The Making Of A New Elvis

Chris Isaak has looks, talent and ambition. But is that enough?

Addicted to Noise
August 1995
By Michael Goldberg

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Examiner's Sunday magazine, "Image," on April 6, 1986. At the time I wrote it, I had already known Isaak for a number of years, had seen him perform in numerous clubs and we had become casual acquaintances. Nearly a decade after it was written, I think this piece stands up remarkably well. As a companion piece to my brand-new interview with Isaak (also in this issue), it does a good job of filling in the background, of explaining where Isaak came from, and what his hopes and dreams were, years before he finally made it. It leaves off with Isaak working on his second album, Chris Isaak. That album, like Isaak's first, was not a big seller. It wasn't until the third album, Heart Shaped World, that Isaak scored a hit with "Wicked Game" and became a star.

San Francisco, CA

On a cold and windy San Francisco night, a little over a year ago, Chris Isaak seemed poised on the cusp of rock stardom. This was his night, the night Warner Bros. Records��one of the most powerful record companies in America��held a party celebrating the release of Isaak's debut album, Silvertone.

Several hundred people��the movers and shakers of San Francisco's music scene��were crowded into the Punch Line.

To many of those in attendance, Chris Isaak had arrived. His trajectory to the top, reasoned the rock pundits, was inevitable. Fame and fortune would be his. And the scene maters��the ones who could assure you they'd practically discovered him, for chrissake, the ones who claimed they'd been there, at the Mabuhay Gardens, oh, four, maybe five years earlier when Isaak was making some of his first tentative public performances, back when absolutely no one had heard of the guy��they were all here to bask in his reflected glory.

There was Joel Selvin, the San Francisco Chronicle pop music critic, standing at the bar, talking loudly about how much he liked Isaak's album. And over there hovered Kent Zimmerman of the Gavin Report, an influential radio newsletter that program directors across America use to assemble their play lists. Howie Klein, president of 415 Records and for over ten years a rock and roll trend setter, had cornered a San Jose DJ and was earnestly telling him that Isaak's album was "the best record ever recorded in San Francisco." Even a few bona fide celebrities��members of the Forty-Niners defense squad��had made it on down. Isaak took a deep breath. For a guy who still rode the Greyhound bus back home to Stockton every few weeks to have his mom cut his hair and wash his dirty laundry, this was really something.

The new album kept pumping out of the club's sound system. Periodically, the lights dimmed and Isaak's first video, for a song called "Dancin'", lit up a big screen. Each time the lights went back on, the rock VIPs clapped and cheered. Wandering through the crowd, returning the back-slapping and congratulations ("Hey Chris baby, great album!") with a smile and a polite "Thanks" was Chris Isaak himself. As he stopped near the bar, it was easy to see what all the fuss was about.

His is a striking figure, with the handsome face of a '50s matinee idol. His brown hair was combed back into a great, greasy pompadour. He wore a big, baggy, blue gabardine suit, suspenders, shiny black pointed shoes, a white shirt and a wide tie covered with about twenty tie clips. As he stood there, shaking hands, rocking back and forth to the sound of his own music, periodically messing with his hair, he was a brash young cross between Elvis and Robert Mitchum.

"It's a real ego trip," said Isaak, gently, staring at an immense blow-up of his face on a poser taped to one wall. "That's what I guess this is meant to do, build me up to other people. Which is nice. But I'll tell ya, lookin' at a picture of your face as big as a Volkswagen��that'll do somethin' to ya."

Was all the attention embarrassing?

Chris Isaak thought for a moment. "It's embarrassing that I like it."

THE ALBUM'S A "STIFF"

Since that night, there has been a lot more cause for embarrassment. Interview magazine displayed a full-page photo of Isaak. The Washington Post called his record "one of the most striking debut albums of the year." The Los Angeles Times chimed in: "Isaak's eerie debut is a collection of small pop gems. " England's terminally hip The Face listed Isaak alongside Mickey Rourke, Don Johnson, Rosanna Arquette, Sean Penn and Madonna in what they called "The Class of '85." Director Jonathan Demme, coming off his celebrated Talking Heads concert film, Stop Making Sense, approached Isaak about a starring role in his next movie. A tour of Europe elicited more rave reviews.

In nearly every way, 1985 was a tremendous success for Chris Isaak Every way, that is, but one: He didn't become a "big star." Though Warner Bros. has, to date, spent between $200,000 and $300,000 on Isaak (the cost of making his album and two videos, promoting and marketing his records and supporting his tours). the album sold a mere 12,000 copies in the United States. In record biz lingo, that's a "stiff."

If Chris Isaak doesn't become a star, it will not be for lack of talent. He is, quite simply, the best rock and roller to come out of San Francisco in at least twenty years. You can say of Isaak what rockabilly great Carl Perkins, the guy who wrote "Blue Suede Shoes," said about Elvis: "The boy had everything. He had the looks, the moves and the talent... He really was different."

You can hear it in his voice, a deep, lonesome ache that sounds like it contains every sorrow that's ever broken his heart. It's the voice of a country singer, plaintive and sentimental. And it's the voice of a real rock and roller, a cat who can sing��hold notes, deliver a melody��as if his music is the only thing that can truly set him free.

On stage, Isaak and his band all wear the same baggy suits, white shirts and wide ties. Their sound and style hearken back to some other time. A time before the complex English Lit rock poetry of Bob Dylan. Before psychedelic drugs turned songs into "experiences." Before punk rock and synthesizers. It's a sound that's raw, rough but right. Four guys playing real instruments: drums, bass and two guitars. A classic rock 'n' roll combo in the style of Buddy Holly and the Crickets. Or the early Rolling Stones. Or pre- Sergeant Pepper Beatles.

The songs, with titles like "The Lonely Ones," "Tears," "Funeral in the Rain" and "Lie To Me," are perfectly crafted rock 'n' roll artifacts. They capture, in the simplest, most concise way, feelings of heartbreak, doubt and passion. It is a testament to Isaak's considerable talent as a songwriter that in live performance, as the band alternates Isaak originals with rock classics like the Rolling Stones' "Fortune Teller" and Carl Perkins' "Dixie Fried," Isaak's own compositions invariably sound better.

As John Fogerty, the former leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival who made a successful comeback last year, says, "I'm just knocked out by Chris Isaak. It's obvious that he's going to be a big star. That's a dumb phrase, but he really does have the stuff that big stars are made of. To me, he's already like a skyscraper against the landscape."

ONE-ROOM GARAGE APARTMENT

He lives in a one-room garage apartment in the Sunset District, a block away from Ocean Beach�$#173;the same dark, cramped quarters he's occupied since moving to San Francisco in 1980. When he's not working on his music, he can indulge his other passion: surfing. The afternoon I arrive, Isaak is just back from riding the waves. He hangs up his still-dripping wet suit in the backyard and leads the way into his apartment. "This place may be sloppy," he says, clearing some records off a chair and offering me a seat, "but it's not dirty. No roaches."

Isaak, who is 29, lives alone. Although he has a steady girlfriend, he claims that relationships are difficult for him. "I have a lot of strange ideas about love," he says. "When I tell these ideas to other people, they always kind of look at me like, 'You're joking, aren't you?' Some of them are just old-fashioned ideas, like the notion that getting married means staying together forever and never cheating on your wife. All I see now are single parents. To me that would be tragic. Even though I don't live up to some of my morality, it's still in my head."

Isaak sits down, picks up a small acoustic guitar and begins to idly strum a country-western melody. He is under a lot of pressure these days. His second album is underway and he spends five nights a week in the studio. There have been meetings with Jonathan Demme. And there are always interviews. Suddenly he adopts a demented voice. "I should be bigger than Prince. My destiny has been denied. Why has God forsaken me?" He pauses, laughs. "I am bigger than Prince. Hell, I'm six-foot-one-inch; he's only five-foot-something."

Isaak's single bed is in the closet. Most of the small room is taken up by two long clothes racks crammed with vintage clothes: old gabardine suits, Hawaiian shirts, leather jackets, dozens of ties and vests. Then there are the records: classic disks by Roy Orbison and Elvis, Ricky Nelson and Marty Robbins, the Beatles and Muddy Waters. And two guitars, set out on metal stands: a Gretsch Chet Atkins Nashville and a Sears Silvertone.

"I'd love to sell millions of records," he says dreamily. "But if it happened, I don't know what I would buy. I thought I was going to buy a new wet suit this year, but the one I've got is holding up. There isn't much that I want or need.

"Owning a lot of things can make you a hostage. You have a big house, the government might take it away. You better keep working. But they can't take much away from me. I can get everything I need for about $100. A tape recorder and a guitar, that's it. That's all need to work."

HIS MOM SANG "BLUE SUEDE SHOES"

He was born Christopher Joseph Isaak on June 26, 1956, three months after Elvis scored his first number one record. Isaak's mother, Dorothy, swears she was singing "Blue Suede Shoes" as she gave birth to her son. "I told the doctor who delivered him, 'Watch out, Dr. Peterson, watch out for your blue suede shoes,' 'cause I knew he was about to make his entrance," she laughs, sitting in a middle-class ranch-style home in Stockton cluttered with ceramic fruit and cups, small figurines, an antique spoon collection and thousands of other pure Americana knickknacks.

But life at the Isaak residence did not resemble The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Chris's parents fashioned themselves beatniks in the late '50s. "Chris was trained to be creative," says his mother. "I taught him that he had the freedom to express himself."

He was always different. Sipping from a big glass of Pepsi, Dorothy tells one offbeat story after another about her son. Like the time they went to the Santa Cruz boardwalk and a man who sketched caricatures for a buck asked seven-year-old Chris what he wanted to be when he grew up. Chris would have none of that "when you grow up" stuff. "I'm an artist," he said decisively.

Through his older brother Nick, Chris became a big fan of country music. As teenagers, the two would sit in the upstairs hall outside their parents' bedroom singing country weepers like "Letter Edged in Black" and "I Cried" until their mother literally broke down in tears. "We would play those songs to make her cry," he says. "Between me and him it was like tear-jerk city."

As a kid he never had a band, never performed music in public. It wasn't until 1979, living abroad in Japan as part of a University of the Pacific exchange program, that Isaak became a kind of born- again rock and roller. He came across a copy of Elvis's The Sun Sessions, a classic collection of songs Presley recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis in 1954. "Hearing that record was a turning point," he says. "That body of work is probably the Rosetta Stone of rock and roll. All of a sudden it clicked: This is what I want to do!"

Returning to America, Isaak quickly set out to accomplish his dream. He started commuting to San Francisco because "it was the closest city to Stockton." He grew his hair out and started dressing up kind of strange, like "a combination Elvis and Jack Kerouac." He hung out at the Mabuhay Gardens on Broadway, at the time San Francisco's premier punk rock club. "I'd dress up like I wanted people in my band to look. If somebody looked like that I'd strike up a conversation. 'Do you play an instrument? Do you want to be in a band?' You always lie and say you've got the other guys��never tell them you're the only one. 'You play bass? That's what we need, a bass player!"'

Three months after his first trip to San Francisco, Isaak was one step closer to his goal: He was the leader of a new rockabilly band that he called Silvertone.

"I'M GONNA MAKE YOU A STAR!"

The year was 1981 and Erik Jacobsen was at loose ends. Over a decade and a half earlier, Jacobsen had discovered a folksinger named John Sebastian and helped him put together a pop group called the Lovin' Spoonful. Jacobsen produced eight Top Ten hits for the Spoonful. At the time he was all of 25 years old; he traveled around New York in a limousine.

But all that was so long ago. It had been years since Jacobsen had produced a hit. Now he was dejected, halfheartedly searching the Bay Area clubs for an act that would inspire him. And then he discovered Chris Isaak, fronting a rather primitive rockabilly outfit at a San Francisco Art Institute party. "I was reborn," says Jacobsen. "I just loved his spirit. When someone has really got charisma on stage, even if they're a little off or if the band is a little out of tune, the people still watch. The audience found him riveting. So did l."

Jacobsen took Isaak out to lunch the next day. "I wanted to ascertain how deeply committed he was to his career. I asked him, 'What would you do if your band didn't grow fast enough and you outpaced them?' He said, 'I'd fire anybody in an instant who was holding me back in any way.' That was refreshing to hear."

Soon afterwards, Isaak, Jacobsen and co-manager Mark Plummer ��a former British rock journalist��entered into a business relationship on a simple handshake. As the two managers spent time with Isaak, they became convinced that they had the "new Elvis" on their hands. "But there are so many things you've got to do right to get where you want in this business," says Jacobsen. There were voice lessons, songwriting sessions, photo sessions, study sessions spent listening to classic pop records and hundreds of hours in low-cost studios. Along the way they fired Silvertone's rhythm section, dropped the rockabilly sound and replaced Chris's punk-rockabilly look with a more uptown image.

But this was not a case of shrewd managers molding a naive musician into a commercial act. Isaak is centrally involved in all of the important decisions being made about his career. "We've been a gang," says the aspiring star. "The three of us have spent a lot of time in Chinese restaurants at four in the morning, plotting strategy."

With Jacobsen and Plummer on board, the next thing Isaak needed was a recording contract. This proved to be no easy task, despite the fact that Jacobsen has had a production deal with Warner Bros. Records since the late '60s. Under that arrangement, Warner Bros. finances demo recording sessions for bands he discovers and in return has first option on signing those bands.

Warner Bros. initially expressed an interest in Isaak, based on what Warners A&R man Michael Ostin called "some very primitive-sounding demos." But the company talent scouts saw Silvertone perform at the I-Beam in San Francisco. "Next day I phoned one of them recalls Jacobsen. "He tells me: 'Frankly Erik, the guy can't sing. He can't write a song. The group is sloppy. Furthermore, I don't see any hope for improvement on any of these fronts.' That was a total pass. We had no deal."

So it was back to the studio. The resulting demo tapes did the trick. Warner Bros. suddenly regained its interest. In early 1984, Isaak finally made it onto the record company's roster. Following the release of Silvertone, Isaak and guitarist James Calvin Wilsey assembled a more proficient band and began rehearsing for a rather offbeat tour. The idea was Plummer's. Since Isaak and his new sidemen had not performed live, Plummer figured he would book them into Nightbreak, a small out-of-the-way club on Haight Street where they could function as the house band for a month or so. Playing four or five nights a week before a live audience would quickly whip the band into shape, reasoned Plummer and attract the attention of the local media. He was right. Joel Selvin of the Chronicle was among those who took the bait: "All the pieces fit together like a movie set��the crowd, the club, the band, the sound, the singer," he wrote in a review last spring. "Rather than just gigging, Isaak launched his band in a scene out of Expresso Bongo, that '60s British rock film where Cliff Richards is discovered in some dingy cellar of a nightclub." Isaak also played successful "residencies" at the Anti-Club in Los Angeles and Danceteria in New York, then went on to tour Europe.

But the bottom line for a recording artist is record sales, and no one was happy with the sluggish performance of Isaak's record. One Warner Bros. executive now complains that Isaak's image is "too '50s," that he needs high-powered management and perhaps even a different producer. Jacobsen and Plummer talk darkly about the pressure they feel to have a hit. "To me, all the pressure that counts comes from myself," says Isaak. "The other people hooting and hollering and wanting this and that��let them make their own album. Sure there's pressure on Erik and all the guys. Everybody wants a hit. But I took the first album very seriously, working as hard as I possibly could. I mean, I'm obsessed with this thing. I've been obsessed since day one."

At Warner Bros., for the moment at least, they still believe in Isaak. "Chris is the kind of artist that we like to bet on, says company president Lenny Waronker. "Somewhere along the line, when you've got somebody that talented, the audience will catch up to him or he'll figure out how to get to them and then you have a career."

"It's hit-bound. It's a platinum smasheroo." The hyperbole clashes with the setting��a funky $30-an-hour South of Market recording studio that one can only reach by a freight elevator. Tonight Erik Jacobsen seems to be trying to convince himself that he's just cut a hit. The song in question is called "You Owe Me Some Kind of Love." It's destined for Chris Isaak's second album.

Isaak, who is standing solemnly behind, Jacobsen looking like a pouty high school sophomore in his gray sweatshirt, jeans and white hightop tennis shoes, just rolls his eyes. One imagines he heard the same superlatives during the production of his first album. That album once seemed "hit-bound" too.

Isaak has been in the studio for three weeks. Until now, things have not gone well. The first two weeks were spent working with Isaak's touring band��drummer Kenny Dale Johnson, bassist Rowland Salley and guitarist Wilsey��and few of the basic tracks were successful. Now Isaak and Wilsey have brought in seasoned studio pros��Prairie Prince of the Tubes and session bassist Chris Solberg��to insure that the rhythm section is rock steady.

Isaak says little about the music. He sits, silently listening: his eyes seem focused on something outside the room. Between takes he picks up an acoustic guitar, sits on the edge of a secondhand couch and strums bits of Beatles tunes. "I don't want to spoil the party so I'll go," he sings. "I would hate my disappointment to show." He moves on to an old country tune, Hank William's "Lost Highway," but improvises lyrics. "When I pass, all the people say, just an ex-has-been, on the hits highway."

Isaak seems down. In fact, just tonight, after talking it over with his managers, he has reluctantly decided to turn down Jonathan Demme's movie offer. "Too bad the timing on this thing didn't work out," he says, putting the guitar aside.

Plummer says Isaak would have made a cool $75,000 for co-starring in Demme's film. "Seventy-five thousand dollars seems like a lot now," says Plummer later. "Chris could sure use the money. I could use my cut too. But you can't let that crowd your career. These film offers aren't going to go away. We finish the record, do some videos, play another month in L.A. and the next time they'll offer half a million." He pauses, smiles, catches himself. "Maybe."

In the studio, Jacobsen tries to keep the mood light. He teases Tom Mallon, the recording engineer, and Wilsey. "We can joke around," says Jacobsen suddenly, "but there is a life and death situation going on here." He says this with exaggerated melodrama, but of course he is serious.

Isaak, Wilsey and Plummer leave the room, grab Cherry Cokes out of the icebox and head up to the roof of the building. The air is cold. One can see the freeway, jammed with commuters heading home. "What a life," says Plummer, shaking his head as he watches the headlights inch along.

It's a life that Isaak and the others have chosen to avoid. They rarely rise before noon, don't get to work until two or three, and sometimes don't get to sleep until sunrise. There seems to be an unspoken but shared attitude among them: I live life on my terms, not like the squares.

It's now after midnight and everyone except Isaak��who doesn't drink, smoke or use drugs��has had a few beers. Add a little alcohol to a recording session that has lasted more than ten hours and things get kind of strange. You start to mistrust your own ears. Bizarre tracks can start sounding like hits; potential hits can sound like duds.

"Turn it up," says Wilsey, tugging at the Giants cap on his head. "You Owe Me Some Kind of Love" is playing again. "Let's see what this thing really sounds like."

The engineer rewinds the tape, jacks up the volume and lets it roll. Wham! Thunderous rock and roll drums and a twangy, Duane Eddy guitar riff fill the room. Isaak walks to the center of the room, directly between the speakers, and drops to his knees. "You owe me some kind of love," sings Isaak, his voice slightly echoing Roy Orbison. "You owe me some kind of love." Everyone is moving to the beat. "You really came down on the right night," says Plummer later. "This was a real milestone for us. That track shakes like hell!"

Just before one a.m., the session ends. Jacobsen and Plummer head off to a bar to drink champagne and celebrate. For now, at least, their beads are filled with visions of platinum smasheroos. Isaak, meanwhile, just heads for his tiny oceanside apartment. Alone.

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