He's good as GOLD

Stockton-born pop star Chris Isaak, who's just doing what he loves, finally can say that he's 'made it' (Plus, Sub Article)

The Stockton Record
Saturday, November 7, 1998
by Tony Sauro, Record staff writer

Finally, Chris Isaak can admit it. Grudgingly.

After 13 years and seven mostly moody, twangy, lonely-hearted albums, the Stockton born pop star - still realistic and self-effacing despite his glamorous public persona - has made it. So to speak.

"I've made it in the sense" said Isaak, the 42-year-old Stagg High School and University of the Pacific graduate. "I make a living. I play music for a living. That's making it."

Which is all he ever wanted. That's why he isn't concerned that his newest album - the slightly more adventurous "Speak of the Devil" - is merely hanging on there at No. 101 on Billboard magazine's national charts 6 weeks after its Sept. 22 release.

"I always feel like, you know, the sales and marketing of an album is the last thing I worry about," said Isaak. "The first thing I worry about is that it comes out the way I wanted it to sound in my head and that the quality is good. If I make a real good record - even if the sales aren't real good right away - my career will go on. Know what I mean?"

So, Alanis Morissette he isn't. She's the 24-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter who sold more than 28 million copies of her first album and will somehow have 'failed' if her new album doesn't match it.

"I actually know people who've sold millions of records - and I'm not naming names - and they said it was the screwiest thing that ever happened to them," said Isaak, speaking recently from a New York City hotel the morning after he and his band, Silvertone, had taped the segment of "Hard Rock Live" that premiers at midnight today on VH1.

Isaak performes four songs from "SOTD" on the TV show, along with "Wicked Game", the sadly smouldering ballad that made him a star when it went gold and reached the top 10 in 1991.

Its success has propelled "Heart Shaped World", the 1989 album on which it appeared, past the 2 million mark in sales. One of his other albums ("Forever Blue") also has gone platinum (more than one million sold), and two ("Baja Sessions" and "San Francisco Days") are gold (more than 500,000 sold).

Though he's now as good as gold every time out, the process remains suitably slow and steady. "It's probably a good thing I didn't sell 29 million copes", said the dependable Isaak. "I talk to people all the time who say 'What would you do? What would you do?' But there's a good chance I'd end up with a turban on, going around with, you know, people saying, 'Chris no longer speaks English. He just burbles stuff and believes clothes are the devil's plaything.' Know what I mean?"

Uh, sure, Chris.

"Maybe not having huge success is the best thing," he said. "Maybe just having success is good. Otherwise, you might see me wearing a turban and no pants, which isn't a bad look, really, now that I think about it."

Of course, his classic good looks have turned to gold too. Fitting the more spontaneous, slightly more rocking, definately more band-oriented sound of the new album, Isaak - known for his 20-pound suit of mirrors and other Elvis-style stage attire - is making a simpler statement.

"I'll be wearing suits at some point", said Isaak, who opted for a T-shirt look during the VH1 gig and did Jay Leno's Sept. 25 "Tonight" show in biker black. "I'm sure it'll be fun just to come out and be a little more casual. It's easier to get up and rock right away. But I always bring the suits with me." "I've even got some new ones. There's one with a woman on the back, kind of hanging on me. It's kind of my own fantasy, in lieu of a real woman. It kinda looks like somebody's holding on to you. It came to me in a dream. I did it on a napkin. I design all of them. One that's still being finished is purple with rhinestones all over it. That's always a classy look."

Likewise, his sound, a twangy, reverbed, blue-velvet throwback t the age of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison. It's one-of-a-kind in the high-tech 90's.

Determined not to get permanently stuck in some retro stylistic trap, though, Isaak reoughed things up a bit on the new album - some noisier guitars, bits of '90's sonic ambiance - producing or co-producing seven of the 14 tracks and writing and recording "live" with his band.

"It was fun," said Isaak. "I'm not somebody who goes to the studio after a record is done and then sings. When I do a record, I'm usually there every day for everything. My rule of thumb is, if they're recording something, I'm there. I don't like to be absent from the process.

"Luckily, I've been able to learn by watching the process. Everybody who comes in teaches you something. I produce just a little differently. There are certain little things that are important for me that I go for. There are other things that I'll let slide. Know what I mean?

"What I'm really after is, I love to get the energy fo the great take. I die to get that. I usually get that pretty quick. Then the vocals. There are things in my voice I wanna hear. I don't know how to describe it, but I know what it is."

Apparently, not everybody else does. In a break with tradition, Isaak adn his band (drummer Kenney Dale Johnson, bassist Rowland Salley, and guitarist Herschel Yatovitz) rented a SF warehouse so they didn't have to rehearse for the album at Isaak's Sunset District house.

"We always just rehearsed in my garage", said Isaak. "So we had to knock off at 4 pm so the neighbors wouldn't get bugged by us playing loud. We got this warehouse near Candlestick Park. There was a Roto-Rooter next door, ... and a bunch of deadbeat bands. It's not the high end of rental space.

"I ran into this one guy (who was hanging out nearby) and he was saying most of these bands are pretty bad. But one band is really good. But they won't ever go anyplace. It's a Chris Isaak cover band. I said, 'How interesting.' That was really funny. At least he thought we sounded good."

That bit of good-natured rough-housing helped get them into a more spontaneous, garage-rock mood when it came time to record, this time in a slightly more modern SF studio (Coast).

"I always write late at night on an acoustic guitar," said Isaak. "This time, I would go in and play and the band would just follow me. I could hear then, right away, the rock arrangement. It's a lot easier to work it out and make it into a rock record if you start out hearing that arragement.

"I had a really fun time making this record. It's the first time we'd worked in a studio that had air-conditioning we could actually turn on and still hear ourselves."

While the mood is mostly blue as ever - including Isaak's darkest song yet, "Black Flowers", which is part of the VH1 set - the album does include a few upbeat tunes ("Flying," with Stockton sisters ....).a radio-ready collaberation with Grammy Award-winning songwriter Deane Warren, a surf-rock instrumental, and one tune that ponders the plusses of marital bliss.

Isaak, known for his wry wit and mischevous nature, was ready with a response.

"No. Marriage isn't in the offing," he said with a laugh. "A lot of times, in lieu of having a personal life, I have a fantasy life. You get that when you live in a hotel. It's like I said to my drummer the otherfday. 'Sex? People still do that?"

In any event, Isaak is still doing what he loves, and he's happy about that. "When I first moved to SF, after I came out of Stockton, I remember putting a sign up in (Stockton's) Miracle Music", thinking back to those scuffling days before his 1985 debut album was released. "you know, a mimeographed sign with a picture of me playing my guitar. It said I wanted other musicians to play music with and I wrote down some of my influences. And I had, you know, Connie Francis, people like that on it. The phone just sat there and stared at me with plaintive eyes, saying 'Why did you write that?' Nobody called."

Eventually, a couple of punk-style musicians contacted him and, while they had nothing in common musically, "one of them said to me, 'Hey man, all we want to be able to do is make a living playing music'.

"That is the dream. That you can go and do that. I did it right away, actually. I always had just a full-time gig. I didn't have any money. My parents (Stockton residents Joe and Dorothy Isaak) gave me some furniture and I had this, like, dresser thing with three drawers. In the top drawer I had my underwear and in the corner was a jar. Every gig I did, I put the money in that jar. When I hit my rent money, then I knew I was making a living.

"Now, I just have a bigger jar."

SUB-ARTICLE:

He'd 'love' to play here

The question has become inevitable and unavoidable in any conversation with Stockton-born rock star Chris Isaak.

So, Chris, when are you going to play Stockton?

"I'm not sure of a date", said Isaak, who's never done a show in his hometown since starting his ascension to pop stardom in 1985. "But believe me, I have talked, like 20 times or more to my booking agent and manager and said 'Why can't I play my hometown?" I still hope to play there on this tour."

Stockton's downtown Fox Theatre, the venerable old 2,100-seat building that Isaak remebers from his youth and that's been undergoing a pop music renaissance in recent years, would seem to be the logical choice.

"I'd love to play there (the Fox)," said Isaak. I'd love to play any place in Stockton To me it would be great. I have a lot of friends there and my family's there I could paly the show and then go home after it. What could be better?"

Stay tuned.

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