Jakob Dylan on how his father is “the best” songwriter around
When conversations arise surrounding the greatest songwriters of all time, there is no shortage of people willing and ready to throw Bob Dylan’s name into the ring. The folk legend created some of the most revered and revisited songs of all time, influencing the likes of fellow songwriting giants Joni Mitchell and The Beatles along the way.
Amidst those people willing to deem him the best of the best, perhaps expectedly, is his son. A songwriter himself, Jakob Dylan has followed in his father’s footsteps as the lead singer of rock outfit The Wallflowers. Although his father is one of the most influential songwriters in music history, Dylan preferred not to speak about him openly until he deemed him “the best” in the early 2000s.
Speaking with The New York Times in 2005, Dylan declared, “If people want to talk about Bob Dylan, I can talk about that. But my dad belongs to me and four other people exclusively. I’m very protective of that. And telling people whether he was affectionate is telling people a lot. It has so little to do with me. I come up against a wall.”
It’s understandable that Dylan would want to make this separation between Bob Dylan, his father, and Bob Dylan, folk legend. He did acknowledge that his father is, and always has been, affectionate towards him, before going on to speak about and uphold his father’s unparalleled reputation.
“Look, he’s the best at what I do,” Dylan surmised, “I know that, and so do my heroes.”
Dylan remembered his father meeting fellow icons like The Clash singer Joe Strummer and songwriter Tom Waits and the awe that he evoked in them, a strange experience for a young Dylan.
“I got to watch my heroes meet him and saw how they reacted,” he explained, “whether it was Joe Strummer or Tom Waits. It was peculiar. I’m so stoked to meet Tom Waits, and he’s so nervous to meet my dad. It’s a head spin.”
It’s easy for any of us to imagine the wonder and intimidation that meeting the folk songwriter might incur, even if we had reached the level of Strummer or Waits. But, to a young Dylan, he knew him as his father far before he knew him as the man behind all-time greats like ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’.
Still, watching his heroes be stunned by the presence of his father must only have reaffirmed that he was the best.
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