Contemporary Musicians, December 1991 (Volume 6) - Biography
by Anne Janette Johnson
Personal Information
Born in 1956 in Stockton, CA; son of a forklift operator. Education: University of the Pacific, B.A., 1980. Singer, songwriter, guitarist, 1980-. With James Calvin Wilsey (guitar), Kenney Dale Johnson (drums), and Rowland Salley (bass), formed band Silvertone, 1981; signed with Warner Bros. Records c. 1985, and released first album, Silvertone, 1985. Had first Top Ten hit, "Wicked Game," 1991. Songs have been featured in the film soundtracks of Blue Velvet, De Laurentis, 1986, and Wild at Heart, 1990. Amateur boxer c. 1976-80.
Addresses
Record company--Reprise (Warner Bros.)
3300 Warner Blvd
Burbank, CA 91510.
Chris Isaak's moody, anachronistic music is an unlikely addition to the pop charts, but after years of near-obscurity the handsome Californian is on the brink of major stardom. Virtually since his debut album appeared in 1985 Isaak has had a cult following--and the raves of critics--but he broke through to the public's attention in 1991 with the top ten hit "Wicked Game." Since then Isaak has been quite happy to bring his jazz- and rockabilly-influenced sound to large theaters and concert halls. "I'm doing the same thing, but more people are watching," he told the Boston Globe. "It's real strange to me that it's happened so quick. We've been doing this for years, but it just seems like all of a sudden people are showing up and paying attention. But you know, we're diggin' it."
Success has been slow in coming to Isaak because he places artistic merit before marketability. A number of his early albums failed to sell because his fifties-style rockers and ballads sounded so different from standard pop fare. Isaak told the Washington Post: "I heard all those other records that didn't use any guitars and I heard all those guys who couldn't sing at all, and they didn't stick in my mind at all. ... I mean, do you think Wynton Marsalis wakes up every morning and says, 'Jazz is never going to sell as much as pop, so I'm going to change what I'm doing?' No, you have to do what you're going to do. I'm always going to make records where the emphasis is on a good song with the voice out front."
Unlikely as it seems, a singer-songwriter who plays the accordion and calls up images of Roy Orbison has succeeded on his own terms. At one time Isaak and his band Silvertone were fixtures on the West Coast rock scene and were favorites of such Hollywood notables as actor-turned-director Sean Penn and director David Lynch. In fact, Lynch's inclusion of Isaak's music in the soundtracks of Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart helped launch the rocker on a national level. Critics have always praised Isaak's music, however, even though his debut album sold only 14,000 copies on release. "No one else has so successfully drawn from the past, with an artist's eye, reassembling the disparate images, sounds, styles and artifacts of pop-culture history into one persona," wrote Michael Goldberg in Rolling Stone. "Of course, Isaak would be just another two-bit Elvis clone if he didn't manage to transcend all the stagy photos, contrived outfits and retro minutiae. Sure, that stuff is fun; it has its charm. But what matters is his music, which is the genuine article."
Isaak grew up with a healthy distrust of fads and trends. He was raised in Stockton, California, a blue-collar town some sixty-five miles east of San Francisco. Isaak was a radio buff who wired his whole back yard in order to pull in esoteric stations from all over America and Canada. "I listened to tons of stuff as a kid," he told the Boston Globe. "I'd listen to the radio very late at night, laying in bed. All through high school, people probably thought I was the world's sleepiest guy or just a dummy. During the first three classes each day, I would just sleep because I'd been up until 4:30 or 5 listening."
Despite his interest in music, Isaak never considered pursuing a singing career. Still, he had an instinct for the offbeat style and a stubborn pride in his individuality. After high school he enrolled at the University of the Pacific, where he studied filmmaking, English, and journalism. He also boxed, mostly as an amateur, and had his nose broken seven times. "I was definitely on the outside," Isaak told the Chicago Tribune of his college years. "I'd drive across town over to the old Santa Fe Depot on the south side of Stockton and box all day, and it was all blacks and Mexicans and a couple of white trash guys like myself, and then I'd go across town to this university and it was all these upper-crusty guys with that Poupon kind of mustard. I didn't really fit in with either side."
Isaak cultivated an artistic look by dressing in bizarre thrift shop clothing from other eras. He became devoted to music in 1979, when he was spending a semester in Japan. "There was this Elvis song that really knocked me out called 'I'll Never Let You Go,'" Isaak said in the Washington Post. "I liked the song so much that I sang it and sang it. One day, the Japanese lady that lived downstairs from me started singing it too. She couldn't speak English. She had learned it phonetically from hearing me. That's when I decided to give singing a try."
After graduating from college, Isaak moved to San Francisco. "When I came down from Stockton, I was pathetic," he told the Washington Post. "I had this bright lime green suit with black velvet buttons. I thought that was how musicians dressed; I didn't really know. I kept going down to this nightclub and standing outside the door until they eventually said, 'Do you want to come in for free?' Then I'd go in and look for people who looked like someone who might want to be in my band."
By 1981 Isaak had formed a small band called Silvertone. The group played in the San Francisco nightclubs and bars, alternating fifties hits with more and more of Isaak's original material. They literally began at the bottom but soon became favorites in the Bay area. Producer Erik Jacobsen became a big Silvertone fan and eventually helped to secure a recording contract with Warner Brothers Records. The debut album, Silvertone, was released in 1985.
The nation's pop music critics simply loved Silvertone. Washington Post contributor Joe Sasfy wrote: "Chris Isaak's 'Silvertone' is not only one of the most striking debut albums of the year, it is also one of the few albums of the '80s offering a thoroughly contemporary rock sound fashioned from America's musical roots." Goldberg called the work "terrific," praising its "sparse, Sun Sessions-like production, ... twanging Duane Eddy-ish guitar playing and Isaak's romantic, larger-than-life voice."
The accolades notwithstanding, Isaak's first album--and his second, Chris Isaak--sold very few copies at first and received almost no radio air time. Some influential people did notice Isaak, however--Lynch, for one, and rocker John Fogerty, who called Isaak "a skyscraper against the landscape." Even Roy Orbison befriended Isaak and began writing a few songs with him before Orbison's fatal heart attack.
Inevitably Isaak was compared to Orbison, and to Presley, due to his falsetto vocals and moody tunes about love gone sour. Isaak is frankly uncomfortable with the comparison. For one thing, his music has a distinctive contemporary edge, even though its style harks back to earlier years. Furthermore, Isaak is simply unwilling to try to fill someone else's shoes. "When you compare somebody to Roy Orbison or Elvis, it's like parking a speedboat next to the Queen Mary," he told the Boston Globe. "What I do is nice, but I'm not trying to compare to those guys, because it makes my work look tiny. I have hopes that if I keep working hard, some day I'll have a couple of songs that'll add something to music. But I'd drive myself crazy if I thought I had to be like Elvis or Orbison, because I just don't think it's possible. Those guys are once in a generation."
Isaak's third album, Heart Shaped World, seemed destined to follow its two predecessors into obscurity. Fortunately for Isaak, a disk jockey in Atlanta heard the instrumental version of the rocker's "Wicked Game" in the soundtrack of Lynch's Wild at Heart and decided to track down the original song. The DJ then added "Wicked Game" to his station's playlist, and before long requests for the tune were pouring in. A single was released, and it slowly climbed into the Billboard top ten, pulling the album along after it. Two years after its release, Heart Shaped World emerged as Isaak's first gold album, and "Wicked Game" became his first hit.
Isaak has since moved from nightclubs to large theaters and the realms of MTV. "After years of playing to avid fans and very few others, Isaak is pleased as punch," wrote Sam Wood in the Philadelphia Inquirer. "He's finally found his audience. Several different audiences, actually." Those audiences are responding warmly to Isaak's wild rockers and his heart-rending ballads. Isaak has had his share of broken romances, and he explores his own personal pain in his lyrics. "A lot of times it's just stuff that I can't say to anybody," he told the Chicago Tribune of his songs. "Those ideas get stuck in my head and the only way I can say 'em is in music. The way I write, I sit down with a guitar, and usually it's in the dark, and I just start singing like I'm talking to myself. It all comes out at one time, the melody and the words."
Now that stardom has found him, Isaak is besieged with film and television offers, some of them quite tempting. He told the Philadelphia Inquirer, however, that he is not at all interested in changing careers. "I'd never give up music, because I like to sing more than anything," he said. "More than anything. People always ask me, 'What do you do on your time off?' I tell 'em I sing, 'cause that's what I like to do. Call me a one-dimensional shallow person, but if I got time off, I grab my guitar and play some more."
Selected Discography
Silvertone, Warner Bros., 1985.
Chris Isaak, Warner Bros., 1987.
Heart Shaped World, Reprise, 1989.
Sources
Periodicals Boston Globe, July 6, 1989; March 3, 1991; May 10, 1991.
Chicago Tribune, April 28, 1991; May 19, 1991.
Philadelphia Inquirer, May 17, 1991; May 20, 1991.
Rolling Stone, June 20, 1985; May 21, 1987.
Washington Post, August 15, 1985; May 12, 1987; May 17, 1991.
Found At: my.musicblvd.com
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