By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
October 15, 1995
If you listen to Chris Isaak’s latest album, “Forever Blue,” you’ll hear a heartbroken man singing about his breakup with a longtime girlfriend. But if you talk to the Bay Area musician, you’ll find out that things aren’t quite so bad for the singer with the sardonic wit.
“Sometimes people think I’m depressed all the time because a lot of my music is moody,” Isaak said, phoning from San Francisco after spending an afternoon surfing. “There’s a lot going on, but I guess a lot of times I write when I’m sad, which is why my songs are sometimes sad. But that’s just one side.”
Another side of Isaak, who will perform Wednesday at the Arie Crown Theatre, is glib and silly. During his tour of Europe last month, Isaak and bassist Rowland Salley played a prank on a member of his road crew, convincing him that a fawn had eaten a sandwich on the tour bus. At the Los Angeles airport, Isaak and drummer Kenney Dale Johnson “pantsed” saxophonist and semi-regular band member Johnny Reno for missing a few gigs. Never mind that Reno had prior bookings that forced him to bow out of the shows.
Success has been a long time coming for Isaak, who made his record debut 10 years ago with the critically acclaimed “Silvertone.” His self-titled followup fared well with the media, but it was 1989’s “Heart Shaped World” that became his calling card with the public. Thanks to the seductive single “Wicked Game” and the steamy, Herb Ritts-directed video for the song, Isaak became the rock star that music critics had predicted he would be.
But success has been a double-edged sword for the singer who openly sings about his personal life, but guards his privacy.
These days, Isaak can’t stand next to a pretty woman without being romantically linked with her.
“If someone wants to take a picture of me going to a restaurant with someone, let them,” Isaak said. “I don’t really care. And I think that most people out there don’t care, and they shouldn’t.”
But they do. A brief flirtation with comedian Margaret Cho was blown out of proportion, he said. One tabloid detailed a dinner Isaak supposedly had with singer Paula Abdul and cited him as a “steak and potatoes” man, a fact he found amusing since he eschews red meat and has never dated Abdul. After an interview with MTV’s Kennedy, tongues wagged about a prospective coupling (never materialized). Isaak also has been linked with “Friends” star Courteney Cox, which he said is false, not to mention Madonna (the only thing the two share is a publicist).
Not surprisingly, his love life is the object of much speculation on the Internet’s message boards. So when Isaak sings about being lonely, it raises plenty of doubts. He’s rich, he’s famous and he’s not exactly hard to look at.
“I can get a date, but that’s not the same as a relationship,” Isaak said. “And that’s the difference.
“I don’t get the fixation on the looks because I’m very average. I’m a lot like Uncle Charlie on `My Three Sons.’ Reality proves that in everyday life, people don’t know who I am and they don’t care, and I’m not considered good looking by anyone other than my mom. But slap a picture on a magazine cover and even the most normal person is perceived as looking better than they actually do.
“I see guys and women all the time who aren’t models or movie stars and they’re just walking through a lobby at a hotel or down the street, and they are as good looking as Keanu Reeves or Naomi Campbell or whoever is this week’s hot item. But no one makes a fuss about them because they’re not famous. If I was some guy working in an office, nobody would say anything about how I look.”
Of course, it’s undeniable that he owes much of his burgeoning film career to his photogenic face. After landing small roles in Jonathan Demme’s “Married to the Mob” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” and David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” Isaak nabbed his first starring role opposite Bridget Fonda in Bernardo Bertolucci’s uneven “Little Buddha.” Isaak spent the last couple of weeks; meeting with directors to discuss upcoming film projects.
“We’ll finish the U.S. tour in January and then head over to Australia,” he said. “Then hopefully I’ll start a new movie in the spring. Until then, I’ll just keep writing songs, surfing and watching Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies.”
