Where Are They Now?

Rick Springfield
(ex-Noah Drake, GENERAL HOSPITAL)

From 1981-83, Rick Springfield Dr. Noah Drake had female fans swooning.  He enhanced his popularity with a lucrative singing career, spinning such Top 10 hits as "Jessie's Girl,"

Since leaving General Hospital , Springfield married wife Barbara in 1985, had two sons, Liam, 7, and Joshua, 4, and performed in two worldwide concert tours.

"I was going to go out on tour again," Springfield says, "but I had a motorcycle accident, which laid me up for a year.  After I recovered, I started acting again in writing songs.  I did a pilot called NICK KNIGHT, where I played a vampire.  I did a couple of TV movies, one with Daniel J. Travanti (MISSING PERSONS) and Joan Van Ark (KNOTS LANDING called SOMEONE IS WATCHING."

Earlier this year, Springfield went on the road again.  He recently completed a two week stint in Japan .  "The whole point of me going out on tour and why I have been doing clubs is to get back to the writing," he explains.  "I figure when I get back to the U.S. , I'll have enough songs for an album."

Is a return to GH and the cards?  "After recovering from my accident, I went in to talk to them about going back there," Springfield offers.  "There was not much of a reaction, so I kind of let it go.  They thought it would be interesting, but then I never heard anything.  So I just went on with my life.  They have their own agenda and that's okay.  I just wanted to work, because I hadn't worked in so long."

Unemployment however is no longer an issue for Springfield now that his music career is back on track.  "I have always gone at everything with both guns blazing," he says.  "I have never said, ‘I'm going to lay this aside.’  Music is something that I do 24 hours a day.  I act as much as I can.  Even when I was on GH, touring and getting ready to do a movie, I was still able to do everything at the same time." (As Soap Opera Digest went to press, Springfield was landing in Australia , his birthplace, were he’ll stay for six months to do a series of films.)