Fall Music Preview: "Son Mixed with Clouds"

9.8.00 by Chris Willman for Entertainment Weekly (photographs by Kurt Markus)

Jakob Dylan is trying to discuss which elements of his new album might be autobiographical. But he keeps getting sidetracked by something he sees out of the corner of his very blue eye. "I wrote all these songs within the same six-month period." He's explaining over iced tea at an alfresco cafÈ in L.A.'s Fairfax district. "And if you're writing out of a certain block of time, out of an experience and not just making up stories, the songs are gonna have a theme, whether you like it or..." Now he can't help but be distracted. "This guy is having the best time!"

He nods in the direction of the sidewalk across the street. Jiggling distractedly down the block is a tubby, Walkman-wearing jogger, apparently so oversome with musical joy that he's skipping spastically along the pavement, making almost no forward progress. You'd swear it was Richard Simmons on crack. "That never happens to me when I put a Walkman on. Never," says a bemused Dylan. "I hope that's not a new exercise, because that's horrible!"

I suggest that we find out which oldies this deranged jogger is sweatin' to. "Yeah. I hope that's not my new tape," Dylan offers.

Not bloody likely. Even if Mr. Happy Pants had managed to download an MP3 of Breach, the soon-to-be-released third album from Dylan and his band the Wallflowers, he might be running more...meditatively. The new collection (due Oct. 10) is a much more personal, possible more pensive set of Dylanology than we've heard from this branch of the family before, and, while it rocks, it feels considerably less celebratory than 1996's 4-million seller Bringing Down the Horse. In other words, it's not real skip-to-m'lou music.

If you had to pick someone at the opposite end of the scale of demonstrativeness from the exuberant nutcase across the street, you might pick this handsome man in black on this side of the boulevard, who, until recently, was the poster boy for impenetrability. But Breach represents a serious crack in the wall of opacity since the Wallflowers' self-titled debut in 1992. His singing has become more expressive, and the lyrics contain some surprisingly candid stanzas. One song in particular, "Hand Me Down," is a startling evocation of just how insecure it might feel to be Bob Dylan's son - the sort of subject matter hertofore avoided like the plague. This is the first album in which a Dylan fils doesn't come off like a wallflower.

"I think all my songs have been personal," he says, rising slightly to his own defense, "but I just made them a little more dense before, made 'em real thick so that I didn't feel exposed. A lot of younger writers do that." Especially younger writers born to bards and poet laureates. "Before, I haven't really wanted anybody buying my records looking for information about myself or my family," he allows . "but at this point, the group has a lot of people buying the records who aren't interested in that, so it gives me more freedom."

At 31 [sic?], Dylan seems seems surprisingly easy-going and more comfortable with himself - and his family legacy - than he was in his 20s. No longer are interviews a contest of wits between journalists determined to get at least one quote about growing up as the son of estranged Bob Dylan and Sara Loundes and a solemn young artist determined not to oblige. He's more protective now of his wife and children - whom he's still reluctant to discuss with the press - than he is of Dad. But it's not hard to imagine some of the waring impulses still within him. The son of one of the most scrutinized figures of the 20^th century, he was bred from birth to be a private person. But he's enough of a music fan to know that one of most of rock's greats are considered great because they revealed something deep and intimate about themselves to a mass audience.

"Right, and I wanted that in some way," he says. "If you keep writing these records that appear impersonal, the people who are listening don't have any sense of you. They're just being entertained. For me, that's not enough. When I was a kid buying records, if I couldn't vest myself in these people and try to relate, I moved on to the next thing. But yeah, that's how I was raised, and how I've been till recently. That definitely is a constant struggle. I can't explain the insanity of me actually picking this as a job. That doesn't make any sense - to do this and then plan on being a private person."

If there's any chance of having it both ways, he's got a great role model. As Breach coproducer Michael Penn - who broke into show biz after brother Sean, and can relate to being second famous guy in a family - notes, "His father brilliantly played both ends. I mean, no one hid as beautifully as Bob Dylan in lyrics, and nobody revealed quite so much as Bob Dylan in lyrics."

Jakob insists this is no "sob record," but getting him to acknowledge how personal it is isn't easy. "Sometimes you get a straight answer," chuckles Andrew Slater, who's been his manager and occasional producer from the start, "and sometimes you don't."

But, says Penn, "I felt like he was starting to put his foot in the pool of not hiding anymore - particularly with 'Hand Me Down,' which was not only a brave but really important song for him to write." Some of the lyrics are so bluntly self-deprecating they're nearly comical: "You feel good and you look like you should/But you could never make us proud.../Living proof evolution is through." In one of the initial pre-production meetings, Penn recalls, "he was hedging around whether or not he was actually revealing what I knew he was revealing. I came to the point where I said, "Look, Jakob, there's no way you could have written this unless you felt it, because it's just too true...So, that's a good thing!"

Almost as telling as "Hand Me Down" is the first single, "Sleepwalker," in which Dylan sings, "It's where I'm from that lets them think I'm a whore/I'm an educated virgin" - a couplet describing how, in his early days as a musician, people assumed he was more jaded than he really was. "It's Hollywood," he says. "People don't root for anybody unless they think they can come out of nowhere and they're losers. 'An educated virgin'...it was my first time. I just maybe knew a few things that the average guy next to me didn't. But those weren't things I could use."

Some lessons came hard after Virgin released the first Wallflowers album - a relative flop. Though the band toured relentlessly, Dylan refused almost all interviews, figuring People and Hard Copy weren't calling just to deconstruct a freshman record; some at his label considered him a prima donna. "To the record company, an opportunity to push units is an opportunity, even if a lot of those opportunities just literally made my skin crawl...But I probably wasn't that polite. I was 21, and my shyness probably got misconstrued as being rude."

Dylan compensated for his reluctance to dish by touring with a vengeance - a work ethic that continued as the Wallflowers fell apart, and regrouped, with keyboardist Rami Jaffee, 31, the sole holdover (bassist Greg Richling, 30; guitarist Michael Ward, 33; and drummer Mario Calire, 26, now complete the band). The Wallflowers parted ways with Virgin and signed with Interscope, but the second album, Horse, was slow out of the gate. "We were playing to 50 people in clubs, and a lot of the song titles" - Pop's - "got yelled out," he recalls. "I was gonna keep coming back to town and disappointing them, so they just got bored and stopped coming." But, months after the album came out, "Sixth Avenue Heartache" piqued radio's interest, MTV picked up on his good looks, and the audiences shifted from stray boomers out to spy on Bob Jr. to a new generationof Bob who? teens. "At that point, it was pretty refreshing," he recalls. "There was no longer a guy in the front row wearing a Jerry [Garcia] T-shirt yelling '[All Along the] Watchtower' at my face. That's no way to do your show!"

But the refreshment only went so far. Much of Breach, an album about all kinds of alienation, reflects Dylan's inability to exult over his triumph. "Maybe it's my background that is internally impossible to overcome, or maybe it's that [success] is not what's gonna make me feel whole," he says. Dylan emphasizes that he didn't want to indulge in the time-honored tradition of using his first post-platinum album to whine about fame. "Pop culture's gone on way too long for anybody to complain that they didn't know what success would be like when they go there."

Maybe his problem was that he knew it all too well secondhand, but believed that it would be validating anyway, just like any kid who ignored his parents' musical indoctrination and decided he wanted to form a band after discovering the Clash. Muses Penn: "The novelty of celebrity is not something that he was gonna be swayed by, having grown up the way he grew up. There wasn't that diversionary aspect to it for him. I think his course is set and not affected by the success or failure of the records."

The uncertainty broached in Breach belies growing confidence. Some who've worked with Dylan over the years believe he used to hold back a little, vocally, for fear that mannerisms would lead to...comparisons. This time, says Slater, "if there was a certain inflection in his voice, if the DNA was coming through, it didn't matter." Not that he'll ever be a ringer. "This is a weird comparison," Penn says, "but to me his voice has more the texture of Peter Gabriel. It's very dense - the opposite of his father."

If, like Gabriel, there's some mystery to Dylan's delivery, still some holding back, that's not necessarily a drawback for fans. However he came by his reticence, whether it was drilled into him or deliberately adopted, Dylan's refusal to force his charisma on us may be a bonus for music lovers tired of savvy young bands like Third Eye Blind, whose frontman, from their very first video, looks like he has spent a lifetime making love to the camera. There'll be no unbecoming lens-snogging for this slow burner.

"Oh," he retorts, brightening, "you gotta see my new stuff. Orgies with myself on the camera!" Put that in your Walkman and smoke it.