It's all the rage these days, the offspring of well-known singers releasing records, answering questions about what it was like residing with a well-known songwriter who probably unashamedly mined their domestic background for lyrical fodder. What was it that a respected 1960s singer-songwriter said about yet another of his marriages breaking down? Oh, yes: that's at least a half dozen songs for the new album.
The most famous sons of equally famous rock stars are Julian and Sean Lennon, who both released very different albums within days of each other some months back. (A coincidence, said Sean. A strange spurt of synchronicity, reckoned Julian.) Then there's Jakob Dylan, son of Bob, who with his band The Wallflowers is currently doing major business in the US. As if these two weren't enough, within the past month, sons of three of the most well regarded singer/songwriters of the 1960s (Stephen Stills, Leonard Cohen, and Loudon Wainwright III) have released albums. Like blessings, the results are mixed. What is heartening, though, is that none of them necessarily feel they have to emulate the creative thrust that has made their fathers' music so enduring. They also have no problems using their fathers' contacts and reputations in the music industry, which could be interpreted as cynical and quite typical of opportunistic life in the music industry. Come to think of it, that's exactly what it is.
Twenty-three-year-old Chris Stills's father is Stephen, he of Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame. As a child, Chris went on tour with his dad, but admits to not paying too much attention to his father's stagecraft. When he was 12, one of his father's guitar technicians taught him to play The Beatles' Rocky Racoon. "After that I just watched my dad's hands all the time. I remember someone playing me For What It's Worth, and I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever heard. That song was an epiphany for me. I just played it over and over again."
When he was 17, Chris played on his father's Southern Cross album, graduating from there to forming the Stills-Cohen Band (with Adam Cohen, son of Leonard) in New York. With his debut album, 100 Year Thing, Chris Stills has tapped into a bi-generational fan base that is paying more than just the laundry bills. Unlike the Lennons, he has no problems whatsoever facing criticisms of sounding like his father. "I don't mind sounding like my old man at all," he says with a shrug. "I didn't want to stray too far from that era. Those are the records I still love the best."
Also 23, Rufus Wainwright reckons he suffers less from the parent trap than either Chris Stills or Adam Cohen. His father, Loudon Wainwright III, was more a respected songwriter than an overtly famous one. His mother, Kate McGarrigle, was part of a moderately successful French-Canadian folk duo with her sister, Anna. His parents' "low grade popularity" (which still sees them selling out theatres on a regular basis) has been a huge advantage to him, as it means the pressure to match their respective success is considerably relieved.
Despite being a big fan of his parents ("It's a mutual support society," he gushes), Rufus feels the only way he could rebel was to learn how to read music and to "get into" classical and opera. This is not, you will agree, the time-honoured teenage response to parents who "just don't understand". His recently released self-titled debut album is significantly different from either of his parents' output. It has received wide critical acclaim, which is fine by Rufus, as he wants to sell far more records than either of his parents did. Rufus sees himself, Chris Stills and Adam Cohen as "the new brat-pack".
Adam Cohen - also 23 - possibly carries more weight on his shoulders than Rufus Wainwright or Chris Stills. To many, Leonard Cohen - despite enjoying an ongoing sabbatical as a Buddhist monk that shows no sign of ending - is still the male singer/songwriter who typifies the era of doleful narrative, introspection, self-doubt, and miserabalist self-analysis.
"My father is a prophet, a clown, a lover, a romantic," Adam recently informed a music magazine. "He's got a footnote in the annals of history. It's easy to find inspiration in his role model as a human being and it's a huge advantage having a father like that. He sets a benchmark. His work says to me, `Hey, you've got a lot to live up to'. He's always given me limitless encouragement which is more than just some complicated strand of DNA."
One gets the impression that Adam respects and loves his father, yet he remembers his formative on-the-road experiences as being unexceptional and terribly banal. Paying scant attention to the person on stage, Adam would sometimes wander up to his father in the middle of a song "partly out of curiosity and partly out of childish ignorance". He sees nothing at all negative or arduous about what he does, as he continually strives to grasp at even a hint of his father's creative sensibilities. Moving to Los Angeles from New York because he had no money ("and being near my father was an inspiration from which I could only benefit") Adam signed to Columbia more than two years ago. Of the three records, his is the one that appears to have suffered most at the pointed fingertips of the music critics, although this could be as much due to Cohen senior's considerable reputation as anything else.
Of course, we might hear no more of Stills, Cohen, and Wainwright (a career as a law firm seems distinctly possible, however); perhaps they will have no more to say, and no outlet through which to say it. But when your surname opens doors that are normally closed, when demo tapes get listened to instead of being thrown into the rubbish bin, and when you have interest from people who haven't even heard you sing, what do you do? Say, `no thank you?'
"We all plan on being equally successful," says the forthright Wainwright. The optimistic idealism of the 1960s has been reversed. Welcome to career opportunities firmly grasped. It looks as these guys are here to stay.