Chris Isaak: a crooner with charisma (rock musician)

Cosmopolitan v216 n1 p64(2)
January 1994
By Michael Segell

Abstract: Singer, songwriter and guitarist Isaak appreciates his career success. He has achieved popularity after several years of obscurity. His new album is called 'San Francisco Days' and he will appear in the film, 'Little Buddha.' He discusses his life and career.

Okay, this isn't easy, being a man and all, but I'll just go ahead and admit it: I'm jealous of Chris Isaak. I mean, this is what Isaak considers work: Lying around his oceanfront San Francisco apartment writing love songs. Occasionally racing down to the beach with his surfboard if he spots an awesome swell. Leaping about a stage playing ecstatic rock and roll at night. Frolicking in the sand all day with a topless Danish model while making a music video. Traveling to Nepal to star in Bernardo Bertolucci's next film.

Some job.

Mind you, my feelings have nothing to do with knowing Isaak is a talented composer, a terrific athlete, a marvelous singer; that he's tall, slinky, chiseled, and muscular; that he's an Adonis who slays the women; or that he has one of the greatest wardrobes this side of Milan showrooms-- and all that hair.

Can we level the playing field, Chris?

"I feel like I got some of what I deserved and a whole lot that I didn't," Isaak demurs in a flat California drawl with a slight nasal ring--the result of a truncated boxing career (in Japan, of all places), during which he stopped a lot of punches with his nose. After a long day of TV interviews, he's encamped in his publicist's office high above Rockefeller Center, sipping bottled water, supremely turned out in a dark suit and black-and-white-striped crew-neck shirt, his hair swept into a perfect pompadour. "I deserved a job being a musican because I learned to play guitar and can sing pretty good, I think. But did I deserve to sell millions of records and be on TV and in movies? I just try to do a good job and make it fun, because there will probably come a time when the only place I can play is in a bar."

To be fair, Isaak wasn't born with a silver guitar pick between his fingers. He has done hard time in obscurity, living off Cup-o'-Soups, floating his rent payments, making critically acclaimed records that went nowhere, and cultivating a reputation as one of the San Francisco music scene's best-kept secrets. (Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, John Fogerty, and Bonnie Raitt count themselves among his earliest fans. Indeed, he's had a hard time shaking the survival tactics he learned during his years of penury. "I've lived off canned and dried food so long that I've actually developed a taste for it," he says.

Things change, fortunately. Three years ago Isaak, now thirty-seven, got lucky: Director David Lynch used an instrumental version of a throbbing Isaak tune called "Wicked Game" in the score of his movie Wild at Heart. A deejay in Atlanta, smitten with the ethereal guitar work, tracked down its source and discovered Isaak's haunting vocal layered on top of the music. He began playing the song; other programmers followed. "Wicked Game," bolstered by the pouty Herb Ritts-directed video of Isaak and a half-naked Danish model sporting on a foggy beach, became a Top Ten hit.

Isaak's career has been on a high plateau ever since, with nonstop touring in Europe and America and cameos in movies--The Silence of the Lambs and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Now, with the recent release of San Francisco Days, his star is once again on the rise. The record is quintessential Isaak: a dreamy blend of plaintive ballads, rockabilly stompers, and moody make-out music. It's unquestionably his finest effort. In what could be the biggest break of his career, though, Isaak will soon be seen in Little Buddha, the new Bertolucci movie, with Bridget Fonda and Keanu Reeves. Shot in Kathmandu and Bhutan, the film features Isaak as a Seattle architect whose seven-year-old son is kidnapped by Tibetan monks who believe the boy to be the reincarnation of Buddha.

Casting director Howard Feuer had suggested Isaak several times, but Bertolucci, who wanted an unknown, wasn't interested. Finally, the famed Italian director agreed to watch a videotape of Isaak reading some scenes."The minute Bernardo saw the tape," Feuer recalled, "he thought Isaak was fabulous. His masculinity and warmth translated into a Gary Cooper kind of feeling."

Isaak is modest about his contrbution to Little Buddha. He feels "good" about his role in the movie, the first film in which he doesn't tote a gun. "I hope it's good," he says blandly. His nonchalance is typical and belies what his friends say is an extremely ambitious temperament. According to one intimate, Chris was willing to shed blood to get the part.

In Nepal, on top of the world, mesmerized by the "breathtaking beauty" of the country, Isaak worked all day and played his guitar at night. Hoping to learn some native musical styles, he jammed, on one occasion, with a group of Tibetans who played through forty-year-old amplifiers on old Indian guitars wth broken strings. "But they wanted to play nothing except Robert Cray tunes," he says, referring to the popular American blues musician.

Nepal was not Isaak's introduction to the third world: "I was born in Stockton," he quips. The son of a forklift operator, youngest of three boys, Isaak grew up "white-trash poor," not far from the central California city's loading docks on the San Joaquin River. His musical taste gravitated toward Buddy Holly, Elvis, Roy Orbison, and Marty Robbins, and he started writing his own songs at thirteen. At Stagg High School, he was president of the student body and valedictorian. An early taste for fancy threads accompanied the emergence of his musical talent and scholarship: He was once sent home from school for wearing a double-breasted pin-striped suit, flowered tie, and pointy Italian shoes.

The Isaak house was noisy, raucous, athletic, musical. The boys all boxed--the thing to do on the Stockton waterfront. Chris's mother, Dorothy, was an Elvis Presley fan and played the King's tunes nonstop. Some of the noise, though, was generated by acrimony. "My parents fought a lot," Isaak says.

Dorothy Isaak was, and is, her last-born's biggest booster--and something of a remarkable woman herself. (For most of the years she spent raising her sons, she worked in a potato-chip factory at night. Then, not long ago, Dorothy enrolled at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, where Chris studied English literature, and she now has a doctorate in education and counseling psychology. She encouraged Chris to become a singer, supported him through his years of obscurity, shows up at gigs and recording sessions, and is always available for dead-of-night phone calls. "He tells me I'm his first love and his only love," she's said. "And he'll never love anyone more than me."

Isaak's role model for a successful relationship? "I don't know," he says, slumping in his chair and crossing his long legs. "It's usually your parents. Mine are still married, so that's good. Are they happy? They love each other--and love to fight with each other. They wouldn't be happy without each other."

Whatever its source, there's a lot of heartbreak in Isaak's repertoire. In his musical vignettes, boy typically meets girl, falls in love with girl, falls out with girl, and wants her back. Does a man with such a sexy image really have that much trouble with women? "Nobody thinks your image is related to how your personal life goes," he says. "But yeah, I have things in my life I regret, things that happened with my first girlfriend, things that will probably always be with me. On the other hand, I've been in love with people and had it as good as anybody's had it. I don't think I've had it any worse, but because I'm a musician, you just hear about it more."

One thing I've never felt is that I had to be unhappy to write songs. If I had to grind my fingers into knives just so I could scratch out another few lines in blood, I wouldn't do it." On the contrary, Isaak says he tries to make himself "as happy as possible every day." He keeps his mood even by not drinking or smoking and, when he does get a little low, by exercising. "I'd feel pretty guilty if I started complaining now, considering I have friends and my family's healthy and I have a great job that pays too much money for something I like to do anyway."

But Isaak is nonetheless enamored of the sob story and always on the lookout for a good one. "I've heard stories from men that make my own look like a piece of cake," he says. "This one guy told me he came home on Christmas Eve with his hands full of packages and found a note on the tree that said, 'Honey, I'm leaving. Bye.' She took the baby and left him for his best friend, and he didn't see her again for five years. When I heard that, I went, 'Ouch, man.'"

The songwriter from Stockton admits to being a soft touch and a bit of a crier. "Stories about things that bring out the best in people and it just isn't good enough, or stories about people who try really hard and they just don't have it or don't get the break they should--those things get me," he says.

A guaranteed route to misty eyes is the love story set to song. In Little Buddha, Isaak had to cry during a scene and used a favorite ballad by Portuguese singer Amaila Rodriguez to get in the mood. Which song? Unbidden, his voice takes flight: "~I found my aching heart in Portugal with you/When madly I discovered love I never knew/My head was in the clouds, my heart went crazy too/And madly my heart said I love you.' I've heard that song fifty times and it always brings me to the same place."

A bachelor, Isaak says he has no plans to marry anytime soon. "When you're in a different town every day, it's hard to have a relationship," he says."You either have a different relationship in every town or none at all. I've tended toward the latter. When I've had none, I've gotten a lot more work done." On his current record, Isaak closes out his twelve-song set with the Neil Diamond classic "Solitary Man." The choice is appropriate. According to his drummer, Kenney Dale, Chris is "a total loner. He doesn't play into the whole schmoozing thing too much." But Isaak himself claims he's just shy. "I was never good at meeting girls," he says. "If I went to a club, I'd just stand in a corner and watch the band. Since I didn't drink or smoke, I didn't have anything to look cool with. "

Nonetheless, he says he's now involved with someone--"At least I'm hoping it's an involvement," he adds. Though it's supposed to be a secret, the lucky lady is said to be Sonya Chang, formerly his personal assistant and now his comanager. Brusque and bright, Chang knows Hollywood and accompanies Isaak to every meeting. Casting director Howard Feuer described her as "a very bright girl. He definitely listens to her. She takes charge."

For his part, Isaak admits to harboring "a crazy taste in what women look like. I'm not usually one who goes for fashion models. Of course, the next headline you'll see: ISAAK WEDS MODEL. The main thing to me is if a woman is nice. Not greeting-card nice, but I've got to feel like she's a square player. And no facial tattoos."

His ideal woman? "Anybody who likes me," he says. "That's a big start right there. You know what people find attractive? If somebody finds you attractive. It sounds stupid, but it's true, you know? Somebody comes up to you and goes, 'See that girl over there? She's always talking about you, about what a smart guy you are, how clever you are.' All of a sudden, you're looking over and going, 'She's pretty attractive too.' At least you know you'll get along, and that she's got good taste."

Despite his success, Isaak has changed his lifestyle little. He's not investing in real estate or building customized recording studios or buying big cars (he still drives a 64 Chevy). And he still cruises thrift shops for cool threads. "I've always thought it a responsibility to save something," he says. "In twenty years, I don't want to turn to my brother and go, ~You know, Dick, I blew it all. Can you lend me Five till payday?'"

Even his most jealous friend wouldn't wish that upon him.

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