About His Videos

If there is one performer who seems tailor-made for the video explosion, it would be Rick Springfield. Long before his first “official” hit single, he thrilled millions of afternoon hearts in a starring role on the soap opera General Hospital. As Dr. Noah Drake, he learned how to look a camera straight in the eye; his finely-chiseled features caused female fans to invent excuses to find themselves alone with him in the emergency room.

But what’s generally not known about Rick is that he’s no Johnny-come-lately to rock & roll. In fact, long before he tried his hand at acting, he paid considerable musicianly dues, and it has made his rise to musical stardom all the more satisfying.

Originally from Sydney , Australia , Rick was given a guitar from his 13^th birthday. His first band, called the Jordy Boys, worked the rough suburbs of Melbourne . Another band, Zoot, helped him to achieve a #1 single in Australia , “Speak to the Sky,” in 1972. When word of his prowess reached the U.S. , he was given a chance to try and crack American audiences.

Even then, Springfield was a dynamic performer. Clad in a Conan-like fur outfit (perhaps driving home the point of his Comic Book Heroes album at the time), his high kicks and guitar dynamics might have won him a large following; but he was never able to resolve the supposed conflict between being a teen pin-up idol and a serious rocker.

In frustration, he turned to acting, renting a small Hollywood theatre to present small plays and scoring a few parts on television shows like The Rockford Files and Six Million Dollar Man. His two-season stint on General Hospital gave him a new lease on stardom, and when RCA Records knocked on his door in 1980, Rick was more than ready.

This time he didn’t worry about which side of the rock & roll fence he needed to call his own. With a sense of self-confidence, his good looks only enhanced the hard rock-bottom that underlay his songs, and his ease before the camera meant that his grasp of the video medium would be second to none.

That might be why Rick’s videos are exemplary mini-movies, put together with an eye toward cinematic production values and narrative cohesion. The most stunning example of this is a sci-fi scenario written by Ned Gorman: 1894’s “Bop Till You Drop.” In this epic, humans have been enslaved by a race of bestial lizards inside a Dune-like-factory. Opening with a squall of saxophone squeals, cut short by a wicked laser death ray, the drudge of back-breaking work is halted when a new prisoner is brought in. This combination of Spartacus and Demetrius the Gladiator is indeed Rick, and his very presence, singing and dancing along to the riveting funk beat of the song, inspires them to smash their chains. “You gotta get up, gotta get up!” Rick chants as the slaves revolt. Though the good vs. evil un-raveling of the plot is perhaps predictable, the intricate set design, state-of-the-art special effects, and general no-cost-spared look of the production be-speaks a cinematic sophistication that is beyond the reach of most rock videos.

The science fiction element was earlier pursued by director Phil Savenick in 1983’s “Human Touch.” Aliens enter a dusty room, staring curiously at a green bulb. Pulling off the cover, there is an explosion; the door to a compartment raises to reveal Rick in suspended animation. His eyes open. He steps out and consults a computer terminal nicknamed Sally, which tells him the year is 2016 (not so far away at that!) More tanks open; more sleepers awake, becoming a dance troupe that fling themselves about synchronistically. A band appears on the compu-screen to accompany them. After a brief remote-control battle sequence, the red light of a radiation alert flashes. It’s time to return to sleep until Earth needs them once again. Rick slips and falls as he heads toward his pod, but a nearby Lucious Blonde beckons him to her compartment. Hmmm…

“Don’t Talk To Strangers,” directed by Paul Justman, is somewhat more prosaic in theme, as Rick – under the guise of warning her about the city’s dangers – works through the jealousy of seeing his girl being wined and dined by another man. The twist, of course, is that it’s Rick who’s dangerous in this video, a virtual peeping tom who watches her through a window, strokes her leg under a table, and even, in one menacing sequence, follows her down a dimly-lit street and clamps his hand over her mouth. Kinky!

To see how far Rick has come along the video trail, a look at “Jessie’s Girl,” which won a Grammy for Best Rock Male Performance, is instructive. Relatively straight-forward, with the band flicking in and out as Rick scrapes at his guitar, he tries to keep his cool as he sees Jessie and his girl strolling about: “I want to tell her that I love her/but the point is probably moot.” He looks in the mirror and with his guitar. At the end, watching his performance, is Jessie, the girl, and…a dog in a tie and jacket?!

The most recent Springfield video, “Celebrate Youth,” is a joyous explosion of exuberant frenzy. Based on a fantastically propulsive Caribbean rhythm, Rick salutes “the pride and passion of the young” while whirling through the eternal cycle of age, renewing innocence through a child’s eye. A small boy sits in an attic, surrounding by the trappings of approaching adulthood and the nostalgia of blown leaves and childhood games. In a narrow room, a mass of youngsters leap and cavort. Shot in black and white with strategic shocks of color – Rick’s scarf, a pair of sneakers, a balloon – the video seems to simultaneously symbolize Rick’s own sense of boyish exuberance with the knowledgeable experience he’s gained on his long climb to the top.

There are but a few samplings from Rick’s copious videography, which also runs the gamut from the top 5 smash of “Love Somebody” (from the film Hard To Hold) to the torch-singing “Affair of the Heart.” They have recently been joined on a long-form concert video, The Beat of the Live Drum, which is available on home video cassette.