Tangled up in blue - pop singer Chris Isaak

Harper's Bazaar, April 1993 n3376 p132(2)
By Robert Seidenberg

Abstract: Depression may pervade pop singer Chris Isaak's music but the singer possesses a vibrant personality. His latest album, 'San Francisco Days' includes songs that depict agony and solitude. Isaak has maintained his simple living despite the success of his album.

When Chris Isaak calls himself the Man with a Tear in his Heart, he's only half-joking. Pop music's reigning Prince of Darkness is not nearly as depressed in real life as his songs might suggest, and anyone who's seen him perform knows that he can be riotously funny. But for eight years Isaak has been singing mournful tunes of lost love and other sorrows. With plaintive vocals set atop a sparse background of twanging, vibrato-drenched guitar, he conjures musical landscapes where love never lasts. "Wicked Game," the single that rocketed the 36-year-old Stockton, CA, native from cultdom to stardom two years ago, is quintessential Isaak: a haunting, forlorn meditation on the fickleness of romance. Isaak's new San Francisco Days, his fourth album, continues the artist's perpetual blue period. In the opening song, "Waiting," he sighs, "Why did you ever leave me?/Why break the heart of that boy?" Elsewhere, he pleads, "I still need you/Don't hang up and say goodbye"; and concludes with a rousing version of Neil Diamond's "Solitary Man," wherein he promises to keep searching until he finds "a girl who will stay and won't play games behind me."

"It's easy for me to write dark songs because I'm sad by nature. And maybe writing about sadness helps me get over it," he explains in a setting that couldn't be more appropriate. Outside his comanager's apartment, the pounding rain floods the Hollywood Freeway. Sitting by a roaring fire, Isaak, dressed in black jeans, black cowboy shoe-boots, and a green sweatshirt, his oft- pompadoured hair unslicked, strums a vintage guitar. "But my life isn't all doom and gloom. There are lots of good things in it, too, so I certainly don't want people joining the Slash-Your- Wrist Club over my record." Actually, San Francisco Days is more upbeat than its super somber predecessor, Heart Shaped World. A swirling organ, courtesy of Robert Cray's keyboardist, Jimmy Pugh, turns up the blues quotient in Isaak's country/blues/ rockabilly recipe. And though the mood is mostly doleful, there are pockets of hope. "Except the New Girl," a tale of unrequited love, even offers a happily-ever- after ending.

"It's a very positive song," Isaak says proudly. "It's about somebody who does find somebody. A lot of people seem like they never will: They're too strange, or they're not beautiful or lever. But it's wonderful when you see some guy who's five-foot-two and ugly as a mud fence and he's got a girlfriend. She may be nothing to look at, but you can tell by way the two of them look at each other that they're in love. And if it can happen for them, it can happen for me.

Most of Isaak's songs are autobiographical. The torch songs, he admits, are inspired by an intense high school romance that still haunts him. "People always have strong feelings about their first love affairs," he says, suddenly quiet. "They remember how much it hurt, because they had dreams that were unrealistic. And rather than drive myself crazy thinking about what might have been, I put my feelings into songs. Doesn't hurt anybody,and hopefully it's good for somebody."

After his high school heartbreak, Isaak remained in his hometown of Stockton, a small, working- class city 80 miles east of San Francisco, to attend the University of the Pacific. His decision to spend a year studying in Tokyo, as part of a university exchange program, changed his life: In Japan he came across Elvis Presley's historic, Sun Sessions, "the Rosetta stone of rock 'n' roll," says Isaak. "When I heard that record, all of a sudden it clicked: 'This is what I want to do."'

Graduating with a degree in communication arts and English, Isaak promptly moved to San Francisco and, for the first time, considered music as a possible career. Constantly broke, he lived in a cheap, one-room apartment, subsisting mostly on sardines. Singing and playing his own music, at the time, was merely a means to an end. "I had wanted to be a filmmaker," he says, revealing a little-known fact. "I was applying to film school at places like USC, but things got in the way. Little things like not having money and not having a car that would make it down to L.A. So I thought, 'Well, I have a guitar and I can sing. Maybe I should get a band together and, even if it doesn't go anywhere, we could always play children's parties, bar mitzvahs, store openings.' I figured that if I could get the band to be successful, then I could try to get work in film."

Isaak's strategy worked perfectly, for he now enjoys a burgeoning second career as a movie actor. After fashion photographer Bruce Weber captured Isaak's smoldering good looks on the cover of his second album, Isaak landed small roles in two Jonathan Demme films (Married to the Mob and The Silence of the Lambs) and in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. This fall Isaak gets his big break in Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha, in which he plays the father of an American child believed to be the reincarnation of Buddha.

Besides giving Isaak his first starring role, Little Buddha also afforded him the chance to visit Bhutan, which, in turn, provided him with raw material for the hilarious, long-winded yarns-- always delivered with a faux-hick naivete--with which he loves to regale his audiences. "The first morning I had breakfast in this huge hall that was built for the king's coronation," he says, offering a small sample. "And when I opened up these big metal things to get the food, there were hoof-sized pieces of yak meat in there. For breakfast! I kept going, 'Rice Krispies? You know, Snap, Crackle, Pop? Little elves?' But the second day I was going, 'You know, the yak was better yesterday.' By the third day you just chow down with everybody else."

Isaak's guilelessness is not an act. He doesn't curse. Doesn't smoke. Doesn't drink. His is an innocence left over from another era. In fact, the first time he was inside a bar was the first night he played at one. "When I first played the Stockton bars, they didn't want me to play my own songs," he recalls. "They said that people only wanted to hear oldies. So I went out and played my stuff, but I introduced my songs as oldies. I said, 'Okay, folks, our next song will bring you all the way back to 1962, when Dale and the Chiffons did "Blue Hotel," but we'd like to do it our way.' And then I'd play my song. People would sit there and nod their heads. I thought for sure we'd be fired. But afterward the owner of the bar said, 'You see? They liked you because they know the songs."'

It's not surprising that Isaak was able to pass his songs off as oldies--his musical taste runs as far back to the past as do his hairstyle and onstage outfits. He counts among his idols Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, and Roy Orbison. The influence they've had on Isaak's songwriting is undeniable--particularly Orbison, whose hits "Crying" and "Only the Lonely" share haunting vocals and grief-stricken themes with Isaak's songs. Some of Isaak's critics have even accused him of being an Orbison copycat. But over the course of four albums, Isaak has forged a style that is distinctive--and contemporary--enough to silence the detractors.

Will success spoil Chris Isaak? Doubtful. Even though his last album sold more than 1.5 million copies, he still lives in the same San Francisco neighborhood, a few blocks from the beach where he surfs late at night. He still eats at the same Chinese restaurant as often as possible.

Most important, he is still who he's always been. Not one to drive in the self-destructive fast lane that's become such a cliche among pop stars, Chris Isaak prefers to stick to the speed limit. "Hey, I'm a knucklehead," he boasts. "I drive slow. I'm the guy people are honking at. I'm the only guy that ever took seriously all the stuff they taught in driver's education. To me, the idea of being a rock musician who gets in the car, drives 190 miles an hour, drinks while he drives, and also rides a Harley, is so predictable. That's what you do if you're not sure."

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