Chris Isaak - Questions & Answers
The lonesome cowboy of love on blue moods little white clouds, private loss and public pain.
The Face
June 1995
By David Toop
Q: I've heard the new album. Can you tell me anything about the writing process?
A: It was a little different, in that all the songs were about one girl.
Q: So it's a theme album?
A: I guess. When I finished the album, somebody said, "What's the cover going to be?" I said, "Well, I have a picture of her. Let's just put her picture on the cover." He said, "We might have legal problems with that. That's not a good idea."
Q: Why the legal problems?
A: I guess because you can't put a picture of somebody who's your ex-girlfriend on your cover. It was a good picture, though. She was in a bikini and squinting into the sun. It was nice.
Q: Was this you lamenting a relationship?
A: Yeah. I was writing songs but they seemed to end up being about that relationship, which had ended. It gives them a nice centre. In my mind at least, they they all have a connection.
Q: It's quite unusual to admit that you've done that.
A: I threw myself into the album right away and kept working all through this last year. It takes a lot longer to get over something if you don't deal with it or talk about it. If you don't say a thing about it, it takes forever.
Q: While you're promoting the album, you're doing the songs on stage.Is it a good thing to relive those experiences?
A: Sometimes it's painful. Not usually. Realistically, when you're on stage there's a lot of distractions from getting really inside yourself, emotionally involved in the song to that point where it's painful. One time I heard the Everly Brothers talk about singing and I thought they always sang great. Someone said,"What do you think about when you sing?" and they said, "Hitting the notes." I thought it's true. Technically, you're thinking about that. Sometimes it dawns on you or it comes through in moments and that can be unpleasant. I dunno, like putting your finger on a cut.
Q: In public.
A: These songs, I feel good listening to them and they don't really hurt. I had a song that was on a sound- track this year from a Clint Eastwood movie, A Perfect World.
Q: It had a great soundtrack - all those pop-country songs from the Sixties.
A: Yeah. And Clint Eastwood wrote a song. I thought, is it going to be any good? I liked the song that he wrote.I thought it was one of the coolest things on there, but I had two songs on there and when I recorded those songs it was about the lowest point in my emotions. I was really shot. When I hear those songs, it just brings me back. I think the songs came out very pretty, but it was a real painful time. This stuff doesn't bother me.
Q: I like that period of country music: very self- pitying songs, done in an upbeat way.
A: I think I know that period as well as anybody, or better than anybody I've met for a while, because I've played all that stuff. The shame of it was that in the film the soundtrack was so low in the mix that you didn't hear anything. There was a lotta work and a lotta money spent, and I'd turn to people in the theatre and say, "Can you hear that?" There's subtle and then there's ... what's the point?
Q: The whole thing is a business, yet it's a business that's all about touching raw emotions in people. If you do something very personal, then the realness can be devalued.
A: I've never been worried about revealing or showing anything in my music, in my work, that is very personal or real because of a very cynical realisation that people don't care. They can't tell a lotta time whether it's real or not. You can reveal your innermost secret and you'd be surprised at how unaffected people are. If anything, it's soothing for the person who's revealing it. I stood on stage one time and I told the audience,"I wrote this song and it means a lot to me. I wrote this song in the club downstairs." It was Amsterdam, at the Paradiso. "Lie To Me", I wrote that song there. And when I said that, the crowd just laughed. I just thought, that's a lesson to you.
Q: This new album - the woman you wrote the songs about does she know you've written them? What do you think she's going to feel?
A: I'd like her to think it was an important relation- ship. That I really loved her. It wasn't something trivial to me. Probably that's the best way that I could show it - by spending a year writing a whole album. I don't think there's anything in the songs that are meant to put her down. There's nothing that's meant to be hurtful. It's like having a lovely picture of your wedding, even after you're divorced. You can't go back there but at least you have a nice picture.
Q: Does she have any way of making a public statement about you in return?
A: No, I don't think she would. She'll know it's about her but I never use her name. I'm sure that some of her friends will know but I don't wanna cause her embarrassment.
Q: Are there any songs you like that are very personal statements?
A: I was reading a book about the Beatles, about their songs."In My Life" by John Lennon - it started off he was just writing about places that were changing. He had a list of places that had all changed and then he gradually kept changing the song until it became what it ended up being. Great piece of work. You hear stuff like that, you think,'How could it NOT been a hit?' Did they really need a promo man? You know what I mean?
Chris Isaak revealed all to David Toop.
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