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When you find yourself the offspring of a well-known musician, your final identify turns into each a burden and a curse.
That is very true when you determine to even be a musician. Whereas having a well-known mother or father may also help you meet the correct folks, it may possibly additionally immediate comparability after comparability. As Wolfgang Van Halen, son of Eddie Van Halen, as soon as put it: “Positive, the identify does assist open some doorways, however I don’t suppose it helps to maintain them open.”
Jakob Dylan, son of Bob Dylan, has confronted comparable challenges and has spent years of his musical profession doing what he can to forge his personal path away from the shadow of his father’s profession. Objectively talking, he is finished a reasonably good job of being profitable along with his personal band, the Wallflowers, which he shaped in 1989. Between the band and his solo identify, there have been three Grammy wins and tens of thousands and thousands of albums bought. (Paradoxically, the Wallflowers received a Grammy for Greatest Rock Efficiency by a Duo Or Group With Vocal on the similar ceremony his father received Album of the Yr in 1997.)
One perk of being Jakob Dylan, in fact, is that legendary rock musicians could be extra prepared to contribute to your albums. For those who mix that reality with Dylan’s personal singular expertise, you’ve got obtained a reasonably strong recipe for good music. Under, we’re looking at 13 instances Dylan and/or the Wallflowers collaborated with traditional rock artists.
1. Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Not many youngsters get to go on the street with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, however Dylan did when his dad employed them to be his backing band within the mid ’80s. In different phrases: Dylan obtained to see up shut and private how a completely shaped, touring rock band functioned and it clearly had a final affect on him. A few years after that, guitarist Mike Campbell appeared on the Wallflowers’ 1996 album Bringing Down the Horse. “I performed on [‘Sixth Avenue Heartache’],” Campbell recalled to UCR in 2024, “which was actually enjoyable and I’ve all the time been pleased with his profession.”
2. Adam Duritz of Counting Crows
We’re really going to stick with “sixth Avenue Heartache” for a second as a result of Campbell isn’t the one well-known visitor on it. The voice you hear singing the backing vocals is none apart from Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, who principally obtained the half down instantly. The Wallflowers’ supervisor known as him up one night and requested if he may come to the studio that night time. “I lived up within the Canyons,” Duritz recalled to Stereogum in 2021, “so I simply drove all the way down to the studio within the Valley, obtained a beer, they usually performed me the music. I requested them to play it once more, I grabbed one other beer, after which I sang it a few times. We listened to it, and I left. It was very easy. I heard it and I knew what to do immediately. Typically you simply nail it.”
3. Elvis Costello
When Dylan wrote “Homicide 101,” a monitor that appeared on 2000’s (Breach), he knew what it wanted: Elvis Costello’s voice. “With out him on that music, it gave the impression of someone attempting to do their tackle Elvis Costello,” Dylan defined to Stereogum in 2021. “Reasonably than keep away from that, I assumed nice, simply go get the man. Do not run from it, go proper at it. … He’s a type of folks you may say can sing the telephone ebook and he’ll elevate no matter he’s doing from OK or mundane to good materials. I don’t suppose we ever even performed that music. I feel it was my very own private enjoyment of with the ability to sing with Elvis Costello.”
4. Frank Black of Pixies
There’s one thing type of candy about Dylan having a fellow determine from the ’90s different rock growth be a visitor on “Letters From the Wasteland” from (Breach). We’re talking about Frank Black of Pixies, who sang backing vocals on the monitor.
5. Mitchell Froom of Crowded Home
Mitchell Froom of Crowded Home is the person liable for arranging the horns on (Breach). Froom, curiously, additionally labored on Bob Dylan’s 1988 album Down within the Groove, enjoying keyboards on a music known as “Had a Dream About You, Child.”
6. Mike McCready of Pearl Jam
Here is one other instance of a fellow ’90s rocker lending Dylan a hand. For 2002’s Pink Letter Days it got here within the type of Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, who performed on a number of of the album’s songs. Preserving the Pearl Jam connection going, the Wallflowers enlisted producer Brenden O’Brien, who labored on plenty of Pearl Jam releases, for his or her subsequent album, 2005’s Insurgent, Sweetheart.
7. Mick Jones of the Conflict
Dylan was actually a child when he first heard he music of the Conflict, and it instantly spoke to him. “I may see that they have been clearly descendants of a lot nice music and naturally the Beatles in the best way they put songs collectively,” he instructed Acoustic Guitar journal in 2010. “I nonetheless play that Telecaster due to Joe Strummer. That’s the one rationalization.” In 2012, Mick Jones of the Conflict appeared on two songs from the Wallflowers’ album Glad All Over, “Misfits and Lovers” and “Reboot the Mission.”
8. Jack Irons of Pink Sizzling Chili Peppers and Pearl Jam
However wait there’s extra. For those who listened to the above monitor you’ll have seen Dylan sing “welcome Jack, the brand new drummer / he jammed with the mighty Joe Strummer.” That is a transparent a reference to the album’s drummer, Jack Irons, a founding member of Pink Sizzling Chili Peppers and a member of Pearl Jam for a stint within the mid ’90s. “They handled me actually properly,” Irons mentioned of the expertise to Rolling Stone in 2022. “I all the time felt like a visitor, in a way. I used to be a band member, however these guys had been in a band for years, with all of the ups and downs that comes with that. I used to be a visitor. I loved our inventive course of within the studio, for positive.”
9. Beck
The subsequent 5 entries usually are not technically Wallflowers releases — they’re from a soundtrack album Dylan made in 2019 known as Echo within the Canyon, which accompanied a documentary movie concerning the music of Laurel Canyon, California within the ’60s. For it, Dylan collaborated with plenty of well-known rock mates. Beck joined him for a rendition of Pete Seeger’s “The Bells of Rhymney,” made well-known by the Byrds in 1965.
10. Neil Younger
11. Stephen Stills
12. Eric Clapton
13. Josh Homme
