Chris Isaak finally wins success in wicked game

By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
April 21, 1991

Everyone knew Chris Isaak would become a star. No one knew that it would take this long.

Six years after being touted as the proverbial next big thing in rock ‘n’ roll, Isaak has fulfilled the prophecy of music critics and fans. With the release of his debut LP “Silvertone” in 1985, Isaak was pronounced as this generation’s answer to Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, all rolled into one neat, Brylcreemed package.

Ironically, a single from an album that went nowhere fast two years ago that has won him a turn in the spotlight.

“Wicked Game,” a sensual, slow-burning song about unrequited love, may not be the best cut off “Heart Shaped World,” Isaak’s third LP. But it’s the one that David Lynch selected to showcase in his film “Wild at Heart,” and it gave Isaak the hit single he had wanted, but never went after very hard.

“I know what kind of songs sell, and it wouldn’t be that difficult to get the drums and melody to fit in with what’s popular,” said Isaak, 34. “But I really like the music I do, even if it may not be the kind of songs that are played on the radio. Every couple of days if I haven’t shaved, I’ll look in the mirror and go, `Yeah, George Michael. That’s it.’ But I couldn’t do that kind of stuff. I wish I had George Michael’s money, but I don’t want to write music I don’t like.”

Luckily, he loves “Wicked Game,” which peaked at No. 6 on Billboard’s singles chart. It will be one of the songs Isaak and his band, Silvertone, perform when they return to Chicago for a show Friday at the Riviera, 4746 N. Broadway. Saxophonist Johnny Reno will perform as Isaak’s special guest, and folk-rock singer-guitarist  Marti Jones will open the concert.

Judged by his music, Isaak is a cool, aloof man who is unlucky in love. But  concertgoers get to see another goofier side that belies his desperately tragic songs. His musicians serve as foils for his sarcastic but good-natured sense of humor.

“I don’t think that my music and my humor are necessarily two separate things,” he said. “They’re both part of me. A lot of my songs are ironic. It’s just that the easiest thing to pick up on in my music is this moodiness.”

When Isaak toured to promote “Heart Shaped World” in 1989, he skipped the Midwest. Sales of his album were dismal, and his record company chose to send him to the coasts, where he seemed more marketable. Isaak did play a well-received concert at Chicago’s Hard Rock Cafe last summer,  but that date was arranged independently of his record company. This time around, he’s on a major tour that has taken him from Europe to across the United States. Japan and Australia are on the agenda for later this year.

Much of Isaak’s newfound success is due to a radio programmer and a fashion photographer. After music director Lee Chestnut heard the instrumental version of “Wicked Game” in “Wild at Heart,” he started playing Isaak’s song on his Atlanta station  last October. Other stations nationwide picked up the cut, and by 1991, the “new” song was a Top 10 hit.

Although “Wicked Game” had a highly publicized video directed by Lynch, it wasn’t doing well on MTV. It failed to capitalize on Isaak’s photogenic face, but it showcased  the musical talents of Silvertone, a superb  yet often overlooked band.

In came photographer Herb Ritts, who took Isaak to Hawaii to film video No. 2 of “Wicked Game.”

Although Ritts had intended to focus on  the islands’ beauty, even posing Isaak atop a volcano for several shots, the real star of the video is a nubile, topless young model in men’s jockey shorts who languidly makes love to Isaak. (The volcano never made the final cut.) This version fulfilled MTV’s unwritten rule that babes, and not great backup bands, sell music.

“She was a real good sport about it, because we made her do a lot of things in front of the camera that people normally don’t do with people watching,” Isaak said. “I even had her chip her nail polish so that she would look more like the girl next door and not an internationally famous model.”

As an exchange student in Japan, Isaak got his taste in front of the cameras. Later, his music cost him his biggest chance at movie stardom. Isaak had won the role of Melanie Griffith’s crud ex-husband in Jonathan Demme’s “Something Wild,” but Warner Bros. wanted Isaak to get his next LP out. So he went back into the recording studio, and the part went to Ray Liotta.

But Demme, a fan of Isaak’s music, never forgot him, and cast the singer as a ruthless killer clown in “Married to the Mob.” Isaak currently has a cameo appearance in Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Although Isaak his spot lasted only 13 seconds, he got decent play and his name high in the credits just for playing a SWAT commander.

With the media blitz on, it’s difficult to turn on the TV or pick up a magazine and not see Isaak’s face. He’s put his pouty image to good use. He posed in US magazine’s male answer to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and he has done print ads for designer Alexander Julian. It’s likely that the photos the Ritts shot of him last year for the Gap will begin surfacing soon on magazine pages.

“It was a lot of fun (doing the Gap shoot) and afterward, they said, `Chris, go take whatever you want,’ ” he said. “So I went over to the jeans rack, but it turned out that the last person had taken all of my size pants.”

That person turned out to be country singer k.d. lang.

The days when MTV and Spin magazine misspelled his name as “Isaac” are long gone.

“People ask me if I get tired of having people come up to me and tell me how much they like my work or if I mind signing autographs after shows,” Isaak said. “I just look at them like they’re nuts. This is something that I never thought would happen in my career, with the type of music I play. That I not only get paid to do something I love and then have people say all these nice things to me on top of that, well, that’s just it. I can’t imagine things  getting much better than this.”