Chris Isaak Forever Blue CD

Live Recording

Personnel: Chris Isaak (vocals, guitar); Jimmy Pugh (Hammond B-3 organ); Rowland Salley (bass, vocals); Kenney Dale Johnson (drums, vocals); Gregg Arreguin, Frank Martin, Jason Morgan, David Grissom, Bruce Kaphan.
All songs written by Chris Isaak.
FOREVER BLUE was nominated for a 1996 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. "Somebody's Crying" was nominated for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
Personnel: Chris Isaak (vocals, guitar); Johnny Reno (vocals, saxophone, alto saxophone); Kenney Dale Johnson (vocals, drums); Rowland Salley (vocals).
Recording information: Dave Wellhausen Studios; Studio D & Dave Wellhausen Studios.
Photographers: Rick Lopez; Saori Miyazaki; Henry Diltz; Henry Ditz; Michael Tighe.
Unknown Contributor Roles: David Grisman; David Grissom; Jimmy Acevedo; John Branca; Ross Lahey; Jason Morgan; Gregg Arreguin; Frank Martin; Jamie Young; Jeff Watson; Lee Herschberg; Mark Goldenberg; Pete Escovedo; Stephen Bishop; Gary Briggs; Bruce Kaphan.
Without identifying who it was, Isaak made his mood clear with Forever Blue by including a farewell letter in the liner notes to the lover who had dumped him. Kicking things off with the snaky, almost guttural "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing," later made a theme song for Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Isaak lives up to the confused, fractured message in that letter, turning Forever Blue into his own exorcism. On the one hand, he doesn't sound any less impassioned than before, but on the other, those who have criticized him for seeming to concentrate on the surface of his influences rather than the depths would probably find themselves outfoxed here. There's a stronger energy and fiercer edge to the music, as moodily beautiful as ever, to be sure, but cutting just a little more close to the bone, with even the quiet moments -- check the heartbreaking title track -- sounding truly lost and forlorn. Kenney Dale Johnson's drums hit with a harder energy in the louder moments, the more upbeat melodies have that much more of an incongruously jaunty feeling when set against the often-eviscerating lyrics, as directed as much against himself as the lost love in question. Still, the mysterious departed figure is clearly the main target, and songs like "Don't Leave Me on My Own" and "There She Goes" leave little doubt where things are headed, while "Go Walking Down There" practically explodes with bitterness, Isaak's lyrics lashing out against "the happy people" around him. The instrumental range on San Francisco Days carries over here, but with a newer emphasis on rougher edges mixed with quieter deliveries and arrangements -- a seemingly odd balance, but one that punctuates the sheen of Isaak's earlier work with aplomb, as well as forecasting ahead toward Baja Sessions. Erik Jacobsen again is the production ear behind it all, and credit to him for helping make sure those chances get taken. ~ Ned Raggett
What most people remember about Chris Isaak's infamous video for the 1989 single "Wicked Game" is that he gets the beautiful woman. That's because most people weren't listening. Chris Isaak's entire oeuvre is about losing beautiful women, and he has lost them with a heart-rending relentlessness that makes Roy Orbison seem like a romantic success in comparison.
The remarkable FOREVER BLUE, his fifth album, was written after a personal event that Isaak says "wasn't actually like a break up. It was like an explosion." For someone who seems to almost cultivate romantic depression, that must have been nothing short of inspirational, and on FOREVER BLUE he turns the resulting emotions (sadness, bitterness, loneliness) into a sustained thesis on the wicked game of love. The growling, swamp-blues opener "Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing" portrays true love as a knife, a thing that hurts more and more the deeper it goes. It begins with the question "You ever love someone so much you thought your little heart was gonna break in two?"
Isaak obviously has, and he sQ (6/95, p.123) - 3 Stars - Good - "...sticks to the tried and tested loveless formula as though doomed to be forever haunted by the ghosts of Roy Orbison and rock'n'roll past....No surprises, but no disappointment either."
Melody Maker (6/17/95, p.36) - "...What's different about FOREVER BLUE is that the arch, semi-ironic, coffee-table cool of, say, `Dancing' or `Wicked Game' has been abandoned for wracked, self-abasing misery, and sounds the better for it..."
Musician (7/95, p.109) - "...It's not just that his stylistic range has increased...but that he's added to the music's dynamic and emotional range. It's one thing to leap into falsetto, Roy Orbison-style...something else again to move from whispered hope to full-throated faith as easily as he does..."
NME (Magazine) (6/3/95, p.48) - 7 (out of 10) - "...when Isaak transcends his influences...it's impossible not to be seduced by that crushed velvet, Elvis Orbison voice. The hushed title track creeps into smoochy Chet Baker territory...like a timeless jazz-club standard..."