Chris Isaak: At Long Last Fame

It took six years and three albums, but Chris ISaak is finally sitting pretty at the top of the charts.

Mademoiselle
June 1991
By Christian Wright

Suddenly, in early March, Chris Isaak's third LP, Heart Shaped World, cracked Billboard's Top 20-just a year and a half after it's release. Number 14 with a bullet, way ahead of George Michael, a little behind Whitney Houston. Six months ago, the masses said, "Who?" Now Chris Isaak, thanks in part to Herb Ritt's soft core video clip, has our knickers in a twist.

In mid-February all across the land, from Berkely to Boston, we were swooning over a song: "Wicked Game" When it came on the radio we would stop talking, stop everything and fall in with its trance. It sounded at once familiar and alien, frightening and desireable like the man we know as we go to him is going to mistreat us ( and isn't that what draws us?). Over the course of it's gracefully aching four and a half minutes, we sat alone in our rooms, listening, longing, convinced we were falling in love. But no, it was just that damn Chris ISaak song. That killing voice-rising and falling, straining and crooning-making us cry over the tragic, ill-advised love affair we'd never even had. It was as if Isaak came out of nowhere, which in a way, he had. He was born in 1956 and raised in Stockton, California ( a flat, non-descript town about 60 miles east of SanFrancisco), the youngest of three boys, the son of factory workers. HE and his mom would shop at secondhand stores; while she looked around, he'd search the record bins, picking up 20 records for a dollar. He fancied the voices of Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley and learned to play the guitar by borrowing his brother's when he was out, always putting it back before he got home. In highschool, he wanted to fit in but never quite did because of his funny vintage clothes and square-toed wing tips. By college, (the University of the Pacific in Japan, chosen for it's distance from Stockton), he was studying film and boxing and rather enjoying shocking the squares with sarcasm and retro suits.

When he was 23, he went to SanFrancisco-with financial help and moral support from his mother-rented a small apartment, put together a band, called it Silvertone and started playing small gigs in the area. They attracted the attention of the Erik Jacobsen (the Lovin' Spoonful's producer), with rockabilly energy and Isaak emotion, he decided to work with them after one performance and one conversation. Ten years later, Isaak is still with Silvertone, they still play small gigs in the area and Jacobsen is still their producer.

In 1985, Isaak released "Silvertone", an album full of lovelorn lament, twanging guitars and '50s allusions. Critics raved, heavyweight fans (John Fogerty, Rickie Lee Jones, Sean Penn, Jodie Foster) hung around backstage, Jonathon Demme wanted to cast him in Something Wild and Bruce Webber wanted to shoot Isaak's next album cover for free. Chris SIaak had all the elements of pop stardom-presence, style, impossibly good looks; sexy, skillful voice, solid, swingin' tunes. Basically a dreamboat pulling into port. But maybe because it was difficult to categorize and the record company dropped the promotional ball, the LP didn't get radio play and didn't sell. Despite commercial failure, he would play to tiny audiences in small but cool clubs (like Manhatten's Danceteria before it closed in '86), as if he were playing to a packed house at Radio City Music Hall.

Two years later, "Chris ISaak", a pleasing album from the rocking "Lie to Me" to the brooding "You owe me some kind of Love" faced almost the same scenario. Selling only about 200,000 copies in the US, Isaak (wearing custom suits made of upholstery material), was again exiled from the commercial success he appeared ready and very well dressed for. Then in 1989, when "Heart Shaped World" stalled shortly after it's release, it seemed that Isaak would go on forever making very good albums that very few people would hear. (By the way, forget the "Wicked Game" single that makes you want to lay in bed all day drinking champagne; get the LP if only for the title song-Isaak's commanding whisper makes you want to say, "Talk to me daddy" out loud). But when a DJ in Atlanta became fascinated by the instrumental version of "Wicked Game", while watching David Lynch's Wild At Heart, he bought the sound track (which includes Isaak's vocals), played it a lot on the air, urged his deejay friends to play it too, and then watched as it took off like a racehorse.

The funny thing is, Chris ISaak-now 34 with his first platinum record, a cameo in Demme's "Silence of the Lambs (he's the head of the swat team in the elevator scene), several magazine covers and on a big international tour, never cared about fame really. He simply wants people to hear his music; to work out his thoughts by writing heartaching lyrics; to hang out at home in San Francisco, maybe watch a rerun of Hawaii Five-O when he can't sleep.

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