Hits Isaak hasn't, and that's fine with him

The Hartford Courant
November 27, 1998
By Roger Catlin

As in his shows, Chris Isaak is spinning a lot of different music in his tour bus these days.

''I got the new Beck,'' he says from Newark, N.J.

''And the Verve. The Verve album is pretty good. And I have some Tennessee Ernie Ford. It can be a lethal combination.''

Yet that broad taste in music is what helped create the musical identity of Isaak, 42, whose pompadour and penchant for twangy songs of the past sometimes put him in a retro category.

''I don't think I ever wanted to be like a rockabilly band or anything like that,'' Isaak said. ''For me, I like the idea of being a pop-music writer. Doing new stuff,'' he said. ''You don't have to follow any format particularly -- but you don't know what kind of clothes to wear.''

The difficulty to peg his sound may have stymied his record company. But he managed to have a bona-fide hit in 1991 after three albums, with the single ''Wicked Game.''

Isaak said he wasn't under any pressure from the company to immediately follow up that hit. ''When I wanted to put out a record with Hawaiian guitar or that's more mellow, they didn't mind,'' he said, referring to his 1996 album The Baja Sessions. ''I knew it wasn't going to be Celine Dion or anything. And indeed, instead of selling like the Titanic, it sunk like one.''

Whereas The Baja Sessions ''was the most quiet album'' he has done, his new album, Speak of the Devil ''is the loudest and most like the live shows,'' Isaak said.

Instead of pressure from the record company, he said, the most pressure probably comes from himself. ''You want your records to be liked. And fortunately for me, I'm selfish in that I want to record what I like first. So I really can't go wrong. If I start shooting for what you people will like, that's how you get these really goofy records, The Psychedelic Partridge Family kind of thing.''

It's not that he's an artist beyond reproach. ''I got a price,'' Isaak said. ''I got a pretty reasonable price. Like when people say, 'Chris, do a commercial or something. Do it for the money,' I'm not interested. But if they pay me a ton of money? I'd do it.

''One time I was talking with Roy Orbison, and he was going to do a commercial for Coke Classic. He approached them, and thought up the whole script. I just said, 'Hey, make sure they give you a lot of money.' He said, 'Exactly. No one knows how much it costs to put a band on the road.' ''

Orbison never got to do the commercial, but Isaak learned a lot from his short relationship with Orbison, a classic '50s crooner.

''I may not be a hit guy,'' Isaak said. ''I consider myself more the guy who has a consecutive string of games I've played in. I'm not Babe Ruth, but I show up every night.''

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