Spotlight on "Hand Me Down"

Many fans of the Wallflowers first heard the song title "Hand Me Down" in January of 1999, when RollingStone.com reported that Julian Raymond produced it along with another song, "Eat You Sleeping." At that time, Raymond commented: "The song structure and the whole thing [frontman Jakob Dylan's] laying down is a completely different sound. It's very much the Wallflowers because it's his voice, but the music has changed significantly."

Raymond was eventually dropped (as was "Eat You Sleeping"), and Michael Penn and Andy Slater took over production duties. "Hand Me Down" was reworked and added to the band's third album, Breach (due in stores on October 10, 2000). The song, described as a "a low-key `One Headlight,'" by some critics, didn't turn out to be a significant departure sound-wise from the Wallflowers' previous works. But Jakob Dylan's willingness to be more open about his personal feelings and insecurities in "Hand Me Down" (as well as on other songs on Breach) is a significant change and advancement in his songwriting. As he told Revolver magazine: "If I wanted to continue progressing as a songwriter, I had to really say what was on my mind."

You won't ever amount to much/ You won't be anyone/ Now tell me what you were thinking of/ How could you think you would be enough?/ It's not that you have stayed too long/ And it's not that you've done something wrong/ It's not your fault but you embarrass us all

"I felt like he was starting to put his foot in the pool of not hiding anymore - particularly with 'Hand Me Down,' which was not only a brave but really important song for him to write," Michael Penn told Entertainment Weekly magazine. He added that in an initial pre-production meeting, Jakob, "was hedging around whether or not he was actually revealing what I knew he was revealing. I came to the point where I said, `Look, Jakob, there's no way you could have written this unless you felt it, because it's just too true. . . So, that's a good thing!'"

The media zeroed in on "Hand Me Down" as holding the key to Jakob's relationship with his father. The attention given to the song, however, has been daunting for the songwriter. Jakob suggested to the Los Angeles Times that if someone else had written the song, the critics wouldn't have read much into it. But because of his "son of a famous celebrity" status, the media scrutiny was unavoidable.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic