Bernard ZuelJune 9, 2007
RICK SPRINGFIELD IS still a very good-looking fellow. The kind who Jessie's girl, or her mother, wouldn't ignore any more. The man is nearing 60 but looks 15 years younger. He has hooded eyes, dark hair and is obviously fit. While quite polite and gentlemanly, he has lost neither his Australian accent nor the ability to take the piss.
"I don't think that sense of humour ever goes, does it?" smiles the LA-based, Sydney-born performer. "And the accent. Still, I got my fair share of beatings [over the accent] in England when I was a kid."
Springfield's father, Norman Springthorpe, was in the military and was posted to Britain in the late 1950s for several years. "Being an Australian in England at that time wasn't the most popular person to be."
Later in Australia he went on to wear a pink suit in the band Zoot, when all around him sideburns, beards and denim were de rigueur in any rock band. Clearly, this was a man asking to be beaten up.
"And we were," he laughs. "We got into a couple of fights backstage, one with Billy Thorpe and his band. I met Billy Thorpe when I came over here and I was telling him how I was always scared of him because his fans were always trying to beat us up."
Springfield laughs easily but his laugh is not a full-bodied one. Like his eyes, there's always a shadow behind it. Nothing dramatic these days - the man has been married for 23 years, has two adult sons he clearly adores and declares himself blissfully happy - but it doesn't take much to see or hear the touches of something darker not far beneath the surface.
We're upstairs in a seriously trendy LA restaurant. Outside, tourists in cars slow down and take photos of its front door. Springfield will be in Australia soon for the nostalgia-fest of the Countdown tour, but America has been his home for 35 years, during which time he won a Grammy, released four platinum albums and scored a US No. 1 single with Jessie's Girl. He became a daytime soap star as Dr Noah Drake in General Hospital (a role he landed in 1979 and recently reprised to much viewer delight) and then a film actor.
There were also dark times in the early 1970s when, despite the success of his first solo single Speak To The Sky, he realised he was a floundering little fish in a very big pond.
"In those first three years ... teen magazines started calling my manager and saying, 'We're giving him all this press and he's writing songs about suicide and families breaking up."'
Springfield split from his managers. "All my friends, who were their friends, disappeared, so I was truly on my own in Hollywood at that time, 1974. I was really getting suicidal. At one point, I thought, 'I can't go home beaten, so the next best thing is to shoot myself.' I was really starting to think thoughts like that, sitting alone in my apartment."
A friend talked him into acting classes - "it saved my life," he says. Better yet, he met another friend who took Springfield into his family; living in LA without any roots or support, it was something he desperately needed.
"I don't know if that is drive or prescience or blind idiocy, but I knew something was going to happen and that was the rock I clung to," he says now, adding with a chuckle. "But one of the great things about being depressed or having dark times is you write a lot of music. All my stuff is like that.
"Jessie's Girl is about a [real] unrequited relationship, Don't Talk To Strangers is about sexual paranoia. They are all on the darker side. I always was a very dark kid. They used to call me moody in the Zoot.
"I had this image as the happy-go-lucky popstar but it's never been the case, really."
You would never have known it from Countdown.
The Countdown Spectacular 2 is at the Acer Arena on August 24.
RICK SPRINGFIELD IS still a very good-looking fellow. The kind who Jessie's girl, or her mother, wouldn't ignore any more. The man is nearing 60 but looks 15 years younger. He has hooded eyes, dark hair and is obviously fit. While quite polite and gentlemanly, he has lost neither his Australian accent nor the ability to take the piss.
"I don't think that sense of humour ever goes, does it?" smiles the LA-based, Sydney-born performer. "And the accent. Still, I got my fair share of beatings [over the accent] in England when I was a kid."
Springfield's father, Norman Springthorpe, was in the military and was posted to Britain in the late 1950s for several years. "Being an Australian in England at that time wasn't the most popular person to be."
Later in Australia he went on to wear a pink suit in the band Zoot, when all around him sideburns, beards and denim were de rigueur in any rock band. Clearly, this was a man asking to be beaten up.
"And we were," he laughs. "We got into a couple of fights backstage, one with Billy Thorpe and his band. I met Billy Thorpe when I came over here and I was telling him how I was always scared of him because his fans were always trying to beat us up."
Springfield laughs easily but his laugh is not a full-bodied one. Like his eyes, there's always a shadow behind it. Nothing dramatic these days - the man has been married for 23 years, has two adult sons he clearly adores and declares himself blissfully happy - but it doesn't take much to see or hear the touches of something darker not far beneath the surface.
We're upstairs in a seriously trendy LA restaurant. Outside, tourists in cars slow down and take photos of its front door. Springfield will be in Australia soon for the nostalgia-fest of the Countdown tour, but America has been his home for 35 years, during which time he won a Grammy, released four platinum albums and scored a US No. 1 single with Jessie's Girl. He became a daytime soap star as Dr Noah Drake in General Hospital (a role he landed in 1979 and recently reprised to much viewer delight) and then a film actor.
There were also dark times in the early 1970s when, despite the success of his first solo single Speak To The Sky, he realised he was a floundering little fish in a very big pond.
"In those first three years ... teen magazines started calling my manager and saying, 'We're giving him all this press and he's writing songs about suicide and families breaking up."'
Springfield split from his managers. "All my friends, who were their friends, disappeared, so I was truly on my own in Hollywood at that time, 1974. I was really getting suicidal. At one point, I thought, 'I can't go home beaten, so the next best thing is to shoot myself.' I was really starting to think thoughts like that, sitting alone in my apartment."
A friend talked him into acting classes - "it saved my life," he says. Better yet, he met another friend who took Springfield into his family; living in LA without any roots or support, it was something he desperately needed.
"I don't know if that is drive or prescience or blind idiocy, but I knew something was going to happen and that was the rock I clung to," he says now, adding with a chuckle. "But one of the great things about being depressed or having dark times is you write a lot of music. All my stuff is like that.
"Jessie's Girl is about a [real] unrequited relationship, Don't Talk To Strangers is about sexual paranoia. They are all on the darker side. I always was a very dark kid. They used to call me moody in the Zoot.
"I had this image as the happy-go-lucky popstar but it's never been the case, really."
You would never have known it from Countdown.
The Countdown Spectacular 2 is at the Acer Arena on August 24.
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