You have to ring the doorbell for a long time at Jim Ellison’s new house, a cozy but unprepossessing affair in east Lakeview, before the sound penetrates the blasting sound of a rushing guitar solo–deedle deedle deedle deedle dweeeeeeee! Inside, Ellison proudly shows off a sparkly new Gibson (an SG Les Paul Custom, to be exact), the product of an endorsement deal for his band, Material Issue. A previous deal with another guitar maker didn’t work out: Ted Ansani’s bass kept breaking, and the company wouldn’t give the band the time of day. Then Material Issue met a guy from Gibson. “Ah’ve seen you guys seven times,” says Ellison, gleefully imitating the rep. “Ah thank ah can work something out.”
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The guitars, the house–these are just some of the spoils of a years-long campaign that has now brought Ellison semistardom. His band is a just-this-side-of-lethal power-pop trio: Ellison’s hook-filled songs, Ansani’s articulate bass lines, and Mike Zelenko’s unflappable drumming. Ellison’s lyrical world is an assertively innocent one where girls are girls, boys are confused, and rock rules. He’s grown a bit from his early songs, every other one of which seemed to be titled “Valerie” or “Diane”; his distinctive, slightly melodramatic song settings just keep getting better, reaching an unquestioned high with last year’s “What Girls Want” and its deathless chorus: “I want a man with lips just like Mick Jagger / Rod Stewart’s hair, and Keith Richards’ stagger.”
For the upcoming third album, Ellison went with an outside producer. He talked to several big names before settling on Mike Chapman, who’s had massive worldwide hits both as a songwriter (with partner Nicky Chinn he wrote everything from most of the Sweet’s singles to Exile’s “Kiss You All Over”) and as a producer (Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” the Knack, Tina Turner). Ellison says he charmed Chapman by dissing his recent work (“I don’t want to put out a record that sounds like the Baby Animals”); Ellison, Chapman told friends approvingly, “was an egotistical asshole.” But Chapman earned the band’s respect, too, by flying to talk to them on a day’s notice and ultimately volunteering to do the record for no money up front: “He said if it wasn’t a hit, he didn’t deserve any money,” Ellison says.
