The Dark Side

Mysterious Chris Isaak speaks of the devil he knows best-himself.

Guitar World Acoustic Magazine
Issue No. 29
By Isaiah Trost

Chris isaak is a mix of opposites. Take his music, which is as likely to reference the moody roots-rock melancholy of Roy Orbison as the animated British invasion/surf music of the early sixties. Or consider his looks, a combination of fashion model handsom and wrong-side-of-the tracks tough. Isaak has even negotiated a kind of duality in his career, releasing well-received albums every couple of years while taking rolls in Hollywood films like Married to the mob, The Silence of the lambs and Little Buddha.

Isaak has worked his image as a man of mystery ever since he hit it big in 1989 with the sexy and ominous Top Ten Hit "Wicked Game"(also featured in the David Lynch film "Blue Velvet"). Lately though, that image has started to change as a somewhat less-forbidding tone has come to characterize Isaak's more recent albums, like the sunny SanFrancisco Days and the good-spirited Baja Sessions.

Isaak continues that mood with his latest and sixth album SOTD (Pisces editorial-this is his seventh album). But the new album still has much more in common with Tom Waits than it does James Taylor. While the arrangements feature a kind of playfulness-growing perhaps out of ISaak's stated admiration for the Beatles-the old themes of desperation, danger, loneliness and passion are still present in his lyrics.

His age notwithstanding-he's 42-Isaak is nothing more than a grown-up version of a music-mad teen from a poor North California town. Despite the time he spends working out marketing ideas, appearing on tv shows and taking part in spectacles like the VH-1 Fashion Awards (which was where he was headed the day of our interview), Isaak still puts the music first. Ambitious, media-savvy and surprisingly frank, he takes pride in the fact that his hard-won success is the result of his music rather than any public relations enhanced image. He speaks with great self awareness of the unlikely road he took to become a musician and songwriter, sounding both cynical and vulnerable as he does so. For all his apparent dualities, he is cool, not cold and hip but not effete, and very much his own musical man.

GWA: How would you characterize what is new about SPeak of the Devil compared to say, what you did on Baja Sessions?

Isaak: If my last album was a massage-a very acoustic, laid-back, sound-of-the-waves sort of affair-then this new one was a "lock the door, turn of the lights and turn up the sound" party. Much more of a big production, with a rockin' band.

GWA: What influenced your decision to go in this direction?

Isaak: Well, the last one, as I said, was so quiet and mellow, that I think my natural reaction was not to do the same thing again. Having done a one-man show in which I played Abe Lincoln, I decided to go for the full Broadway musical.

GWA: Since you started recording almost 15 years ago, you've worked with the producer, Erik Jacobsen, who was responsible for some of the great mid-sixties pop acts, producing the Lovin' Spoonful from the East Coast and the Charlatans [one of the earliest exponents of the SanFrancisco Sound-GWA Ed] in California. Does he retain some of the elements from his old approach in his work with you, particularly on Baja Sessions?

Isaak: Erik is really totally up-to-date. I think what keeps him fresh is a classic approach to producing. He doesn't put the "Erik Jacobsen Sound" on you. He's a great editor and a great worker. He says, "Get it right, get it in pitch, and on time. Make it swing. Is that verse too long, is that a good lyric?"-the real fundamentals of producing. If he was a football coach, he'd be about blocking and tackling. He may not be as shiny and shimmery as some producers, who put a big reverb on everything. But over the long term, he's a guy who listens to each record and makes it work.

GWA: There's a mystique about you that seems to be almost as important as your music. How do you relate to that aspect of what you do?

Isaak: The marketing and the imagery is stuff thatt I'm aware of and take part in, but it also drives me insane. I'm tryin to sell records and pay a band. Living in the real world and being of the flesh, you've got to pay for your orange juice-you gotta sell records. My hands are on the whole process: Most of the time it's me laying out the album art. Having said that, it doesn't mean it's something I want to do all that much. To me, the most enjoyable thing is going into the studio and making a record.

GWA: How did you become interested in music?

Isaak: I just liked music a lot. I guess it's a little too obvious to say this, but I was a really big fan. Say I'd be at a party where somebody had a good record collection. If someone would come over and say, "That girl is hitting on you! Why don't you go hang with her?" I'd say, "Yeah, yeah, but would you look at this guy's records!"

GWA: How'd you make that transition from fan to player?

Isaak: Real gradually-it wasn't like I dove in a pool so much as I walked in a long shallow pond, going deeper and deeper, until I was swimming. At 13, I rode my bike over to K-Mart and bought my first cassette recorder. As I was buying it, I can remember thinking, "I can put songs on here." Why it occurred to me, I don't know. My parents were working at a potato chip factory and my dad was driving a forklift, but I thought it would be fun to make up songs.

GWA: Were you already playing the guitar?

Isaak: No. I was playing harmonica and just sang into the tape recorder. Later on, little by little, I learned the guitar by watching my older brother. My buddy gave me a Xeroxed sheet of guitar chords. He said, "Here's a thing that shows you where to put your fingers." It had a hundred guitar chords on a long page. I said, "Wow! This is it-it's all right here, everything I need to know." I took it, figured out three chords and thought, "I can play everything in the key of C!"

GWA: What guitar players have been important to you?

Isaak: I love Carl Perkins, Scotty Moore and, as far as rhythm guitar, I liked Elvis' acoustic rhythm playing, which nobody ever seems to mention. And Cliff Gallup, from Gene Vincent's group, was killer. I got to play with Scotty Moore once. I'm not sure what kind of impression I made on him, but I was just kind of giddy about having him play while I sang.

GWA: What kind of guitar are you using these days?

Isaak: The New Gibson J-200's are really good. I can't think of anything better. I play mine in the studio all the time; it's got a great sound. I've also got a Gibson Country Gentleman semihollowbody electric.

GWA: Would it be correct to say that, for you, songwriting takes precedence over playing and singing?

Isaak: Songwriting is the thing I'm most proud of because that's something I work at, and sometimes, I feel okay about songs that I've written. I don't think my playing is remarkable in any sense; I think it's appropriate to what I write. My lead guitar player has to be a virtuoso, someone who plays better than me. The stuff I play as rhythm guitarist and the sounds I get are kind of funky, and I want that. It's nice to have a couple of seeds floating around the juice just to let you know there was an orange involved.

GWA: Who inspired you to become a songwriter?

Isaak: McCartney, Lennon. Randy Newman-I was real impressed by him. John Prine-he came at a time when no one was writing stories in lyrics and I thought he filled a gap, went totally against the grain. He still writes great stuff.

GWA: Do you ever feel like you're your own sub-genre?

Isaak: All of the time, and it's frustrating. I'm not Madonna or Marilyn Manson. What I do is not a media-driven kind of thing, where everyone reads about the controversy and then buys the records. People buy my records, and, very often, it's because they've heard it or a friend played it for them. It's not so easy, but it's not as hard for me as for some others. I'm sort of in the middle. There are tougher genres to get ahead in.

GWA: There's a combination of darkness and longing in your music, particularly on the early albums. Where does this come from?

Isaak: I think it comes from where I grew up, in Stockton, California. The records I'd listen to that reminded me of where I'm from are older, like Roy Orbison, who probably grew up in the same kind of area as I did-desolate open space. You feel kind of stuck and at the same time, it's like you never want to leave. As much as that stuff, I think the time you live in also helps define the music you make. Even now, the records I listen to relate to where I'm from. I listen to The Verve and Radiohead. They're not from my place, but I can relate.

GWA: On your last few records, you've worked with lead guitarist Hershel Yatovitz. How does he differ from your former guitarist, James Wilsey?

Isaak: They're different people, it's a whole apple and oranges thing. I've never said to my guitarist, "Sound like this" or "Do THis" I'm really happy. Hershel is a nice guy, and we need one nice guy in the band-that's new for us. He's pretty heavy on guitar and can really throw down. It was [jazz guitarist] Charlie Hunter who turned us on to Hershel. I thought, if Charlie's recommending him, maybe he's too hip or maybe this guy will have riffs for days. But like Goldilocks said, "This one's just right"

GWA: ONe last thing: Have you always had such a way with words?

Isaak: I try to put things in as picturesque a way as possible. I used to subscribe to Reader's Digest.

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