Teen Idol or Tin Elvis?

Critics love Chris Isaak, and, like his hero, Chris Isaak loves his mother

Gentlemen's Quarterly
April 1987
By Ben Fong-Torres

Chris Isaak, whose first album, "Silvertone," drew clusters of stars from critics at the "Los Angeles Times," "The Washington Post" and many points in between, and whose L.A. nightclub gig attracted another cluster of stars, including John Fogerty, Rickie Lee Jones and Madonna, is showing me a new acquisition.

It's not a car, a guitar or a rare record from one of the "junks" (second-hand stores) he prowls. It's a pair of old leather chairs his mom got for him.

They're not exactly ratty, and they don't look out of place in the den of his rented house in the Sunset district, a very middle-class pocket of San Francisco. They're just not what you'd expect an up-and-coming pop star to be showing off. But there he is, his arm extended with pride, like Vanna White. "Aren't these great?" he says. He points to a large patch over one arm. "Because of this, they threw this one in for free."

Out in his backyard, he takes a swig of mineral water and talks about the biggest change in his life since the album and the subsequent attention from all over the world.

"Eight blocks," he says. He means his move, from a ten-foot-by-ten-foot, $180-a-month garage apartment that he lived in through "Silvertone" and its aftermath to this house. He glances over at a neighbor tending his garden. "It's suburban, which I love," he says about his neighborhood. "This is for me, Squaresville."

Critics called "Silvertone" "moody," "eerie" and "haunting." Writing about his singing, they invoked a Hall of Fame-ful of names for comparisons: Roy Orbison, Del Shannon, Buddy Holly, Johnny Burnette, Marty Robbins and, most all, Elvis. Isaak himself pushed the talk along by posing for an album-cover photo that duplicated a classic Elvis portrait. Onstage, he and his band continue to wear identical outfits, usually drape suits with "crossover" ties. The scene, near the front of the stage, is right out of Ozzie and Harriet: adorable singer, adoring girls. "Billboard" called Isaak "a singer who sounds like Elvis (the first one) and looks like Richard Gere's cousin. Definite teen-idol possibilities here."

Not so definite, as it turned out. That first album, simply produced (instruments included a cheap guitar and an even cheaper Casio keyboard) and dominated by lonesome rockabilly cries of lost love, lost lives and long distances between people, distanced itself right out of radio play and sold a pittance: 175,000 worldwide.

But Isaak didn't panic. On his new album, "Chris Isaak," he still sounds like an engaging blend of Elvis and Del, of Marty and Roy. He's a more passionate yet smoother Don Johnson. After six months of working out in small clubs on both coasts, he has a voice that has gained muscle and tone. Behind him, the guitars echo the Ventures, the Yardbirds, the Pretenders.

Did he get any pressure from his record company to make a more commercial record? "Let 'em go eat fish heads!" Isaak shouts, then laughs, as if he's surprised by his own remark. Then he adds that Warner Bros. has many more important artists to worry about.

I like this kid. Isaak may be 30, but he looks 21 and talks anywhere from 12 on up, mixing spunk and self-effacement, ambition and anxiety. He takes me back to small towns, to modest values, to outmoded virtues. Sorry, but he reminds me of Elvis. Not that he pushes for any comparisons. He idolizes Elvis--the early, rough-sounding Elvis--and he admits he modeled "Silvertone's" album cover after Presley, whose old Sun recordings inspired him to pick up a guitar and to comb his hair back thirty years. But to equate them, he says, is "shallow." "I have my hair in a pomp, and I'm white, so I look like Elvis?" And he has no interest in emulating Presley's singing. "There's no point," he says. "He's done it."

And yet, without trying, Isaak sometimes appears to be retracing his idol's steps. There is his unabashed love for his mother. Most rock artists, as devoted as they may be to their parents, don't talk about them. It's a little wimpy. But just as Elvis publicly worshiped Gladys, Isaak talks about consulting with his mom before making the move, in 1980, from the small port city of Stockton, California, to San Francisco, two hours and a world away. ("I remember seeing some girl with wild pink socks on," he says, "and I thought, This city--anything goes!") He chose the Bay Area over L.A., he says, to stay closer to his hometown. His mother accompanied him to San Francisco and helpd him find his garage apartment.

He offers a quick biography: "She used to work in a potato-chip factory, sealing the potato-chip bags. She stopped doing that to take care of us. And now she's getting her doctorate in psychology at University of the Pacific."

"If you have a crummy mom, don't like her. If you have a good one, what are you gonna do? You can't fight the system."

The line of the young Elvis was that he was a shy kid in school--L. C. Humes High School in Memphis--who dressed and combed his hair funny, and who, when he first sang in front of the student body, chose a mawkish song about a dog, "Old Shep."

By the time Isaak discovered Elvis's old sides, in 1979, he was living in Japan as a foreign- exchange student. The discovery of Presley's "Sun Sessions" anthology knocked him out. He'd never played music before, but suddenly he had a cheap guitar, was hanging out with Japanese rockers and had started to dress and comb his hair funny.

In San Francisco, he naively strode into whatever nightclubs he found open, looking for musicians for his band. In 1980, the afterhours scene was mostly punk, so that's where Isaak recruited his first combo, and that's where he played his first gigs. At the Mabuhay Gardens, he remembers, "there was mostly hard-core punks coming out, playing loud and spitting at the audience, who'd throw things. I must've been dreamin' and driftin', 'cause I came out with a few fast songs I knew, then I'd play ballads, 'cause I sing ballads at home. They sound good when you're by yourself, just singing. And I guess if you're really into it, people either like it with you or maybe they take pity. 'This guy's so into it, let's not embarrass him.' But I never had anyone yell 'You suck' or 'Drop dead.' "

Even at the punk clubs, Isaak and his band wore matching period suits.

Isaak, who in his backyard wears backyard clothes--a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans--explains, "I saw it as some kind of artistic statement, and to get people's attention. And make them give you some respect. At least respect the fact that you dressed up. Even if they don't like the music, they at least say, 'These guys are cleaned up; they're ready to play.' A guy can bring his girl to see our show, and if they don't like the music, he can go, 'See, they all dress alike; isn't that neat? Those suits match great, don't they?' "

One of Isaak's early admirers was producer Erik Jacobsen. It took a few years of getting Isaak's singing, songwriting and backup musicians into shape, but Jacobsen got him a deal with Warner Bros. Records. It was Isaak's "charisma," says Jacobsen, that charged him. "The audience found him riveting, and so did I."

Ah, yes, the audience. At Nightbreak, a tiny club in Haight-Ashbury where Isaak broke in his current band, I find a woman stationed at the apron of the knee-high stage. At show time, she'll be less than a yard away from Isaak. But this is no teenybopper from the burbs. She identifies herself as Black Moon, says she's 32, a clay artist, the mother of a little girl--and she's seen Isaak sixteen times. As a kid, she never had crushes on anyone, she says, but when Isaak sings, she screams. "It's real strange for me," she says after the show. "It felt kind of foolish." She's torn between a motherly instinct ("He reminds me of a grown-up Opie, he's so clean-cut") and one that's more sensual ("I'm really attracted to him, but he's unobtainable. I don't know what I'd do if I met him").

Isaak seems equally shy. "Beautiful women come to the shows," he says. "You're excited and tryin' to chase after them. But the reality of it is that the best you have to offer is right up onstage. That's where you look your best; you're wearing a nice clean shirt, the lights are ready for you. When you get offstage, you're worn out and you gotta go home and wash your socks."

Shortly after Elvis Presley hit, he was drafted by Hollywood. Even before Isaak had a hit--as of this writing, he's still waiting--he got plucked. Jonathan Demme, the director of "Stop Making Sense," saw Isaak's video for his first single, "Dancin' ," gave him a screen test and offered him the role of the villain in "Something Wild." Isaak itched to do it, but he was committed to finishing the new album.

"I'd love to make films," he says, but he knows he's being drifty, dreamy. He has no illusions about where he is now, despite all that's happened to him. There is also all that hasn't happened to him.

"The career...," he says, letting the word trail off with a trace of uncertainty. "My idea of a career is, if you do good shows and make good records, you'll have a career. If the record is good, it gives me another year's extension."

The new record is better than good. You never know if that's good enough, but Chris Isaak should have no fears. At worst, he can go home to Stockton. And for him, that's probably not bad at all.

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