The Kid's All Right

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By Newsweek Editors

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NOBODY WANTS TO BE TAGGED THE next Bob Dylan, especially his son Jakob Dylan. But here he is at 26, inadvertently filling his dad's shoes. As the front man for the Wallflowers, Jakob is the '90s Dylan: a young, handsome, sincere singer-songwriter who's willing to wear his heart on his sleeve and who doesn't act so damn ornery all the time. ""Bringing Down the Horse,'' the Wallflowers' second album, is one of the year's surprise hits. It's plowing up the Billboard 200, while the single ""6th Avenue Heartache'' is all over MTV and is poised to break into the Top 40. Like Counting Crows and the Jayhawks, the Wallflowers play rootless roots music: vaguely retro country-folk-rock, with plenty of '60s antecedents in the mellow Hammond organ, tart slide guitar and rustic pedal steel but with a keen sense for modern production and sturdy hooks. In other words, they're wildly derivative, but songs like ""One Headlight'' and ""Three Marlenas'' feel so comfortably, soulfully right that you won't care.

Jakob's a bit touchy on the subject of, well, antecedents. Raised in L.A., the youngest of Bob Dylan and Sara Lowndes's five children, Jakob made several valiant attempts at not being a songwriter. He briefly attended art school, thinking he could be a painter; he tried drumming and playing guitar in bands, all to no avail. ""It was something I felt compelled to do,'' he says. ""So I just started. Everybody lives under shadows. I obviously have one but I don't pretend it's any worse than anyone else's.'' Ask him about his family, and he squirms. ""There was a divorce [in 1977]. Everything else was pretty much your standard situation.'' In fact, ask him anything remotely personal, and he clams up. Does he enjoy living in Hollywood? ""I don't really mind -- it's fine.'' Did he listen to the radio a lot as a kid? ""I didn't not listen to it, but I didn't live by it.'' Did he have a swing set in his backyard? ""You know, I can't say I really have fond memories of having one or not having one. But I'm sure I did. I don't see why I wouldn't have.''

We don't want to ram this father-son comparison into the ground, but whom do those nonanswers remind you of? ""I don't have lots of great stories to tell,'' he admits. In fact, if there's one thing missing from ""Bringing Down the Horse,'' it's a slightly stronger sense of Jakob himself. His songs are full of quirky characters and wry observations, but they don't always add up to a coherent perspective. ""I guess I should be ashamed, but I forget to be vain/I did the best I could I guess, but everything just bleeds,'' he sings in ""Bleeders.'' The transcendent melodies and the band's furious precision carry him through when he's too shy to put himself on the line. As a songwriter, Jakob has a way to go. But the better he gets, the more those comparisons to his dad are going to sound like compliments.

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