Why Bob Dylan’s Son Finally Stopped Avoiding Talking About His Father

Bob Dylan has six children, and, as with many celebrities, some followed their father’s footsteps into the arts. His most well-known child is Jakob Dylan, who has been the lead singer of The Wallflowers for years. Despite his own musical abilities, many interviews with Jakob feature questions about his father. For a while, he avoided talking about his father. Eventually, though, he opened up about his relationship with Dylan.

Bob Dylan has six children

In 1965, Dylan married his first wife, Sara Lownds. Together, they shared five children: Jesse, Anna, Sam, and Jakob. Dylan also adopted her daughter from a previous marriage, Maria. In 1986, years after Dylan’s divorce from Lownds, he quietly married his backup dancer, Carolyn Dennis. They remained together until 1992.

Just before they married, Dennis gave birth to Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan, Dylan’s sixth and final child. Dennis-Dylan remained even more of a secret than the marriage. Most people were unaware of her existence until years after Dennis and Dylan divorced.

Bob Dylan’s son talked about what it was like to grow up with him

For a while, Jakob Dylan avoided talking about his father. In part, he wanted to break out on his own as a musician. He also wanted to protect his relationship with his dad.

“If people want to talk about Bob Dylan, I can talk about that,” he told The New York Times in 2005. “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.”

Eventually, though, he grew tired of trying to avoid the issue. With a father that famous, it was both impossible and exhausting to dodge questions about him. 

“Look, if I wanted to avoid all of it, my next record would have been played on a kazoo and it would be about water polo,” he told the LA Times in 2008. “The truth is, it’s just not as big an elephant in my room as it is for some other people.”

He did clarify that his hesitancy to talk about his father didn’t have anything to do with the quality of their relationship.

“When I was a kid, he was a god to me for all the right reasons,” he said. “Other people have put that tag on him in some otherworldly sense. I say it as any kid who admired his dad and had a great relationship with him. He never missed a single Little League game I had. He’s collected every home-run ball I ever hit. And he’s still affectionate to me.”

Jakob Dylan joined Bob Dylan on tour

Jakob explained that he learned a great deal about music while watching his father’s performances. He remembered watching Dylan’s tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in the 1980s.

“I used to sit with Bugs [Weidel, Petty’s longtime friend]. By the amplifiers,” Jakob told Warren Zanes for the book Petty: The Biography. “Soaking it up, learning as much as I could. I couldn’t have asked for much more at sixteen years old than to watch those guys play every night.”