It seems like whenever I mention my liking of the Wallflowers, people either deride them for being just another crappy pop band or riding Bob’s coattails. But dagnabbit, I like them. Breach is great-- easily their best album – using Dylan the Son’s distinctive delivery to rock with an (for me) epic western feel. Bringing Down the Horse and Red Letter Days are also good, though not spectacular, pop/rock fare.
So what is it? Have the people I’ve encountered been biased due to who Jakob’s father is? And where are all the Wallflowers fans? I mean, their record sales are in the millions, and the biggest supporter I’ve met said “Hmmm… The guys that did One Headlight, right? Cuz that was pretty good.”
To be honest, I am not all that familiar with their music.
But The Wallflowers do a kick-ass version of Lawyers Guns and Money on the Warren Zevon tribute album.
Bringing Down the Horse was pretty good, but like most post-grunge alt-rock bands of that era (anyone remember the Gin Blossems, Counting Crows, Better Than Ezra?) I think they just got lost in a white noise of catchy post-college 20-something Gen-X angst bar songs. The pendulem of music has shifted towards bling-bling hip hop and overproduced pop bands.
I thought the Wallflowers were supposed to be one of those overproduced pop bands (according to the hatas)? I agree that it was a thriving era for 20-something angst, but it’s still odd that I can’t seem to find a fan of a multi-platinum selling band that I happen to like.
Nice to see the Gin Blossoms get a mention, even if it is only to say that they’ve basically fallen off the face of the planet
I used to think they were OK til I saw them open for Chris Isaak (in 1998 maybe?). Jakob Dylan was wearing a wrinkled T-shirt and looked either just woken up or completely stoned. The rest of the band didn’t look much better and they played a lockluster set. The whole group gave off a vibe of surliness and not wanting to be there. (Chris Isaak was amazing tho’) It totally turned me off anything they might do in the future. I’ve wondered if the attitude was part of the reason they didn’t make it.
To me, the Wallflowers have two things going against them:
The Julian Lennon Factor–This crops up when the offspring of a performer who’s not just well-known but legendary tries to make it on his or her own. Regardless of whatever success they may achieve, there are always going to be comparisons to their father (or mother) and grumbling that they would’ve never gotten where they were if they weren’t so-and-so’s kid. Jakob Dylan’s certainly had a fair amount of success with his band (just like Julian Lennon had for a short time in the 80’s) but he’s never going to become the “voice of his generation” like his pop, the former Mr. Robert Zimmerman.
The One-Album Wonder Factor–As msmith537 already stated, it seems that the Wallflowers fall into the category of 90’s alt-rock acts who had one hugely successful album (here, “Bringing Down the Horse”) only to have subsequent releases fall victim to the law of diminishing returns. That seems to a problem that’s plagued even some talented acts since the 90’s: the inability to develope a solid fan base that will follow an artist from album-to-album. Again, this also ties into the Julian Lennon Factor in that Jackob’s father was exactly the type of performer whose successive releases sold consistently over a long period of time (and who seems to be an endangered species in today’s record industry).
All those bands are a byproduct of the commercialization of “grunge”. It’s not like they were bad or anything. They just all sounded very similar and there were a lot of them singing about the same things - lost love, unrequithed (sp?) love, general loss, being trapped in a small town, being lonely in a big city, having no direction, hangin with your friends.
Jacob Dylan aside, what made The Wallflowers stand out any more than The Verve Pipe, Matchbox 20, Vertical Horizon, Deep Blue Something, Candlebox, Mathew Sweet, Dave Mathews Band, Hootie & The Blowfish, Soul Asylum dozens of identical bands of that era? (Isn’t allmusic.com great?)
Yeah, that makes sense why they aren’t popular as a group now, but it seems weird how their follow-up album Breach is significantly better than Bringing Down the Horse but it tanked in comparison. Maybe this relates to msmith’s point about the saturation of the market at that point; was the audience just too exhausted of this stuff to get into it?
And to msmith, yeah, the Wallflowers were not a band apart from the bands you listed, and have shown no signs of producing anything as distinct or cool as the Lips’ Soft Bulletin, for example. But they just seemed to me to be the best of that crowded field. Many of my friends had albums from that era, and Breach was the only one I found worth buying myself (though note I didn’t know it was Dylan’s son until after that). Ah well, no one agrees, guess I can accept that
Perhaps they’re trying to give off a Don’t-Give-A-Shit 'tude as part of their rock persona? Anyway, if that’s a frequent occurrence, I could see how that would repulse potential long-term fans. I really don’t know much about them personally (and don’t try to, either… a lot of rockers are jerks), but it’s entirely possible they’re jerkwads. In some fields that’s probably a plus, but not here.
