The Wallflowers |
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Fri. November 15.2002 11:32 AM EST |
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The Wallflowers: Men of LettersJakob Dylan gets his band in the right place for their new record. by C. Bottomley |
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The Wallflowers (VH1.com) |
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"I don’t think everything has higher meaning to it," explains the Wallflowers’ Jakob Dylan when asked about his recent stint modeling clothes for The Gap. “I’m not that obsessive. I don’t read into anything. I don’t look for depth in everything.
Dylan's blasé attitude is an interesting key to his band as a whole. The Wallflowers aren’t a flavor of the month or the future of rock ‘n’ roll. They are a band that writes great FM rock songs, and with their fourth album Red Letter Days, their impressive array of anthems may just put a smile back on America’s face. “Everybody Out of the Water” revives the time-honored formula of nifty riffs and stadium-sized choruses, while “Closer to You” and “Three Ways” find Dylan reminding us what an underestimated author of love songs he is. It’s everything the Wallflowers aspire to be - comfortable and durable. And yes, Red Letter Days has a certain significance. Made in the aftermath of 9-11 and at the expense of their departed guitarist Michael Ward, it’s a crucial album for the Californian quartet. With Breach falling short of Bringing Down the Horse’s mega-success, how the pop world receives Days is crucial to their survival. Dylan and keyboardist Rami Jaffee sat down with VH1 to talk about how they rose to meet the greatest crisis of their lives and being reborn into a changing world. VH1: When you went into the studio did you think, “Let’s throw away the rulebook and start over again?” Jakob Dylan: You can forget what your group’s point was if you don’t stop to evaluate where you are and where you’re hoping to get to. You wake up and the last year was a blur and you don’t know if you put everything you had into it. It was necessary for us to regroup and refocus. That’s what we did last summer. We had some bad chemistry and people around the band who weren’t bringing the right amount of energy. We found a way to get rejuvenated and that’s reflected on the record. VH1: You’re referring to Michael Ward leaving? Dylan: There were a lot of issues with our previous guitar player, one of them being that ultimately he was going to be happier somewhere else. He had his own group, and may have been staying in the Wallflowers for the wrong reasons. There were also people outside of the group that we’ve moved on from. When we realized we had to get in the studio quickly to make Red Letter Days we knew we didn’t want anybody on the team that didn’t want it as bad as the other guy. It was important to move on. VH1: You’ve said Days was the record you always thought you were going to make when you were a kid. Dylan: Yeah. There’s an idea that records are very difficult to make and artists need to be worked to death to create good material. That’s a load of crap. I wouldn’t say Red Letter Days was easy to make, but it wasn’t that complicated. Artists sound stronger on records if they’re in comfortable positions. That’s why we asked Tobi Miller - one of the guys that started this group 12 years ago - to produce it. [He was the Wallflowers guitarist and played on Bringing Down the Horse, but] he got a great partner, Bill Appleberry, and became a producer. We wanted them involved because we figured nobody knows this group better than he does. VH1: Growing up, what was the album that made you think, “I want to make a record like that!” Dylan: For me it was the Clash’s London Calling. It’s one of the few records important to us as teenagers that I still believe is an incredibly great rock ‘n’ roll record. Sometimes you go back and listen to a record you loved when you were 17 years old, and it doesn’t mean the same thing any more. That record is still a standout. Rami Jaffee: Mine would have to be Abbey Road or Revolver. Dylan: If you’re waiting around for me to make a record as good as Revolver, you’re going to have to knock that off! [Watch Clip] VH1: The album touches on 9-11 on apocalyptic songs like “Everybody Out of the Water” ... Dylan: It’s influenced by what’s been in the air for the last year, but it’s not that specific. It’s not just literally “streets cracked open.” Morally and ethically everything seems to be going to hell in a bucket! Dylan: So are you making a political statement on Red Letter Days? Dylan: No, it just has to do with the climate of life. It’s really been an uncomfortable year for so many reasons. If you’re a writer of any kind, it’s in there, whether you know it or not. It’s changed the way you’ve looked at now and the future. It’s impossible to ignore. VH1: Have you noticed the effects of that climate on anyone else’s writing? Dylan: I like Bruce Springsteen’s record. He’s the only one who could do that. He’s such an incredibly genuine artist. He means it. I’m glad that a lot of other artists haven’t felt required to make that record. Artists tend to feel a responsibility to react to important things. The problem is that most of them are not educated or sincere about it. But you can’t argue with Bruce Springsteen’s sincerity. Jaffee: A lot of people who died in the World Trade Center were from his home town. He was definitely more connected to that than other artists. VH1: A lot of this album seems to be about separation and people who can’t live with each other any more. Is it a divorce record or a reconciliation record? Dylan: No. It’s not a divorce record. When I present my ideas about relationships, it’s very rarely a situation of man/woman. That’s what people assume when you say “you” in a song. They usually assume the song is about some kind of love relationship but there’s not much of that here, really. Your whole life is built up of relationships with the people you work with, an audience, the public or whatever. VH1: Do you hear a lot of weird interpretations of your songs? Dylan: I used to always have to hear about who people thought died in “One Headlight.” There was never anybody who died in “One Headlight.” But I actually encourage that. Countless times you hear an artist explain what their songs are about and you’re disappointed. I prefer people to listen. If they like the drumbeat, I’m okay with that. Whatever moves people. [Watch Clip] VH1: How has the rock scene changed in the ten years since your debut? Are people more sympathetic to your kind of music again? Dylan: We have to remain indifferent to that. Every time we put out a record, we’re told it’s not the best time for this kind of music. We’re not interested in keeping up with what anybody else is doing. We just follow what feels right to us. People react and sometimes they don’t. That’s what makes careers colorful and interesting. There isn’t really anybody I’ve admired that has consistently stayed popular. VH1: Are there any rock bands that impressed you this year? Jaffee: A lot of us like Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head. Dylan: Some of that [garage rock] is good. It’s encouraging that people are trying to pump that up, but a lot of it feels like tribute bands. They’re very musically and stylistically and fashionably from a moment. A lot of it’s very kitschy. A lot of it’s really good, but until somebody writes a song that is really a knockout, it’s going to be hard to say that it really counts. VH1: What do you think of Tom Petty’s The Last DJ and his views on how music is made and packaged nowadays? Dylan: Tom’s always been that way. He began making records in a different time and remembers that as a really great time. We didn’t make records in the early ‘70s, so I can only imagine [what it was like.] I do know that in order to get yourself out there and make people know you have records, a lot of [what you have to do] is flat-out painful and degrading. And it escalates every year. You can only imagine Tom Petty making a record in 2002 versus 1974. The guy must be flat-out disgusted. It’s not how it was, and no one’s going to argue the music is better now than it was then. I think he’s got a lot of great valid points on there. He’s also selling out arenas without a new record, so he can say whatever he wants! [Watch Clip] VH1: Is there a cure-all to that sort of thing? Is salvation in the live arena? Dylan: Playing shows is obviously the one spot where there’s no crap involved. As he says himself, the business has always been a monster. I don’t think it can be fixed. It’s too far gone. There’s too much money and there’s too many things that are cheap that work. They don’t let bands grow over a course of years any more. That in itself will keep great music from rising to the surface. If you have to sell [hundreds of thousands of] records to keep a record contract now, we’re never going to have all these great artists around. |
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