When you have a famous songwriter as a parent, you run the risk of intimate family affairs being put on display for all the world to see. But when that famous songwriting parent is Bob Dylan, you have the benefit of mystery, opacity, and plenty of defection that helps to separate your mom and dad’s dirty laundry from, well, everyone else on the planet. But not every Dylan album is entirely murky.
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According to Jakob Dylan, the youngest child of Dylan and his first wife, Sara Lownds, he can usually enjoy his father’s music just like any other folk-rock fan. But there are two notable exceptions.
“If I hear ‘Tombstone Blues’, I’m having a good time with everybody else,” Jakob said in a later interview. “Those other songs on Nashville Skyline and Blood on the Tracks, those are my parents talking.”
These Two Bob Dylan Albums Reflect Vastly Different Relationships
Between the release of Nashville Skyline in 1969 and Blood on the Tracks in 1975, Bob Dylan and Sara Lownds had a vastly different relationship—one that inevitably affected Jakob Dylan’s childhood. And because Jakob was only six years old when the latter album came out, some of these songs provide the most information he has about his parents’ private lives. “That’s the only snapshot I have because I don’t have a great memory of that time,” Jakob explained.
“A lot of random images might strike my memory hearing it,” he said. “If I want to go to that place—I mean, how often do you want to depress yourself? Sometimes it goes in one ear and out the other. Sometimes, depending on my state, those songs can bother me.”
Nashville Skyline, on the other hand, is more positive, featuring love songs like “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” and “To Be Alone with You”. For Jakob, the songs capture a moment in time he was too young to witness—if his parents would have even been that open in front of him. “I can tell in certain songs—maybe that’s where I get my information on those subjects. I’ve never had to ask questions about it. I’ve always kind of left it alone.”
Like His Dad, Jakob Dylan Has Kept Some Cards Close to the Chest
In many ways, Jakob Dylan learned about the relationship his father had with his first wife (and Jakob’s mother) the same way everyone else did: through Bob Dylan’s records. But for every lyric that has been pored over by music critics and fans, there are just as many moments at home that Jakob has fiercely protected as his and his family’s alone.
“If people want to talk about Bob Dylan, I can talk about that,” Jakob told the New York Times in 2005. “But my dad belongs to me and four other people exclusively. I’m very protective of that. 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.”
The life that Bob Dylan led between his albums, outside of his lyrics, and within the confines of his own home remains largely private, thanks in no small part to his family’s eagerness to protect what little emotional ownership they have over their larger-than-life patriarch.
Photo by Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images
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