Rockabilly Heartthrob

By Guy Garcia

PERFORMER: CHRIS ISAAK

ALBUM: SAN FRANCISCO DAYS

LABEL: REPRISE

THE BOTTOM LINE: No longer just another pretty voice, retro-rocker Isaak forges ahead on disc and the big screen.

With his Ricky Nelson profile, Roy Orbison pipes and Elvis Presley moves, Chris Isaak could easily be dismissed as a pretender to the retro throne, a rockabilly Milli Vanilli coasting on his looks and the popular pining for the spirit of rock 'n' roll past. But as anyone who has listened to his records or seen him perform knows, Isaak is the genuine article: a pompadoured anachronism who grew up in the blue-collar cow town of Stockton, California, listening to Dean Martin, Louis Prima and Hank Williams Senior. By putting a cutting-edge gloss on a vintage 1950s and early '60s sound, Isaak, like Lyle Lovett and k.d. lang, avoids parody by dint of sheer talent and a playful sense of irony.

On San Francisco Days, Isaak continues to refine a style that, despite a '90s shimmer, is steeped in the strum and twang of the lonesome-cowboy blues. Backed by spare, guitar-centered arrangements, Isaak's compositions convey the aching pang of emotion without ever sounding wimpy. On Beautiful Homes his rich tenor throbs with vulnerability as he sings, "I stare at your window and I cry/ I love you so much/ I love you too much." He brings equal ardor to Two Hearts, a Latin-tinged Valentine levitated by his soaring falsetto, and a stirring remake of Neil Diamond's Solitary Man, which he transforms into an existential anthem for tough-yet-sensitive guys. When Isaak sings, "Me and Sue -- that died too," his voice almost cracks with manly anguish.

If such brazen baring of feelings is unhip, Isaak doesn't care. "Sophistication is the subtle art of trading away all your gems for a bunch of junk," he says. During the '70s, while his peers were turning on and dropping out, Isaak -- who neither smokes nor drinks -- was in Japan as a college exchange student grooving to Presley's Sun sessions and trying to break into the movie business. His first credit: a walk-on part in a Japanese World War II film in which he played a lubricious American G.I.

Moving to San Francisco in the early '80s, Isaak formed a band and started playing in Bay Area clubs, eventually attracting an ardent following that included Bruce Springsteen and Rickie Lee Jones. Another early fan was director Jonathan Demme, who cast Isaak in cameo bits in his films Married to the Mob (Remember the fast-food clown who tried to rub out Tony the Tiger?) and Silence of the Lambs (as a SWAT team member). He had a few lines of dialogue in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, but his biggest break came last year, when director Bernardo Bertolucci invited him to play the American father of a reincarnated Tibetan lama in Little Buddha, due to be released for Christmas.

Until Hollywood calls again, Isaak, who will tour with his band in the U.S. and Europe this summer, is raring to return to his first and deepest love. "I want to sing every day," he says. "I've had girlfriends who said, 'Every time you're upset, you grab your guitar.' " And if you can believe him, he grabs it a lot. "Being happy or unhappy has got very little to do with how much stuff you have or how well your career is going," he explains. "But I haven't given up hope. I'm still trying."