Why Everyone's Talking About Chris Isaak...

His video, Wicked Game, was the hottest clip of the year. His film appearances in Silence Of The Lambs and Married To The Mob are the most talked-about cameos in Hollywood. What is it about Chris Isaak that has the world watching his every move? Chris Heath discovers the cool cred of this hot new star...

Dressed in a purple, gold and black jacket with tie-pin festooned lapels, Chris Isaak gallivants around the Grosvenor House ballroom in London. It's the after-show party for the Brit awards - Britain's equivalent of the Grammy's - and Chris is enjoying his newfound celebrity status: a compilation of his three LP's, Wicked Game, is number three on the British album charts, and it seems everyone wants to chat to him. But Isaak wants to ride the dodgem cars that have been set up for the occasion. When he's finished his ride, I introduce myself to him; we're to spend all of the next day together. Isaak gives me a clean, pop-star smile and a firm handshake.

We meet at 10 the next morning: me, Chris, Andy the driver, and Kenney his drummer. Today's promotional lark is an appearance - two songs and a chat - on The Jonathon Ross Show. Jonathon Ross is a smart young David Letterman/Steve Vizard wannabe on British TV.

Driving through London in the snow, Chris is talking about shoes. His black shoes have been mended four times, and now the left sole is coming off again. "Oh, hell,' he hams. "It's a nice day. Let's just go and make a snow angel," he jokes with the driver. All is pop-star whimsy. And then, quite spontaneously, he heads into autobiography: "I was born in 1956-7-8," he tells me, deadpan. "Messy business."

Stockton, California, is a quiet place to spend the 1960's. When Chris Isaak walks through town as a boy, down Pacific Avenue and Main Street, past little honky-tonks, pool halls and pawn shops, and looks a million miles up into the sky, he can see the spire of the big, old Catholic church in skid row where the Isaaks go. The spire is painted gold, and every time he sees it, he thinks to himself, "My grandfather painted that." The Isaak's have been here since his great-grandfather's time.

Chris's grand-dad calls him Fighter, because of a fight he got into when he was small, though his mother doesn't like the nickname. His two older brothers address him traditionally: "Hey! Stupid!"

This is before they push the big highway through in the '70's, before John Huston makes Fat City, a film about a has-been boxer, in this very town. Stockton is working-class - white, Mexican, Filipino. There are farms and a port 160km in from the sea. Chris will work there several times, unloading sacks off a ship onto pallets. Mrs Isaak seals bags in the Frito-Lay potato-chip factory. She's smart - in a few years, after her hands give out, she'll go back to school to become a doctor of psychology.

The Isaak's live in an old house on California Street. Chris shares a bedroom with his brothers. His eldest brother, Nick, is the musical one, though Chris has his favourite songs, like "Silent Night" (he thinks it's written by Santa Claus), "Venus In Blue Jeans" and "Sink The Bismarck" by Johnny Horton, but then what kid wouldn't? "Hit the decks and run them boys and spin the guns around/The Bismarck is the biggest ship we gotta bring her down..."

When you're that age, you know what you want from pop music - fewer songs about girls and kissing and mushy stuff like that, more songs about sinking battleships.

The night before, in the backstage press room at the Brit awards, Chris answered pop-star questions like a pro.

Do you like making films?

"Sure. When you make movies, they say, 'Chris, do you want some iced tea?' "

What's David Lynch like?

"Real normal - he doesn't eat live mice."

What music do you like?

"I'd like to work with Connie Francis. I like...Soho...Deee-Lite...Depeche Mode...ABBA, of course."

Did you fear success would never come?

"No, I was already doing good, eating Chinese food every night of the week, and wearing my suede shoes."

Where did you get that suit?

"This was formerly some curtains in my house. I needed a suit for the stage, and this guy said it would cost about $2000. I said, 'For $2000, I won't want to wear it, I'll want to drive it."

He's answered a lot of questions about his trip to England: "Suede shoes"..."My mother cuts my hair"..."Chinese food"..."Suede shoes"..."Sure I can wiggle my ears"..."Yeah, I went into Madonna's bedroom"...

One day, Mr Isaak asks his youngest son if he likes the girl who has moved in nearby. Chris is horrified. Of course he doesn't like girls. "Well, someday you will," Mr Isaak quietly predicts. Chris doesn't think so. Someday is when Chris is 15, at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School. He sometimes goes over to his first girlfriend's house and plays her brother's beat-up acoustic guitar. It has a big daisy on it, so obviously he can't play it in public. Sometimes she listens, but she isn't impressed. The first girlfriend. He could never have known how much it would matter. Later, when someone asks him what happened, he'll look sad and quote a line from some Anthony Quinn movie that he thinks fits: "Life tore us apart." Chris doesn't forget her. She moves to another town, becomes a children's nurse, marries. He calls her - just once. He thinks, I'll just talk for two minutes. And for those two minutes, he looks at the second hand sweeping around his watch and hopes that it wins the race before it becomes obvious that his emotions are going crazy and that he wants to say things that...but the time runs out and he just says goodbye. Chris doesn't forget things like that.

Chris has a friend called Dennis. They act at being the wild, young teenagers they are and drive around Stockton throwing grapefruits at pedestrians and oncoming cars. Some older kids kick their asses, to teach them a lesson. They deserve it. But that's the kind of stuff Chris and Dennis do together. Dennis is stocky and Japanese. He's like a bulldog, Chris thinks. Then Dennis goes just a little bit...off, and suddenly he's in a mental institution. It can't be good for Dennis, over there alone with mental people. Chris goes there, hangs out every day, all summer. Eventually, Dennis comes out, but he isn't fine. He's sick. Talk can't reach him. Chris can't reach him.

Chris has agreed to do a phone interview with England's notorious tabloid, The Sun. I listen to his side of the conversation. They question him about the life of a non-drinking, non-drug-taking musician:

"One time backstage, they were lining up cocaine on my pick guard," he says. "I was furious. Not because of the drugs, but because they were going to scratch my guitar with the razor blade. I just went over and blew off all the stuff and shut my guitar case. God, I was mad."

His heart-throb status:

"It's flattering, but you could put a rock on the cover of a record and people would say, 'That's a nice-looking rock'."

His life before success:

"We weren't on top, but we couldn't tell from where we were. We'd go out and eat Chinese food all night..."

It's the 1970s. The other kids in Stockton are listening to Canned Heat and Elton John, but at the Isaak's, it's all Hank Snow, Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and Mrs Isaak's jazz records. Mornings, Mum makes Chris a deal: "I'll cook you breakfast if you sing," and he sings the songs she wants to hear - country songs, love songs: "Harbour Lights", "Blue Moon". At night, he sings in the hallways too, and she tells him it helps her get to sleep. But she doesn't think his voice is anything special. This is confirmed at university. There's a singing test. "You have a 'B' voice," the teacher tells him. Maybe later he would have his revenge, go back to the university and say, "I'm making records now, and people like my voice, and it's not a 'B' voice." Maybe he would, but far in the future, when he sees the teacher, he'll see an old man, and his words will be different: "I remember you. You always encouraged me, and I really appreciated that because it taught me to sing in front of people. You're a good guy!" And could anyone who knew how happy that man would look have done it any differently?

Chris Isaak doesn't much like the picture of him as pop's romantic depressive, the man who makes those records of ghostly tremolo guitar, and despondent, lovelorn poetry. But he still admits, "In a weird way, the subject that's closest to me would probably be unhappiness." He's written cheerful songs, but his best ones are the heartachers. And when he writes them, he uses simple, universal words: Rain. Wind. Hot. Sun. Sky. Roads. Gone. World. Lonely. He uses those old, exhausted words, but not out of laziness, not just for the easy rhyme. He uses them because if you use them right in a pop song, they tell the truth.

At university, Chris does a double major in Communications and English. He writes a story called "Penis In Your Pocket, Kool-Aid In Your Cup", subtitled "The Story Of My Life, By Carl Yastrzemski". The woman who types it for him phones Dorothy Isaak and the Dean of the University and tells them that "this kid needs help".

In the dressing room of The Jonathon Ross Show, Chris Isaak leans back and begins to sing: "I'd like to take my broken dreams/ And lay them tenderly/ Somewhere along a stretch of sand/ Somewhere beside the sea/ I'd like to watch the tide come in/ And passing out again/ Take with it these dreams of mine/ Of things that might have been.

"I'm a romantic person," he mutters when he's finished, "and that's part of it - looking at things that are gone. A lot of life slips through your fingers."

Chris's mother tells him he should move to San Francisco. She knows he's been thinking about it, thinking about singing. So one day, he borrows a beat-up car and drives down there. He buys a newspaper and finds a cheap room. It's so small he has to sleep in the closet; if it's cold, he pulls the door shut to keep out the chill. He doesn't really know what a musician in San Francisco wears, so he uses his imagination. He buys a second-hand lime-green suit - much later, he realises it could only have been traded in by a pimp - and a lime-green shirt. They match, and he thinks, "That's classy." Then some pointy black suede shoes...and lime-green socks with pink flowers on them. He's never gone to clubs before, but he does in San Francisco. He hasn't got money to get in, so he hangs around the door, listening. It's embarrassing, but most times, if he hangs out long enough, they let him in for free. In his lime-green outfit. He has a theory: if he's dressed like that, he'll meet other people dressed like that, and they'll all form a band. It happens. Chris records his first LP, Silvertone, named for both his group and the make of his first electric guitar. Unfortunately, few people buy it. But one day, back home in Stockton, his mother shouts, "Telephone call, Chris." It's this guy who mumbles and tallks quietly: "Hi...er...Chris...er...er, I really...I really, really love your tape, and I'd really love to get together with you and do some photos, if that's possible..." Chris doesn't want any photos, but he likes the fact that this guy doesn't sound too sure of himself, and he talks a bit and thinks the guy is so nice. Bruce Weber realises that Chris hasn't a clue who he is, so he tells Chris about this $100 book he did, and Chris remembers browsing through the book once at his record-company offices. Chris says, "Wow, let's do something." So the most sought-after photographer in the world takes the sleeve photo for Chris's next LP, Chris Isaak, for free. They meet in New York in the Iroquois Hotel, where James Dean once stayed. Bruce is impressed when he comes into the seedy, run-down room; it has such a great "look". Chris has to point out that it's the room where he is staying.

In the dressing room, Chris is signing autographs. "Bo Diddley signed something for me once," he says, gazing into the distance. "But, you know, I couldn't read a word." His are easy to read, strange to witness: "Adele. Sometimes I wake up and see your face. Still dreaming." Every time, he writes "you're" as "your". "Justin. Talk to the warden. Get me outta here. Your a real stud, man." "Johanna. Your too good-looking to forget. I DIG YOU. Yo." As he leaves, he is mobbed.

The local record-company people have had enough of me and tell me I can't travel in Chris's car back to his hotel, so I follow in a taxi and find him again in the lobby. A well-known photographer of the Beatles, Bob Freeman, wants to talk to him about a tour film. Chris keeps him waiting, sits me on his bed. Chris chats about Robert Mitchum's records and movies, and then I ask him about his film career. He blushes. "I wish I could say I've been knocking on doors. My life is probably a horrible lesson. Some kid will read this article, and he'll go, 'I'll do it like Chris Isaak. I'll stay home and watch TV, and somebody'll call me up and I'll become really famous!' " Because that's what happened.

Chris is watching TV when director Jonathon Demme calls, just to suggest they go and see a play together. Chris acted a little, in Japan. There weren't many white extras, so you could get money just by being white. Chris goes to LA, and auditions for 'Something Wild'. He does tests with Melanie Griffith. He likes her. He gets the part as the crud; he loves being the crud. But the record company says he must do his next record. So Ray Liotta gets to be the crud. But Demme calls again. Chris gets a part in 'Married To The Mob'. He's a killer clown at a burger joint who shoots a couple of guys and then gets wasted in the parking lot. Then he's in 'Silence Of The Lambs' as a SWAT team leader. These aren't big parts. When people ask him to talk about his film career, he always says, "That shouldn't take long." The first part was 10 seconds; the second, 13.

One day, a real hot day in the summertime in Stockton, California, Chris walked across the street to the supermarket, where his friend Dennis was sitting. The sun was going down slowly. "Man," Chris said to Dennis, "how can you think about killing yourself?" Dennis had already tried a couple of times. "Look, man, do you want to be over there?" He pointed at the funeral parlour across the street. "Think about it. That's nothing. Nowhere. Save dying for last. It'll come." Chris was in San Francisco when he got the call from his mother. "Dennis did it." Right outside the mental institution, there is a big '20s hotel, with all this green grass and big trees, and it's idyllic. That's where Dennis shot himself dead. The funeral was in the funeral parlour Chris had pointed to. A couple of months later, Chris lay on his bed, picking his guitar, trying to make sense of it all. Dennis. Gone. The hotel. He thought about the loneliness Dennis must have felt, and he sang: Blue hotel/ On a lonely highway.../Blue hotel/ Life don't turn out my way.

"...Blue Hotel/ On a lonely highway." Chris Isaak runs through "Blue Hotel" for maybe the 10th time today. It's now a hit in England. This time, the cameras are rolling, and he is being broadcast, under The Jonathon Ross Show's closing credits, into a couple of million homes. It doesn't bring him down, singing this song. He knows what it's about, and Dennis's mother knows what it's about, and it means that there's something that's not forgotten. But it can mean different things to different people. And that's OK, too.

Back to Articles