HIT GIVES JAKOB DYLAN AN IDENTITY BEYOND DAD

8.23.96 By Jon Bream for the Minneapolis Star tribune

Now that Jakob Dylan's band, the Wallflowers, has a hit song, the first question he's asked is no longer about following in the footsteps of his father, Bob.Dylan is now asked what "6th Avenue Heartache," his first hit, is all about.

"It was an actual story. Years ago I lived in New York City," said Dylan, 26, who will return Saturday to the Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis. "And I'd wake up and look out the window and there was this guy who lived on the steps of this building. He had pots and pans, and radios, and clothes. He would play acoustic guitar. He was in his 50s or so. He'd wake up and play songs I knew like the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, these really great songs. I knew them all.

"I woke up every day hearing him play. One day he just never came back. People started slowly stealing his stuff. One day, the guitar was gone. By the afternoon, somebody would take his clothes. After about three days, all his stuff was gone. I don't know if he came back or had an accident.

"Around the same time, I moved back from New York to Los Angeles. There was no real connection; he was a homeless person. But somehow I feltconnected to him. He didn't appear to be from there, and I wasn't either. I spent some time there looking for something, I don't know what. So I turned around and went home, and never did find out what happened to him."

One listen to "6th Avenue Heartache" and the Wallflowers' second album, "Bringing Down the Horse," and it sounds as if Dylan was influenced more by Bruce Springsteen (who was once dubbed the new Dylan) than by Bob Dylan.

"I do like Bruce Springsteen a lot, but I get asked if he's my hero, and he's not quite that," Dylan said from his Los Angeles home. "I'm aware of a lot of his records. I particularly liked `Nebraska' " (from 1982).

Is it easier to deal with questions about Springsteen than those about Bob Dylan?

"Absolutely," Dylan said with a chuckle.

The songs on the new album are more sharply focused and more pop-flavored than those on the Wallflowers' rootsy self-titled 1992 debut. Part of the credit goes to producer T-Bone Burnett, who had worked on records by Elvis Costello and Los Lobos that Dylan admired.

Part of the credit goes to Dylan's evolution as a songwriter.

"I wrote the first record when I was 19 and 20 years old," he said. "For this one, I had a lot more time behind me in writing songs. I tried to write with a little more precision. The last one, I was pretty windy; I had a lot of words. But I'm proud of the first record."

The first album was so wordy that Dylan had to bone up on the lyrics before hitting the road this summer. "It's a lot harder to remember those songs. We did them last night for the first time," he said, referring to a gig in San Diego. "I felt like I needed a TelePrompTer."

Gradually, a new band

There also have been personnel changes in the Wallflowers. Only singer-guitarist Dylan and organist Rami Jaffee remain from the first album. It was a gradual turnover, the leader said: "It was never hard to find someone else to move in. It never seemed like the group was falling apart or not together. It was always kind of transforming itself, which I didn't plan on. I kept it together on my end by continuing to write."

Dylan said he lived a "random lifestyle," using money from his first album. Other band members couldn't afford that approach, so they moved on. The Wallflowers left Virgin Records after a shakeup at the top of the company. It took the band more than a year to get other record labels interested. The Wallflowers eventually signed with Interscope, home of Primus and No Doubt.

The band's new lineup includes guitarist Michael Ward, formerly of the Twin Cities. He has played with School of Fish and John Hiatt. For thesecond album, Dylan used many players, including St. Paul-based guitarist-singer Gary Louris of Golden Smog (and formerly the Jayhawks).Dylan, a serious consumer of music, is fond of the latest albums by Golden Smog, Joe Henry, Paul Westerberg and Garbage. He can gab endlessly and insightfully about all kinds of musicmakers. But eventually the talk turns to Bob Dylan, a reluctant subject for the legend's youngest child.

"It's unavoidable. It's not going to go away. I don't have a problem with it. I'm not going to go very in depth with it," he said. Yeah, it's personal. On the professional level, it's hard to ignore. This is the job - the position that seems so ordinary - he did pretty much invent."

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