Chris Isaak by Hear

Musician
May 1991
By Roy Trakin

Congratulate Chris Isaak on the belated success of "Wicked Game" and he'll compare it with his singing of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" on long car rides with his family. "I think people realized, if they didn't make it a hit, we were just gonna keep releasing it until it was."

Mention the 33-year-old Stockton, California native's classically chiseled features, which have been captured for posterity by fashion photogs Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts, and by filmmakers David Lynch and Jonathan Demme, and he says, "I think I look goofy."

Ask if he's excited about his concert the following night at Hollywood's Wiltern Theater, and he expresses amazement that 3000 people want to see him perform: "I hope there's not some mistake and they think they're going to see Isaac Hayes."

Note that he's finally on the cusp of the stardom predicted by critics since the release of his 1985 debut Silvertone, and he laughs, "I've always said, as soon as you sell some records, they'll start sayin' stuff like, 'He's a pale recreation of the past. How often must we hear these tired, Orbisonesque lyrics?...'"

Suggest that the plaintive loneliness of his writing must be assuaged by women lusting after his body and you get the straight-faced reply, "People can't believe it, but I have no time for personal relationships. My guitar player gets all the girls. They only talk to me to get to him."

Muse on what he's going to do with his beefed-up royalty checks, and he shrugs, "Pay the band, I guess. I have no desire for an expensive car, a fancy house or fancy clothes. I love guitars and amps, but most of the ones I like are the cheap, goofball kinds, know what I mean?"

Is Chris Isaak for real? Or some innocent throwback to another era? Certainly his ethereal voice and the haunting, otherworldly twang of longtime collaborator and guitarist Jimmy Wilsey sound simultaneously old and new, a hyper-romantic plea that feels cosmically timeless. Like director David Lynch, who's used Isaak's music in both Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, he's a wide-eyed manchild caught up in a decadent universe, longing for normalcy amidst the horrors of the modern world, while a palpable sexual tension bubbles underneath the surface.

In one of those delicious pop music ironies, Isaak's "Wicked Game" became a Top 40 smash nearly 18 months after its initial release on the album Heart Shaped World, when Lee Chestnut, music director at Atlanta's WAPU, heard the instrumental version in Wild at Heart and began playing it on his influential Power 99 Top 40 station.

"Hey, my life has been really good whether or not I had a hit," insists Isaak. "I had the best of all possible worlds. We played a lot of gigs and we had enough money to make the records exactly the way I wanted to make 'em. It was a fantastic existence. It wasn't as if I was against the wall. When this record hit, my feeling was, 'Hey, this is great. I sure hope it doesn't change anything.'"

Suggest that there'll be fair-weather fans attracted to Isaak because of the hit, and he'll tell you he's used to proving himself in front of strange crowds. "I've played a great many places where people didn't come to see me. I've opened for different acts and we've played bars where the audience was just there to dance. I even played one bar where there was some guy shooting up at the front table and the backstage area had no lights."

For Isaak and the Silvertones--Wilsey, bassist Rowland Salley and drummer Kenney Dale Johnson--live performances have always been the group's strength. At their Wiltern show, Isaak won over the crowd by interspersing his hypnotic, romantic tragedies with wacky between-song patter that included asking the audience to raise their hands and rub the backs of the people in front of them. A request for any "party hippies freakin'" to join the group for a final medley of "Wooly Bully," "Spinning Wheel" and "Wild Thing" resulted in about 30 nubile young ladies rushing the stage.

For all his casual charisma, Isaak has always considered himself a loner. In high school he dressed in thrift-shop draped jackets, pointy-toed shoes and slick-backed hair; the height of fashion today, back then they made him an outcast. His obvious affection for '50s and '60s musical styles has led to some calling him retro, a charge which makes him bristle.

"It's like night and day," he protests. "It's real easy to cop sounds, anyone can do that. But if you really want to write songs, you can't just go back and write somebody else's tune over again. I don't write songs about pink Cadillacs or stuff that's old-fashioned. I write about things that are happening in my life. I think people relate my stuff to that era because my vocals are on top of the mix and there's a real clear sound to Jimmy's guitar. I like the big notes and Jimmy likes to bend and twang. That's what we're trying to sell. The less you use, the more you can hear.

"But if you're going to be influenced," he goes on, "you might as well be influenced by the best. And most everyone would agree the best music came out fo the '50s and early '60s. But I don't believe our albums stop there. My drummer uses a 1930 Slingerland, but we also use drum machines. I've played a real weird Italian guitar with a body that looks like a surfboard and pickups you could speak through. I use modern microphones and old microphones. I used to play through a Vox Westminster amp, which I had to fix every day. It was on this adjustable handlebar, which you could tilt or angle in any direction. I finally broke down and bought a Fender, though. I've had the same one for 10 years now. Fender is to amps what Chevy is to cars. There's a reason 20 billion people own one. They work."

With producer Erik Jacobsen, who worked on all the Lovin' Spoonful's hits and has been with the band from the first album, Isaak has forged an identifiable sound that echoes the past, yet at times achieves almost an avant-garde, trance-inducing minimalism. But above everything is that voice, aching with the pain of unrequited love.

Isaak admits that "Wicked Game" and several other of his torch songs are not about some abstract vision of perfect womanhood, but about a very real individual--someone who apparently did quite a number on the guy. "You get what you give," he says, suddenly very serious. "People say she sounds really mean, but that's not really the whole story. This person is always on my mind and probably always will be. It was a wonderful relationship. When we were together, it was great.

"So you think about that and compare it to everything. In many ways, I've made it in my mind into a situation where, y'know, there'll never be another summer like that one. It's hard to let that stuff go. But I don't think she'd be able to listen to these songs and get that much out of them. She's not really into that."

Gee Chris, don't you meet anyone who loves you for who you are?

"I don't believe you can be loved for the wrong reasons," Isaak replies with a grin. "It's like Floyd Tillman once said, 'If I can't have the one I want, I'll take what I can get.'"

SILVERTONES

CHRIS ISAAK uses Gibson L-5 and J-200 guitars, strung with medium-gauge Ernie Ball strings and played with .73mm Jim Dunlop Tortex picks through a Fender Twin Reverb amp.

JIMMY WILSEY plays Fender Stratocasters, strung with light-gauge GHS Boomer strings and struck by 1.14mm Dunlop Tortexes. Effects include a custom pedalboard with an Ernie Ball 6160 volume pedal and a Boss HM-Z Heavy Metal distortion. The pedalboard is routed through a Roland SDE-3000 digital delay into a Fender Twin.

ROLLY SALLEY plays a Modulus Graphite Basstar bass strung with D'Addario XL160s. Amplification is provided by an SWR SM-400 and two SWR Goliath cabinets.

KENNEY JOHNSON plays Pearl drums with Remo Pinstripe heads and Zildjian cymbals. Sticks/brushes are all Regal/Calato including ZBN sticks, hickory wire brushes and wood-handle Blasticks.

Back to Articles