Except from Details Magazine
Except from Details Magazine
The Wallflower, excerpts from Details magazine
“So,” I ask Jakob shortly after we first meet over iced tea on a Tuesday afternoon, “where do you keep your platinum discs?”
“Actually, I don’t have my platinum,” replies Jakob. “I have my gold disc. It’s in my garage. On the platimun one they spelled my name wrong, which happens to me quite frequently. So I sent it back.”
“Your first name?” I ask.
“Yeah, they spelled it with a c.”
“Not your last name?” I say.
“No,” answers Jakob, with a tiny tight-lipped smile. “They always seem to spell my last name right.” Actually, it’s less a smile than a slight little ironic twitch of the left side of the mouth that says yeah right.
Jakob is wearing a black baseball cap jammed on his head, eyes hidden behind a pair of large Armani sunglasses, looking like a rick star who doesn’t want to be reconized (the perfect disguise in Los Angeles, where everybody looks like that).
He lowers the glasses temporarily, displaying the most dazzling pair of water blue eyes. It’s obvious that Jakob Dylan, though haughty and frequently obtuse, is an absurdly striking and charismatic individual.
The name [Jakob, with a “k”] comes from his parents’ interest in Judism: Jakob’s older brothers were given biblical names too: Jesse and Samuel. (There is also a half sister, Maria, and another sister, Anna.)
Jakob didn’t like the name when he was growing up. He felt it made him stick out. These days, though, having grown up alongside the feckless second-generation celebrities of L.A., he is proud of the Jewish history of his name.
“In L.A.,” Jakob muses, “people name their kids the craziest shit that has no foundation. I know some little kid named Rebel. When this person gets older and wants to know where he came from...”
An odd amalgam of Jakob’s like and hates and assorted personal details emerges in onversation: He cuts his own hair, and has done so for the last seven years. He likes dogs (but hates the smell of them when they’re wet) and is allergic to cats. He doesn’t like gold; in fact, the only visible piece of jewelry he wears is his silver wedding ring (he got married after the first album.) He has chicken pox scars on his face, although they’re barley visible, and a scar on his hand from when his pet dog bit him when he was little.
Jakob has made a point of never talking publicity about his wife or three-year-old son in interviews. “If celebrites dress up their kids in little suits and walk into movie premieres with them,” he says, “that’s their choice. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
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