Chris Isaaks Wicked Game - Essay Example

Musical investigation: compare and contrast using musical concepts two arrangements of WickedGame, the original version by Chris Isaak and the cover by HIM After three albums that didn't sell, his career was going nowhere fast. Then a movie gave new life to his single, "Wicked Game," and suddenly he was on his way to the big time. Welcome to the club. Bruce Springsteen was calling for tickets. So was Madonna. And Sean Penn. And Sylvester Stallone. And Laura Dern. And Rickie Lee Jones. And Mickey Rourke. And some of the cast from Twin Peaks. They all wanted to see one of the most compelling rock & roll acts to hit the Top Ten in years: Chris Isaak. Bruce called about tickets'' says Isaak, every inch the Fifties-style rocker in his tight black jeans, pointed shoes, white T-shirt and brown leather motorcycle jacket, as he looks up from his plate of noodles at a cheap Thai restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. In a few hours he will headline a sold-out show at the Wiltern Theater, in Hollywood. Adopting the voice of a rube, Isaak, who grew up in Stockton, California, drawls: They gonna give 'em free tickets They git in for free'' He's grinning now. Come on, Bruce,'' he says. You sittin' on a big ol' pile uh loot. Git up off it!'' Then, returning to his natural voice, Isaak says quietly: If he comes, that's pretty nice. Any time another artist shows up, it's flattering.'' Isaak can afford to poke fun at the superstars who are interested in him; suddenly, he's becoming one of them. His latest single, the dreamy Wicked Game,'' is an international hit; his album Heart Shaped World has sold about a million copies worldwide. He's been on The Tonight Show recently and plays a cop in the Jonathan Demme film The Silence of the Lambs. The powerful entertainment agency CAA wants to handle his film career, and at least one executive from a major studio has been whispering sweet nothings about getting him up on the screen in a major role. Chris Isaak has abruptly become a star. But he hasn't forgotten that the last time he played Los Angeles, the club he was booked into wouldn't give him a sound check. So even as Warner Bros. executives tell him that his album is the hottest in that company -- yes, hotter than Madonna's -- Isaak wonders just how long it can last. Fingering a wooden tiki head that hangs around his neck for good luck, he says: Five years from now, it could be like Oh, man, him Plays a guitar. Everybody else has got keyboards, he's still got guitars.' Or in ten years: Oh, those guys still actually try to sing. It's boring. They sing.' You never know.'' Isaak adjusts a pair of wraparound shades that look like something Jean-Paul Belmondo wore in the Jean-Luc Godard classic Breathless. As if he were quoting from some official music-business rule book, he says, Usually, right after you make it, you can count about seven years until people go, How totally square.' '' The ship has sailed,'' one Warner Bros. executive told Isaak's manager-producer, Erik Jacobsen, in the summer of 1989. The ship has already sailed.'' The meaning of those words couldn't have been clearer. Heart Shaped World, Isaak's third album, was dead; the company had no interest in spending another dime promoting it. Jacobsen contends there was never much enthusiasm at Warners for Heart Shaped World. Executives from the company had flown up to San Francisco to hear it that spring. Not a favorable word was spoken,'' he says about the awkward playback session. It was just the most deadly reaction that I have ever seen to anything in my life. As for getting it on the radio, all they said was Tough, very tough, extremely tough.' '' For Isaak, those were dark days. Although he was loved by the media when his debut album, Silvertone, was released in 1985, his songs didn't get on the radio and his videos never made it onto MTV in any kind of meaningful rotation. No less an authority on authentic American rock & roll than John Fogerty described Isaak as being like a skyscraper against the landscape,'' predicting that he'd be a big star.'' Yet Isaak's intensely atmospheric rock & roll was out of step with commercial radio. His records didn't sell. Everybody convinced us we were a failure,'' says Jacobsen, who as a young man in the Sixties had produced a string of hits for the Lovin' Spoonful. We were sitting there, wondering: Is it the record company Is it the production Is it the songs' '' And then, months after Warner Bros. had abandoned Heart Shaped World, a call came from David Lynch's office. The director, a longtime Isaak fan, wanted some songs for the film he was completing, Wild at Heart. Lynch ultimately used an instrumental version of Wicked Game.'' Enter Lee Chesnut, the music director at Power 99, a rock station in Atlanta. Although Wild at Heart flopped in America (it won the Palme d'Or last year at the Cannes Film Festival), Chesnut managed to see it three times before it was pulled from the theaters; he became enchanted with what he called this hypnotic instrumental.'' When Chesnut hunted down a copy of the soundtrack album, he was surprised to find a version of the song with, he says, this incredibly cool vocal.'' The music director put the song on the air in mid-October, a year and a half after the release of Heart Shaped World; calls from listeners poured into the station. Word spread to other Top Forty stations around the country; four months later, Wicked Game'' was in the Top Ten. I think at that point the fix was in,'' said Isaak, with his tongue firmly in cheek, to a disc jockey during an on-air interview about how his record became a hit. People ask me, Are you surprised to finally have a hit' But it's not really that way. There is a meeting. Let's see, who was there Madonna, Prince, Phil Collins. They say, Welcome to the club.' They say, From this point on, anything you do is cool.' '' The song that gained Isaak entry to the club'' was written late one night. There was a girl on the way over,'' says Isaak. It was one of those things where they call, they say, I'm comin' over.' You know you shouldn't, but you let 'em. Hang up the phone and go, Oh, no. Now we're gonna be in trouble.' '' A wry smile crosses his face. You know you're not, uh, star-crossed,'' he says. But it's just like Here I go!' There's a line in a Jerry Lee Lewis song that goes, Waitin' on the corner like an old tomcat . . . who walks by/Me oh my/ Jumpin' Jehosophat Big Blon' Baby . . . Big Blon' Baby, glory be, here I go. . . .' Kind of an attitude like I know this won't work, I know I can't handle this, but here I go! Watch me try!' Anyway, I wrote Wicked Game' real quick,'' Isaak says. I hung up the phone and wrote the song. By the time she got there, I had the song pretty much finished.'' Isaak pauses, his timing perfect, and adds: We didn't do much guitar playin' after she got there.'' THEY CALL HIM the Orbison of the Nineties,'' says Isaak's lead guitar player, James Calvin Wilsey. There is more than a touch of sarcasm in Wilsey's voice as he tosses aside a copy of the Los Angeles Times. Isaak and Wilsey have been hearing the comparisons to Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison and Ricky Nelson and Duane Eddy for most of the eleven years they've been making music together. Everybody draws from stuff,'' says Wilsey as he picks out the melody to an obscure Sixties surf instrumental on his silver-fleck Fender Stratocaster. It's really hard to create something completely different that nobody has ever heard before. So you try to think about what you want to sound like and start culling all your most favorite cool stuff.'' References Droney, Maureen., CHRIS ISAAK'S 'WICKED GAME'. May2002, Vol. 26 Issue 6, p148 Bell, Carrie., The Devil' and Chris Isaak. Billboard, 09/05/98, Vol. 110 Issue 36, p15 Wild, David., Chris Isaak's twin peaks. Rolling Stone, 3/4/93 Issue 651, p25 Read More