Cris Isaak Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Cris Isaak - Essay ExampleAfter three albums that didnt sell, his career was going nowhere fast. Then a celluloid 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 neglect 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 closely 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 eggshell of noodles at a cheap Thai restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. In a few hours he will headline a toss 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 g it in for free? Hes grinning now. Come on, Bruce, he says. You sittin on a big ol pile uh loot. Git up off it ... 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, hes still got guitars. Or in ten years Oh, those guys still actually try to sing. Its boring. They sing. You neer 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 fool it, you can count about seven years until people go, How totally square. The ship has sailed, one Warner Bros. executive told Isaaks manager-producer, Erik Jacobsen, in the summer of 1989. The ship has already sailed. The sum of those words couldnt have been clearer. Heart Shaped World, Isaaks third album, was dead the company had no int erest 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 uneasy 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, passing 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 didnt get on the radio and his videos never made it onto MTV in any kind of meaty rotation. No less an authority on authentic American rock & roll than John Fogerty described Isaak as being like a skyscraper against the