Chris Isaak On Dean Martin
Addicted To Noise
Music News of the World
January 2, 1996
Edited by Jaan Uhelszki
Everybody tells Chris Isaak he sounds like Roy Orbison. But his real idol was Dean Martin, because of the way Dean-o handled drunks and loudmouths in his audience. When Isaak was in Toronto earlier this year, he told ATN contributor Peter Howell of the Toronto Star of a Dean Martin concert he really enjoyed: "Damn, he looked good," said Isaak. "And he sounded great: `Everybody loves somebody, sometime...' "And some goof at the back of the crowd kept yelling, `Can't hear ya, can't hear ya!' "And Dean Martin kept singing, `Everybody loves somebody, too...' with his middle finger raised up like this (Isaak made well-known gesture) "It's like he was saying to the guy, `Fuck you, I've got $4 million in the bank.' "And at the end of the song, he said, `I'm tired and I wanna go home.' And he did just that.''
In other Dean Martin news, the L. A. Times reports that Warner Bros. has reoptioned Nick Tosches' excellent 1992 bio of Martin, which is titled: Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams. During the late '60s as well as the '70s Tosches contributed an excellent article to Creem and Rolling Stone. His bio of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, is simply one of the best bios ever written about a rocker. A film based on the Tosches' book could be a real winner, especially if directed by Scorsese and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi, a possibility according to the Times.
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