Get
Serious
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“I’m waiting for my kids to grow up and get into The Offspring and look at me like I’m some sort of candy-ass…” That’s Jakob Dylan talking. Dylan, front man for the Wallflowers, son of a somewhat successful songwriter with the same last name, and by general consensus, leading contender for the title of Most Serious Young Man In Rock n’ Roll. What nobody calls him, oddly enough, is funny—if not outright wry. But two minutes with the Son of Bob and you begin to realize that, behind those paint peeling blue eyes, he’s not quite the somber, button-down young genius the fans have made him out to be. Or not just. “His
self-deprecating humor—that’s one of the coolest things about Jakob,”
says Ben Stiller, who was brought on as “comedy consultant” for the video of
“Sleepwalker,” a single from the Wallflowers’ new album Breach.
“The guy loves to laugh. He also
happens to be the best-looking Jewish man in the known universe, but that’s a
different story…” Already
hailed as a masterpiece of understated intensity, Breach takes on the
realities of life after a band makes the jump from barrooms to big time.
Stillers’s gig was to help Jakob and company work up some parodies of
Life in the Pop Lane, to capture the absurdity and weirdness of success that
Dylan chronicles from the song’s sardonic opening lines: “maybe I could be
the one they adored/ That could be my reputation/It’s where I’m from that lets them think I’m a whore/ I’m an educated
virgin.” Not surprisingly, the reluctantly adored star in question has a different view of himself than the ever-astute celebrity press does. “Most of the stuff I read about myself—good or bad—doesn’t seem to be about anyone I know,” he says, with a deadpan sigh of a man who’s done hard time in the spotlight. “People always write about the ‘serious’ thing. What nobody understands is, sitting in front of a cameraman with lights everywhere,
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That
disconnect, between striving for one’s dreams and the semi-nightmare of
attaining them weighs heavily on Dylan, and it lies at the heart of Breach.
“Coming from somebody in my position, it sounds like whining, but being
successful, selling records, and having your face on the cover of magazines, as
great as it may be, is not like you imagined.
It’s not going to keep you warm at night.” What
does keep this restless icon warm—and this may come as grim news to the
legions of female admirers pining for a DWD (Date With Dylan)—is his
remarkably tight home life. Dylan
is the ultimate family man and goes to great pains to protect the privacy of his
spouse of eight years and the two young Dylans they’re raising together.
It’s a glitz-free existence hugely at odds with the clichéd freak show
of rock ‘n’ roll stardom. Indeed,
the idea of Jakob Dylan tossing a TV out of a Hilton window seems as
over-the-top as Eminem rolling into a PTA meeting. “I’ve had the same three friends since I was twelve,” Dylan confides, by way of certifying his too-cool-to-be-cool credentials. “I’ve been to two Hollywood parties in my life, and I didn’t have any fun.” ___________________ |
being in all these high-profile situations—that’s not a natural
environment for me.