mellow, expressive voice given room to glow in spare settings.

"When it was tucked into a full band sound, I'd always thought of my voice as another texture. I haven't really used it so upfront before.But it's also not that different to what I'd done in The Wallflowers. I always wrote the songs and conceptualised the vision of the records. Here, there's just no big racket behind me."

Already, people have noted the war theme and drawn comparison to Bob Dylan's early songs like With God On Our Side and A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. "I think the concept of war is timeless," says Jakob. "There's physical war and there's emotional war and the imagery is boundless. I come to it not from a political perspective but as a human concern. "Someone said what I'd written (Evil Is Alive And Well) was quite ballsy and was I sure I wanted to say it. I replied: 'I don't mind being the one who puts his foot forward.'" Would he describe it as a protest song? "Who wouldn't protest against evil?" answers Jakob emphatically.

The universal themes explored on Seeing Things also reveal the singer's reluctance to be too personal in song. "Because you write them, it's your own unique spin and you're in there somewhere but my songs are not autiobiographical or confessional. Those buzz words turn me off." With it's intimate feel and thoughtful lyrics, however, the album reveals more of Jakob than anything he did in The Wallflowers. "It's the most uncomplicated thing I've ever done and it feels good. I don't think there's anything about this record that I'll ever learn to regret. Love 'em or leave 'em, these performances are genuine."

So give Jakob Dylan a listen. Seeing Things is an immense achievement by anyone's standards - even his father's.

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