Chris Isaak's New Show to Feature Smashing Pumpkins, Yusuf Islam

Chris Isaak returned to television last night as his new show, The Chris Isaak Hour, made its debut on the A&E/Biography channel. Not to be confused with the situation comedy The Chris Isaak Show that was on Showtime a few years back, Isaak Hour shares a similar feel as fellow songwriter Elvis Costello's Spectacle over on the Sundance Channel, both shows featuring guest artists both talking music and playing music.

Among the guests that will hit up Isaak's couch in the first season are the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, Stevie Nicks, Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), Chicago, Michael Buble and Trisha Yearwood, who appeared on last night's debut episode. The show will feature the guests performing around five or six songs, with Isaak collaborating on a couple of the tracks. The one major difference between Costello's program and Isaak's show is that Spectacle records in front of a live audience.

The Smashing Pumpkins episode looks especially promising, with Corgan bringing his trademark stage banter to Isaak's set. "Life is dark, and we know we're going to die one day," Corgan tells Isaak, according to a set visit by the LA Times. The band's publicist told the paper that Corgan talks to Isaak about things "he's never opened up about before."

Isaak also released his new album Mr. Lucky on Tuesday to coincide with his new television venture.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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