JAKOB'S LADDER Part 2

6.12.97 By Gerry Hirshey for Rolling Stone

Len Fagan, who still books the Teazer, kept them on, despite Jakob's no-shows. "They were very young; they weren't drawing too well," Fagan remembers. "But Jake's voice had personality, and I was crazy about some of the songs. Jake looked like any kid - that knit cap, baggy shorts. He wasn't very animated onstage. But he always had what I call those Ricky Nelson bedroom eyes. He'd make those movements, cringing, singing hard, if he was deep into a song."

And, no, Fagan had no idea whose boy he was until months in to the Wallflowers' residency there, when, as a CBS scout, he persuaded a company executive to catch their set. But the band members told him they could never sign with CBS - Jake's dad was on the label. Fagan suddenly understood a few strange things that had happened, like the time a man leapt out of the darkness to take a picture of Jakob, who seemed oddly and deeply upset.

"You gotta be kidding" was Jaffee's reaction to learning his band mates parentage. As the bus pulls off the highway, Jaffee is recalling that he must have played with Jakob every day for nearly two months before the drummer hipped him. Later, Jaffee asked Jakob why he never mentioned his dad: "He said, 'It could have ruined it. Didn't seem like it was necessary.'"

Providence, R. I., the morning after. For the first night in weeks, Jakob has caught 12 solid hours of sleep. And he is feeling great, until he tries to open a hotel room window and it smashes down on his finger. He's bleeding on the tablecloth of the meeting room we're in. A nasty back swelling has risen alongside the nail. My road kit has bandages, and he submits to some hasty ad hoc doctoring. He'll have to play tonight, of course - will finish up his set with a nasty tatter of bloody gauze sliding up and down the frets.

It seems an apt if cruel moment to ask about one puzzling aspect of his dogged pursuit, his "chasing after this thing," as Jakob puts it. Based on the information he's given me so far, it doesn't add up. He has said he was somewhat of a loner and an academic disaster, ran a dismal D average for three years in one high school before they booted him, was so shy he'd take an F rather than get up in front of 20 kids and give an oral report. At birthday parties and in Little League - especially when Dad was in the stands - Jakob and his siblings were always conscious of being stared at, and he hated it. "Obviously," he says, knowing where this is going, "if you get onstage there's a piece of you that says, 'I like being looked at.' I haven't found the connection in myself yet."

Jakob says that when he was growing up, the unspoken mantra was, "Blend!" The drills were in place before he was born. "If I was in a public place with my dad, and people noticed," he says, "I'd cross the street. Stand next to somebody else. It was instinct. My picture was not to be in magazines. It was unsaid. I understood. IT's something I spent 20 years doing a certain way - then I went completely the opposite. It's hard to figure out how that makes any sense. You find ways to rationalize it - like it's some character up there, it's not you."

The lure of the music and the road is easier for Jakob to explain: "I saw that stuff for so long, since I can remember. I just can't shake it out of myself. Just like some people who grew up on a farm...as you get older, you miss the farm." He is still figuring out how to reconcile the demands of the road with having his own family. His own wife left college when their son was born; someday she'll want to go back. They come out with him sometimes, but he knows enough to be extremely protective of them. He will not even utter his son's name. Even though Jakob got through childhood without the phalanx of Glock-toting nannies and security consultants that cosset rock babies today, fallout from the rock & roll life whacked him hard as a child.

He wouldn't say so at first. He had told me that he barely remembered his parents being together before their divorce, in 1977, after 12 years of marriage. "It didn't seem that abnormal," he said. "I don't look back on that era and think, 'Boy, that's when my life went south, when my parents got divorced.'"

Remind him gently some time later that there was some rather unpleasant information out there, that it was all over the papers when Jakob was 7 & 8, and he says, "Of course." Anyone can find those facts. And he can understand the general curiosity, because some of the hell was hammered into Art, pressed into vinyl, and, baby, it sold.

In late 1974, as the marriage began to unravel, Bob Dylan made his "divorce album," Blood On the Tracks. Released in early 1975, it stands as one of Dylan's most brilliant records, a piece of majestic torment. Writer Greil Marcus described it as "the tale of and adventurer's war with a woman and with himself, and a shattering attempt to force memory, fantasy and the terrors of love and death to serve an artistic impulse."

It made great art, but there were five children caught in the emotional flood - one and three sons the Dylans had together, and a daughter from Sara's earlier marriage. Mercifully, the court records were sealed, but for jakob there are other documents that echo those times. "If I hear [an upbeat song like] 'Tombstone Blues,' I'm having a good time with everybody else," Jakob says. "Those other songs on Nashville Skyline and Blood On the Tracks...those are my parents talking."

Nashville Skyline was cut in 1969, when his parents were making bread and babies - Jakob, to be precise - in Woodstock, NY. Jakob says he hears his parents in its love songs and in 'Blood's' accusations and laments. He is certain that although strangers danced and made love to them, those songs comprise a fathoms-deep repository of his family history. "Sometimes you just write songs for entertainment," he says. "Other times you get a feeling that it really matters. I can tell, in certain songs - maybe that's where I get my information on those subjects. But I've never had to ask questions about it. I've always kind of left it alone."

Come to think of it, Jakob has never asked his dad whether "Forever Young" was indeed inspired by Jakob's birth. He figures it was a rumor some Dylan freak cooked up, since clearly it's a song written to all well-loved children. And he can always listen to it fondly. Not so with, say, "Idiot Wind," from Blood On the Tracks, a song so rueful and vituperative that it's been compared to the poet Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." "Idiot Wind" deals with gossip, backstabbing, shattered faith.

"In a lot of ways, that's the only snapshot I have, because I don't have a great memory of that time," Jakob says. "A lot of random images might strike my memory hearing it. Those are my parents talking, and if I want to go to that place - I mean, how often do you want to depress yourself? Sometimes it goes in one ear and out the other. Sometimes, depending on my state, those songs can bother me."

It is doubtless to everyone's deep regret that some of the more vivid images of the Dylan's domestic travails became very public information. Some were contained in humiliatingly detailed press releases issued by Sara Dylan's lawyer, Marvin "Palimony" Mitchelson, others in news-wire coverage of a harrowing incident at the children's school, in late 1977, as the custody battle raged. Though she had temporary custody, Sara Dylan, accompanied by private detectives, attempted to take her children out of class one day, chasing them through school and assaulting a teacher who demanded to see a court order. Sara was charged with battery for the assault, and subsequently was fined $125.

"That was my school," Jakob acknowledges. "I was there. I can honestly say that day is the most sensitive part of my life. I remember it more vividly than almost any other day. I've never really discussed it with anybody. If I talked about it, I'd probably end up with a therapist within a half-hour. It's that deep."

In fact, he says he's never opted for therapy. Asked just how he thinks he did get through it, he's silent for a moment. "The only thing I can come up with is that the kids were and are very close," he says. "And I didn't have to see very many bad things." And he was so very small: "I was too busy trying to get the cable TV to work or my toys to work."

In Southern California, smack in the middle of the Me decade, divorce was as common and noisy as cornflakes. Plenty of Jakob's friends griped loudly and justifiably, and still do. Not so the Dylan children. "In that sense, [my parents] didn't do a bad job," Jakob says, " because we can all function today without complaining about it."

There is a silence, and by now it's not hard to sense another one of those difficult moments. "I'm kind of stuck here between saying I didn't see anything..." he says. "And the truth is, I do know quite a lot about it. But it's incredibly painful, and I don't feel it's any of my business. But I'd be lying if I said,'Jeez, I really don't know.'"

It's information he'd rather not have, and he'd never dream of asking his parents for more. Fortunately things normalized after a harrowing custody dispute. The needs of the children prevailed. Bob Dylan explained it this way: "Marriage was a failure. Husband and wife was a failure, but father and mother wasn't a failure."

They just found an alternative parenting style. "We always had free access to both parents," Jakob says. "I spent half my time with both of them; there was never any time I couldn't be with whichever one I wanted. We were pretty much allowed to do what we needed and wanted to do. I traveled quite a bit. Certainly, going to Europe was more fun than going to school."

He says that his oldest sister, Maria, is "a full-time mom and part-time lawyer"; eldest brother Jesse is a video director; brother Sam is a photographer; and sister Anna is an artist. There are plenty of children, family get-togethers and, yes, doting, amiable grandparents. Both Bob and Sara watched Jakob marry Paige at his mother's Los Angeles home. Also present: Jakob's only surviving grandparent - his father's mother, Beatrice Zimmerman, whom Jakob adores.

"Jake's family is a huge advantage to him," says T-Bone Burnett. "I'm not talking about the name. I'm talking about the people. They're all great kids. Sara is a beautiful woman, and Bob, well, no matter what anybody thinks or writes, he is a wonderful man."

And, adds Jakob, a habitual seeker. When Bob Dylan, born Bob Zimmerman, temporarily turned his back on Judaism and declared himself a born-again Christian, there were interviews, concerts and albums (Slow Train Coming, Saved). "I went through different times," Jakob says of his spiritual upbringing. "During the conversion thing, I went where i was told. I was aware that it mattered to him. He's never done anything half-assed. If he does anything, he goes fully underwater."

By the time Jakob turned 13 - bar-mitzvah age - he says, "The wheel had turned. I've been Jewish for most of my life." He says that like those Little League games, his catered coming of age was well-attended. But it was hardly hip. "Stray Cats didn't play. It was like Larry's bar-mitzvah band."

Picture the composer of "Like A Rolling Stone" writing a check to some hard-swingin' nebbish in a blue velvet tux. How daunting it must have been to the guy picking out "Sunrise, Sunset" on the accordion to have Bob Dylan in the house. Jakob says he doesn't usually tell his own band beforehand that his father is coming to a Wallflowers gig. But he finds it pleasant, never intimidating, to know that Dad is sitting out there in the dark.

"My family might be labeled 'dysfunctional' like anybody else's family could be," Jakob says. "But nobody ever beat me. Being hurt, molested, those are real problems growing up. I didn't have any of that. I just had my family - whatever it was. I'm glad I can take care of myself and get around today and not dwell on any of that stuff. I think it's pitiful, a lot of people blaming their adult lives on their childhoods. You're an adult now; you have the ability to move on."

And so he has. He writes whenever he gets the chance, and if you want to plumb his lyrics for any clues, go ahead, have a ball. Yes, he concedes when asked about one song. "Ashes to Ashes" is an, ah, interesting one:

"Well you could walk like a stranger, head back into here/Bringing gifts while you act so sincere/Bringing gifts for a boy who's 5 years/Looking for rocks and training wheels/I don't remember you from any of those books/Ashes to ashes and 6 feet under, face- down in a box/Where did you ever learn to treat me like that?"

He remembers what prompted the song, but he'll not offer any help. Nor will he be inking the seven-figure deal for the family tell-all.

"Nobody's house is heaven," he concludes. "That's what heaven's for."

It's not surprising that most of Jakob's happiest memories have to do with music. In the Dylan homes, musical instruments were "like furniture," so plentiful and top-of-the-line that Jakob cannot remember getting his own guitar. Or needing one. Heading out on tour with his father afforded another kind of information: "I got to see a lot of great people. The rule that I understood was that if *he* was great playing with them, they were great. I waited to figure out why later."

Were there ever any direct tutorials from Dad? Jakob says a funny memory surfaced just the other day.

Road trip: just the old man and five kids, piled in a station wagon heading to Big Bear Lake. Three hours in the car, and all dad has in the cassette deck is a lone Hank Williams tape. He's driving straight through, keeps punching the tape on auto-reverse; that lonesome cowboy is pinin' and a-twangin' in Eternal Rotation, and 11-year-old Jakob thinks his eardrums will start to bleed. He screams inwardly - but never to Dad - Turn it off. Get it off! Until...

"I remember at the end of it thinking, 'Maybe there's a point to that,'" Jakob says. "I grew up in L. A., and you're just bombarded with images, advertisements. It's very hard, at a young age, to get involved and interested in anything but pop culture. It's a struggle even if you know that's not the important stuff."

It was that car ride that made Jakob stop, if just for the moment,, and muse, "Hey, I'm missing it." In hindsight, he thinks it might have been the start of his confessed weakness for "sad cowboy songs." The Dylan boys had a rec room of their own in the house, crammed with a huge record collection, instruments, a stereo, posters. Somewhere in the piles, Jakob found a rockabilly collection. He put it on because the cover was cool. It contained Charlie Rich's "Don't Put No Headstone On My Grave" and the towering "I Feel Like Going Home." The latter remains Jakob's all-time favorite. It is a song of the road, of a monumental weariness and longing. It poleaxed the 12-year-old listening to it in Beverly Hills.

"I'd never heard anything as heavy as that." Jakob says. "It was different than the rock I was listening to. Those two songs just opened everything up."

After that, he wasn't afraid to strap himself into the rockabilly, R & B way-back machine. "I remember spending a lot of time trying to figure out who the people I like liked.," he says. "I'd see this photo of the Clash playing with Lee Dorsey, and I'd say, 'Who the hell is Lee Dorsey?' You'd listen to that and it would turn you on to the Meters. Then, 'Who wrote those songs?' Allen Toussaint."

How to process it all? Jakob Dylan says his woeful academic career has left him useless at a computer, ignorant of batch files and e-mail postings. But he's confident that he can manage his information better than most. The most vital data is always readily retrievable and very well-defended. His own media anti-theft program requires deft and constant Reinvention of Self. Both his parents did it. Sara Dylan began life as a Shirley before she became a model, a mother and the muse whom Dylanologists have identified as any number of Sad Eyed Ladies, madonnas and sirens of song. But no one is more accomplished at brilliant disguise than Bob Dylan. The folkie. The suddenly electric horseman. Jokerman. Or Renaldo. He's an artist; he don't look back.

Says Jakob: "It was Himself that said...somebody had asked him, 'When do you become Bob Dylan?' And he said, 'I'm only Bob Dylan when I have to be.' I think more public people should take that point of view."

And so if there are constants in the private, unguarded family albums, there are - and should be - multiple Dylan personalities on those album covers, in the films and magazines. In nature, doesn't gaudy plumage help lure predators away from the nest? "He's been reinventing himself for 35 years now, so nobody has any idea what to believe anymore," says Jakob. "I'm sure it's a lot better that way. I don't think anybody does know anything about him, the type of person he actually is. I don't think they should know. I don't think it's going to do them any good."

This is one lesson of the patriarch that Jakob has taken strongly to heart: "When I started getting into this, I realized immediately that if there are a few things inside you that you really cherish and like, you keep them there. They can know everything else. Think they know it. You need to become a master of deception."

Clearly, Jakob has inherited the knack. He can seem to materialize from thin air and knows how to disappear just as quickly. He boasts that even when hundreds are surrounding his bus now, he can walk right in without anyone seeing him.

"I do know that fame is not a good thing,: he says. "It doesn't benefit you in any way. Personally, I'll never feel that famous, because the kind of thing I've seen is so outstanding. But I've never been anonymous, either. People might not have known who I was, but in thought I always existed."

Sea Bright, NJ, on a bone-chilling early spring night. Yards from where the churning ocean is slapping up against boarded-up beach clubs and clam bars, just past the upended picnic tables, there is - Passion! Pandemonium! Outside Tradewinds, a yawning, pastel stucco club, the hubbub is backlit by the strobe flashes of a few hundred dueling headlights. The parking lot can't swallow one more custom-detailed Dodge Viper. The Wallflowers have delivered a nice, fat sellout at $17 a head. And it did not hurt that for a few days the word on the street has been "Broooooooce."

Sure enough, Springsteen, who lives five minutes away, showed up for sound check piloting a big black pickup that disgorged all the Wallflowers. This afternoon, he and his wife, Patti Scialfa, invited the band for lunch and a ramble on the couple's huge estate, a self-contained paradise of nickering horses, romping children and endless fields. At sound check, Jakob confesses to this odd, out-of-body moment: "I'm sitting in the back of the bus having a few beers with Jon [Bob Jovi] and Bruce. I'm holding a guitar, I'm standing with these people trying to figure out chords..." And it felt very, very good.

As it will during the Wallflowers' set and into the encore. Springsteen has shuffled onstage beside Michael Ward, grinning big at the roar of recognition, whanging the faithful Fender jouncing off the thighs of his black jeans. He's playing a non-showy rhythm guitar, jumping in on the chorus of "God Don't Make Lonely girls." Jake's song. He'll pass his own guitar to Springsteen for a moment, just so Jakob can say that Bruce played it.

They're screaming, beating on the prissy signs that warn, ABSOLUTELY NO MOSHING. These are ticket buyers who have seen Bob Dylan only in - yes - that damned social-studies book. Whose mothers remember Springsteen when he was playing the Stone Pony down in Asbury Park - a recent Wallflowers venue. They're bellowing approval of what has been, what will be, but most of all - and most important - what is right here right now.

The girls next to me are roundly cursing a club bouncer destroying the sightlines with his massive delts. Now they're pelting him with strawberry Starbursts: "Yo! Asshole! We wanna see Jakob!" Behind them a trio of older guys is sending lit cigarettes rocketing like tracer bullets toward that same, bullish, obstinate neck: "Hey, dipshit! We wanna see Bruce!"

When the steroid sentinel finally ducks down, Springsteen and Jakob and - Hey! Izat Bon Jovi strapping on an acoustic guitar? - slide into a Sam Cooke classic older than the beach tar that holds this town together. It's late, it's hot, it's a fire marshal's nightmare, and it's dead, solid perfect - a rock & roll stress test to stir the pulse of this flash-frozen resort town. The beat is strong in Sea Bright; feels like high August on the sweaty dance floor.

"Thank you so much," Jakob is saying. "And good night."

In the dank, narrow corridor that passes for a dressing room, there is enough talent to keep a platoon of entertainment lawyers in Testarossas; Springsteen and Scialfa, Bon Jovi and his wife Dorothea. And here, just to say hello and take in the show, are Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler. As the others inch farther down the line to congratulate Jakob, Springsteen slides into a rickety plastic chair. He is looking at Jakob through the nimbus of smoke and well-wishers. Pale, smiling and exhausted, the younger singer/songwriter has the vulnerable appeal of a marquee Rimbaud.

"You know, he's a very romantic presence up there," Springsteen says. "And he really loves and understands those beautiful songs - the Smokey Robinsons and all. Those two things...well, that's a really great combination.

So Jakob knows?

Springsteen leans his head back and then chuckles.

"Aw, yeah," he says. "He's got the necessary information."

At the fabled quarter to 2, Jakob begins tugging the bulky Army coat over his damp stage clothes as the tour bus shudders to life. He says he can hear that sound beneath any racket, jumps to it like a spaniel to the break of a shotgun chamber. He has hugged his megaplatinum supporters, thanked them, sent them off to their mansions on the hill. Quietly, as the bus is loading for the long night's journey to Toronto - a nine hour trip that will torture Jakob's spine - he wonders aloud: "I guess it went OK. Ya think?"