Chris Isaak

National Academy of Songwriters
October 1998
By Dawn Dagucon

When Chris Isaak debuted a little over a decade ago, comparisons to Roy Orbison and Elvis inevitably followed. Complete with pompadour, he seemed to be a throwback to a time where singers could actually sing, and songs weren't allergic to melodies.

Growing up in Stockton, a farm community about 100 miles NE of San Francisco, Isaak's small town childhood included enough struggle to make comfort and safety attractive goals. Perhaps that is why the image of the '50's appeals to him and is reflected in his music -- the period connotes a gentler, more innocent time. However, the 50's were more complicated than our romantic visions recall, and so is Isaak. Charming and entertaining, he has a self-deprecating sense of humor and a genial mischievousness that belies a great deal of focus and commitment.

His first two records, Silvertone (1986) and Chris Isaak (1987) were critical favorites. Heart-Shaped World (1989) contained the hit "Wicked Game" that, along with play in the film Wild Orchid and a steamy video, arguably made him a star. His follow up was San Francisco Days (1993) and the very personal ode to heartbreak, Forever Blue (1995). He then recorded Baja Sessions (1996), an album of songs he chose for mood and pretty melodies. Isaak has also done some acting, with small roles in Jonathan Demme's Married To The Mob and Silence Of The Lambs, as well as co-starring in David Lynch's Twin Peaks-Fire Walk With Me and Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha.

His new record, Speak of the Devil, employs stronger guitar and edgier vocals than before, but long-time fans won't be disappointed. Isaak's achingly sorrowful ballads still coexist with sexier, more upbeat material. "Breaking Apart" is the kind of song you play over and over, when you can't resist the sweet indulgence of torturing yourself ("I'm breaking apart inside/Crying in my sleep at night without you/And I'm wonderin' if you're doing fine too"). But "Like The Way She Moves" reminds you that for every heartbreak, there were less melancholy moments ("I was laying in bed trying to catch my breath/Half-ashamed, half-smiling at the things we did"). Isaak digs a little deeper this time, too. "Black Flowers" tells of a haunting betrayal, and he steps up the power of his vocals on the title track, as well as on "Wanderin'", and the first single, "Please."

For someone who is a self-described "nut," his appeal crosses both genres and generations. He manages to come off both clean-cut and cool; just enough of a bad boy that women want him and guys want to hang out with him. We spoke at 11:30 in the morning, before he headed out to surf.

DAGUCON: I WAS READING SOME STUFF ON YOU AND SOMEBODY COMPARED YOU TO ROBERT MITCHUM, SORT OF THE 50'S KIND OF...
ISAAK: Head of hair? [laughs] I wish. In my dreams, I'm just like Robert Mitchum. Jeez, right now I'm sitting in my room, which looks like a goddamn bomb went off in it. I thought my house was clean until somebody said it looks like a bachelor lives here and, well, one does. [laughs] I just found notes from the Baja Sessions video and a check list of what to bring: guitars, socks, sex wax...do you know what sex wax is?

YOU'RE A SURFER. HOW DID YOU LEARN TO SURF GROWING UP IN STOCKTON?
In Stockton, I learned to box. I actually fought a little bit in college and in the police athletics league. I was mediocre. Thank God I got out of Stockton. [laughs]

YOU WENT TO UNIVERSITY OF PACIFIC THERE.
UOP was very good to me.

SO YOU GOT OUT OF PACIFIC AND WHAT HAPPENED THEN?
I got out of Pacific and I joined a rock and roll band. I had no idea how that worked. I remember thinking, there's no book that tells you what it's going to be like to be a musician. Every other career was at Career Day. There was a path to follow for real estate or electronics, or whatever the hell people went into. But for people who wanted to be artists -- good luck just wandering into the forest.

Being left on your own was okay with me. The only thing that bugs me now is that they tax you like crazy. You could not make any money for years writing songs, and then when you have a huge hit they start taxing you like it is going to happen forever -- like you owned a salt factory or something. And you think, hey I'm lucky if I ever get another hit, I may need to live off this one for awhile. But they're like, no, no, you have a salt factory now we're taxing you at this rate. It's creepy.

THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS SET UP FOR PEOPLE WITH REGULAR JOBS, SO IT'S KIND OF DOUBLE INDEMNITY FOR ARTISTS.
Squares, I do know ye. [laughs] I just think that the greatest thing you can do with art is that you make it on your own. If you can't sell any of your paintings or your music, that's okay, just get a day job. I've had other jobs. I made sandwiches, I worked in a funeral parlor, I drove a truck, pulled weeds, worked at a port, worked as a bus boy work...

FUNERAL PARLOR? YOU DIDN'T...
No, I didn't embalm anybody. That would require training and skill. [ laughs] I actually got the job because I was trying to save money in college. They had a room and I thought, "Wow, this is cheap, where is it?" It was an apartment in a funeral parlor and they paid you to stay there. They called it a fire watch, but it was a euphemism. They really wanted somebody to stay there 24 hours a day because, you can imagine, funeral parlors make a lot of money. The last thing they want is for somebody to say, gee, last night a bunch of vandals broke in and took a body out and did something weird.

WAS IT CREEPY?
It was so creepy! Whenever people have what I call James Dean syndrome, you know, "I don't care, man. I'm going to die. My number's up, man. I'm cool, I'm going to die." It's like, hey stupid, c'mere. Take a look at what dead is. That's dead. Is it cool? No. It just smells.

When I got out of there, I just wanted to be around things that were alive, good things. Seeing it was good, I guess, because it makes you just realize you'd never commit suicide if you worked in a place like that. You'd just go, I don't want to be laying there, I don't want to trade places with this person. Ever. Suicide's not even an option for me. It's against my religion.

WHAT'S YOUR RELIGION?
Catholic. I'm half German and half Italian. So people look at me and go, white, blue eyes, like I came off a cereal box, they just assume that my whole life is like, right down the middle. But I guess it's good. It was a great disguise for me, 'cause I'm a nut.

I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU EXPLAIN THAT.
I am. I'm just really out there on a different page. But it was nice growing up because you could meet people's parents, and you're planning to set fire to the school or something, and they look at you and go, "Awww, it's that Isaak boy. He's such a nice kid. Richie Cunningham."

That's why I won't get tattoos. I just think it gives it all up too quick. You walk in, you've got a tattoo, and they look at you, and they read the tattoo...gotcha. It makes me claustrophobic, 'cause you're trapped inside that tattoo. Me, I can walk in and dress one of any 20,000 ways and my disguise is complete.

ARE YOU REALLY AS MELANCHOLY AS YOUR RECORDS?
I got a fair amount of that on my records. I've got sad stuff on there, but I've got a little more upbeat stuff, too.

DO YOU EVER WORRY THAT IF YOU GET REALLY HAPPY YOU'RE NOT GOING TO WRITE ANYMORE?
If I was really happy, then I wouldn't care. I'd rather be happy than have a bunch of records. If I could just be happy, fine.

WHAT WOULD YOU NEED TO BE HAPPY?
Safety. When I think of what I would need to feel happy, I think of a place where I feel safe. That's why my favorite movies are old movies. I love movies that were made in America at around 1952 or 1953, just after the war. Not the kind of rockabilly thing, but that sort of small-town Americana where things were very respectful and the teen culture hadn't taken over everything yet. There was an optimism, like we've been through hell and now, dammit, we're gonna wear Hawaiian shirts and drive a great big car and we're gonna go home and have a martini once in a while. We're going to loosen it up a little. Relax and have something good. I love that fantasy, kind of idyllic thing. You don't see a lot of unsolvable problems addressed.

A LOT OF THE ARTWORK ON YOUR LINER NOTES SEEMS LIKE A RE-CREATION OF THAT KIND OF AMERICANA.
I would like for people to put on my records and feel it was relaxing, pleasant kind of music. Not something disturbing or painful. I make some sad records, but they've always been organized in a kind of pretty way, I think. Pretty is a big word for me as far as music goes. It seems like that should just be inherent in all music, but to a lot of people it's not an important thing. It's kind of looked down on. They want something that's educational or politically correct or controversial.

You know what I listen to? The Mavericks. The Mavericks are kind of like a modern country band. I don't listen to much country at all, not the modern stuff. Country radio now is just like really bad pop to me. But the singer in the Mavericks, Raul [Malo], can really sing pretty. He does enough weird stuff that he always stops himself from selling too many records [laughs]. But he can really sing. It's beautiful.

Record sales, the business part of music...it's tough. I want to find one of those things where you can make your own CD's, but I'm also really against bootlegging. I guess if I make a CD off a record that I buy and keep it in my house, that's one thing. But it bugs me because I don't think people are taping Whitney Houston. I'm not ragging on Whitney, I just think the reality is that her music hits such a mainstream audience and she's so well advertised and merchandised that people like that -- like Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, George Michael -- mainstream, they don't have a lot of people taping their stuff and effecting their sales.

The people who get taped are the people on a local level, a band that is just breaking out, and people go, "Hey, make me a tape of them because I can't find the CD." And then the band never gets the revenue. And people go, well how many people taped them? Well, maybe there's 10,000 bootlegs of some artist whose work is hard to find, but people like him so they tape him. Those 10,000 bootlegs are enough that he didn't get signed up for Rhino Records again because that's 10,000 records he didn't sell to get a re-release. Bootlegging kills off exactly the people who need the sales.

DID YOU MAJOR IN MUSIC?
Communication Arts and English major. I tried to take classes in music, because my school had a very good music department. But they really wouldn't let you in to take classes in music unless you had a background in music. They didn't want to teach somebody who hadn't been taught. I remember taking one class, though, and it seemed like I was the only one who really wanted to learn to play something and read music. It bummed me out, because I realized that the professor decided that the class was an easy credit, too, and just really didn't put effort into it. I asked him if I could learn to read and write music, because I wrote songs and wanted to be able to write the music down. And he said, "Nah, the Beatles don't write music and they wrote all that stuff."

SO DID YOU EVER GET FORMAL TRAINING? MUSIC LESSONS?
I pretty much taught myself to play and I am very underwhelmed by my abilities, in technical terms. I wish I had stronger abilities. Even now that I've got some success writing songs and stuff, I'm still trying to work on the technical side of it. I think all the craft you can get is good. I'd like to take piano lessons this year. I can play a little bit of piano, I play a little bit on my records, but just that -- a little bit. The more you can learn, the better. I admire people who can pick up an instrument and make noise with it. The more the better.

DO YOU READ MUSIC NOW?
No. That would be great to learn, too, because I see these [sheet music] books and, being a person who can't read the music, I can only read the titles of the songs. You pick up an old book and say, what a great title, wonder what that sounds like? You can't read it, and you're not going to find a record of it.

BUT IF YOU HEAR SOMETHING, YOU CAN PLAY IT.
I have a pretty good memory for notes, a pretty good ability to fake my way through and figure it out. But I hold the guitar in a goofy way because I'm double jointed in my thumb, and some of my fingers. I was looking at pictures of me playing guitar. It looks funky. My fingers look disjointed. That's another thing, there's certain positions on the guitar where it looks like you're flipping the bird. You look like you're flipping off the audience. I'm embarrassed. It looks like you're saying to the whole audience, "Hey, screw you." [laughs]

DID YOU ALWAYS WANT TO BE A WRITER?
No, but I always wrote things. When I was about 13, I bought a tape recorder. I still have it. It was a big deal to me to get that. I have tapes of me when I was 13, singing songs. I was recording songs, but it wasn't in my head that I was going to be a songwriter, that this was my calling. I wish I could say I was like the young Beethoven running around with ideas in my head, and that while everybody else was playing baseball, I was composing songs.

But the reality was that I liked writing pretty early on, but it wasn't something I was particularly aware of doing. It was just fun. What's weird to me is that I can hear the same kind of changes and subject ideas on those old tapes, kind of like I already knew at 13 how I wanted to sound.

DO YOU HAVE A PARTICULAR PLACE WHERE YOU WRITE? OR A PARTICULAR PROCESS, LIKE WRITING THE MELODY OR LYRIC FIRST?
I write both things together, mostly. I don't have a specific place where I sit or anything like that. I'll write in different places, on different instruments, on the guitar or piano or whatever I can make noise with. I've written songs in the shower. There's a tape someplace of me playing "Dancin'," slapping on my wet leg. I jumped out of the shower and grabbed a tape recorder and was going [sings] "I keep on dancing..." -- slapping on my wet leg -- and I'm thinking, that's it, that's the melody!

THE VIDEO OF THAT PROBABLY WOULD HAVE CAUSED TROUBLE.
[laughs] Chris Isaak and the Soap-on-a-Rope Band!

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR BAND. DO YOU RECORD WITH THE SAME PEOPLE YOU TOUR WITH?
The band? They could be replaced at any moment. The thing to focus on is me, the legend.

THE GENIUS OF CHRIS ISAAK.
Right. The genius half the time probably doesn't know what key he's in. So thank God for the real musicians who are standing there making me look good. They're good guys, they're a lot of fun to tour with. I think that people underestimate the value of people being nice, of being gentlemen. Because in the long run, you've got to have a great musician, but you've also got to have people you can live with. You're going to be on a tour bus and living with these people and you've got to keep going.

Kenny [Kenny Dale Johnson, drums & vocals] and Roly [Rowland Salley, bass & vocals] and I have known each other, like, 13 years. Hershel [Hershel Yatovitz, guitars & vocals], it's been three or four years, and I still look at him like the brand new kid. Other bands come and go, they're out for a year and they're gone. I like having the same guys.

A COMFORT LEVEL?
A comfort level, but we also talk about the ability to play and the "get it" factor in music. The "get it" factor is where some guys can play anything, but they don't get it. They'll say "I can play jazz, rock, pop, country," but do they know what we're trying to do? If you don't get it, it's hard to do. My band, we all have a common idea of what we want to sound like. It's a real good crew. We have a real steady rhythm section. Roy is a real gifted songwriter, he sings, he plays guitar. He's got a rich background and he knows a million songs. It's the same with Kenny; Kenny's a great harmony singer for me.

All of them have a lot of talent that they bring. and the best part of it is that I get to stand in front of all their talent and look good. I'm in the suit with the sequins, the band sounds great, and people go, "You were great, Chris." A lot of times I feel guilty because Herschel will be playing the guitar solo and I look out and somebody's looking at me. Of course, I'm playing rhythm guitar, but they look at me like I'm playing the solo. So I'll go stand next to Herschel and take my hands off the guitar like "Look, it's him!" I told Hershel one time, "If I could play like you, I'd be huge."

I'VE SEEN YOUR NAME AT THE BLUEBIRD IN NASHVILLE. DO YOU LISTEN TO MUCH COUNTRY MUSIC?
I like old country music. Webb Pierce. Ernest Tubb. One of my favorite writers is Floyd Tillman. I just think he's a genius. He wrote beautiful melodies. His arrangements and things are sometimes country, but the melodies are bigger. They defy being lumped into a category. You can't just say, "That's a country melody." It's not -- it's pop, country, it's all different.

Somebody actually gave me his number, but I never called him because I was terrified. I can call anybody up that I don't care about. But when you respect somebody, you start to think, "I'm not going to call him. He'll think I'm a pest." And he'd be right. [laughs]

SO YOU STILL GET NERVOUS AROUND CERTAIN PEOPLE?
Man, it's just amazing when you get to talk to people that you really like. I remember very well the first time I was talking to Roy Orbison. He called me on the phone and I just freaked.

Then first time I talked to Connie Francis I was on a TV show. Talk about the look on a guy's face. I'm on the show and I said that Connie Francis was one of my favorite singers. And they said well, we have somebody on the line to say hi to you. And this voice comes on and says, "Hi Chris, this is Connie Francis." And I looked at the guy and I thought, "If this isn't her, if this is a trick, I will get up and knock you down." But it really was her and it almost scared me, I was kind of shook up, because to me she is a legend. She's the greatest female singer I've ever heard. And all of a sudden you're talking to her and it's like somebody let you up on Mt. Olympus for a second.

It blows my mind to have people come to my show and they're very excited to see me play. I just think it's bizarre that's somebody's listened to my music before they've met me.

LIKE THEY ALREADY KNOW A PART OF YOU, OR FEEL LIKE THEY DO? BUT YOU MEET A LOT OF PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU HANG OUT AFTER YOUR SHOWS.
Yeah, unless I have to take off for some reason for work, I always stay after and sign autographs until everybody goes, which is one way of bringing you back to reality. Because if you want to be a star, the best way to do it is run through the crowd and take off in a limo. And people go, wow, he must be going somewhere important.

But when you're signing autographs, and they see that you're sweating all over the paper and sparkles are coming off your clothes, then they start talking to their friends about where they're going to go eat. They'll leave, and you're still standing there, signing. And it's like, oh yeah, I'm the guy in the sequined shirt who sings.

WHEN "WICKED GAME" CAME OUT, IT LAUNCHED YOU INTO ANOTHER ARENA. DID THINGS CHANGE WHEN THAT SINGLE HIT SO BIG?
I'd had hits before that. In Europe, I'd had "Blue Hotel" and it was being played everywhere when I was there. So to me, "Wicked Game" was like my second hit. I was excited to have it, but to me hits mean that you have five more years of guaranteed recording and touring. Nobody drops you when you have a hit. It's like in baseball: if you hit homeruns, they're going to let you play more.

If I get a hit, my band is able to work, I know I can record, and it gives me even greater freedom because I can make records that are...marginal, like I made record of me singing Hawaiian songs, and acoustic stuff. I mean, I'm no dummy. Baja Sessions wasn't meant to blow Whitney Houston off the charts, you know?

HITS GIVE YOU CERTAIN FREEDOM TO DO OTHER THINGS THAT MAY NOT BE AS COMMERCIAL.
I guess it's that way. In the long run, I think it's really fun to do those other kinds of projects. And I think you do find an audience for it. I meet a lot of people at shows who really like that kind of music.

That album was... well, you go down to Baja and you put that tape on and to me it's a very mellow, cool experience. I want pleasant things like that. I would like to make another record just taking all the pretty songs I can find. I'd love to make a Hawaiian record. I'd like to sing one in Hawaiian. I just think it's a pretty sounding language. You better not tell the record company this stuff. [laughs]

WHAT'S THE NEW ALBUM CALLED?
Speak of the Devil.

HOW WOULD YOU CHARACTERIZE IT? IT'S PROBABLY DIFFERENT FROM BAJA SESSIONS.
It is. I refer to it as the "loud" album. It's a little more rock, but you know there's some ballads on there and there's one song that's just two guitars.

SOMEBODY TOLD ME THAT YOUR RECORDS ARE THE ONLY ONES HE CAN PUT ON NO MATTER WHO IS COMING OVER -- HIS MOTHER, HIS GIRLFRIEND, HIS BUDDIES...
I love that. Somebody told me that the other day, "Hey, look at your crowd. You've got old people, young people. You've got punks, and some total yuppies." I like that a lot of different people like my stuff, it's really flattering. It means something when people come up and say, "I listened to the album and I really like it." People act like they want to say it really quickly and get out of your face, like they think they're going to irritate you. Anytime anybody comes up and says, "Are you Chris Isaak? I like your music," I feel like a dog that somebody's petted. I want to wag my tail and go, this is great! But people come up and they spin on their heel and walk off like I'm going to say, "Go away, I'm busy." But me, I just say if you want to say something nice, talk slow."

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT THAT WE HAVEN'T COVERED?
Yeah. Put Connie Francis and Pat Boone in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, or tear the sucker down.

Dawn Dagucon is the Executive Director of NAS.

National Academy of Songwriters

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