Billie Joe Armstrong’s boy Joey is a chip off the old block.
The Green Day singer has passed on his penchant for punk pop to his 19-year-old son, who plays drums in the group Emily’s Army. The band has already released two albums and plays the Studio at Webster Hall on Friday.
Clearly, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree, because they bear more than a passing resemblance to Green Day.
But being the offspring of a famous musician isn’t easy if you plan to be a musician yourself. It’s something that’s virtually impossible to escape, even for those who establish their own sound.
Here are six artists who have found out that following in your folks’ footsteps can be the most difficult path of all.
Sean Lennon
The only son of John and Yoko has a voice uncannily similar to his father’s. But Sean has slowly carved out his own niche of psychedelic pop through solo albums, his band the Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger and via several collaborations with his mother.
Translation: No, he won’t play “Imagine,” no matter how many times you shout it at him.
Alexa Ray Joel
Being the daughter of Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley is pressure enough — but having musical aspirations to boot has made things doubly difficult for Alexa to step out of her parents’ shadows.
She once wrote a song called “Notice Me,” but very few people beyond her dad’s hard-core fan base have. Sadly, she gained more notoriety for her personal struggles and overdose in 2009 than she has for her music.
Jeff Buckley
New Yorker Jeff Buckley grew up estranged from his father, the cult folk artist Tim. Even so, they lived eerily parallel lives. Both looked strikingly similar, possessed angelically beautiful voices and ended up dying young — Tim from a heroin overdose in 1975 at age 28, Jeff by drowning in 1997 at 30.
Although Jeff only lived long enough to produce one full-length album — “Grace” in 1994 — it stands as one of the best albums of the decade.
Jakob Dylan
When Dylan debuted the Wallflowers back in the ’90s, it was difficult to imagine how he’d ever compare to his wildly influential pop, Bob.
In the end, he didn’t even try to. Over the course of six albums of solid if unremarkable alt-rock (plus a couple of solo releases on the side), Jakob has become his own man.
Norah Jones
Norah Jones rarely had to suffer comparisons to her father Ravi Shankar, but that was probably because of the distant relationship between the two.
Shankar was a world-renowned classical sitar player, but his daughter, raised primarily by mother Sue Jones in Texas, ploughed her own furrow into jazz-pop with huge commercial success. Her 2002 debut album “Come Away With Me” sold 26 million copies alone.
Wolfgang Van Halen
When your dad is Eddie Van Halen and is widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists that ever lived, it’s probably a good idea to not play guitar.
Wolfgang Van Halen has avoided being held to his father’s lofty standards by smartly switching to the bass guitar for his main instrument. Perhaps not so smartly, he agreed to team up with his dad in Van Halen in 2008, only for the band to go on hiatus in 2012 due to infighting.