Springfield reconnects with rock-star past of early '80s

Rick Springfield still remembers the day in 1981 when he realized that he was truly famous. Though he had been a teen idol in Australia in the '70s and even teetered on the brink of stardom in America, it wasn't until he took the role of Dr. Noah Drake on the soap opera General Hospital that his musical career exploded.

He says a simple walk through his Southern California neighborhood served as an awakening.

"I walked down that same street only two weeks before, and nobody had noticed me," Springfield says. "And two weeks later, every third or fourth person was turning to look at me, going 'Hey, isn't that the guy . . . ?' It was really that fast, and I didn't understand the power of being on television.

"I took the acting gig on General Hospital because I thought my record was going to flop, and I needed some money. I was broke. So I said, 'I'll take this stupid soap-opera gig.' I really wasn't into it or anything, and I had no idea it was about to become the biggest show on television that summer.

"That was really mind-boggling."

Thanks to his newfound exposure, Springfield's next album, Working Class Dog, did not flop. It contained the Grammy-winning No. 1 smash Jessie's Girl and led to more success throughout the early '80s. In total, he scored 17 top 40 singles, including Don't Talk to Strangers, I've Done Everything for You, Affair of the Heart, Human Touch and Love Somebody.

Springfield, who stops at the Celebrity Theatre tonight, says he's hesitant to pick a favorite and prefers to evaluate his songs on their craftsmanship.

"I kind of look at them as how they worked," the 54-year-old says. "I ask, 'Were there parts in them that maybe I could have written better or made more musical?' But I've always (leaned) towards Love Somebody as one of the ones I thought really worked and was a bit of a surprise for people, because it was a little harder than they were expecting. It was also successful, so it was a change that worked."

Springfield says his latest album, Shock/Denial/ Anger/Acceptance, was inspired by four of the five stages of grief, which he prefers to call stages of healing.

"I thought it was an appropriate title because I write to heal," he says, adding that most of his songs come from matters of the heart and that the downside of love is usually what inspires his music.

"It's the usual stuff - getting through broken relationships or relationships that don't seem to be working and trying to figure out what to do about it," he says. "When I'm feeling in love and happy, I'm not inspired - or if I write something, it's usually pretty sappy and I don't want to use it.

"My leaning is definitely toward emoting about the dark side. That's when I start to look in, and that's when I start to write."

Springfield says that approach to songwriting is nothing new to him.

"Jessie's Girl was about sexual angst and not getting what I wanted," he says. "Don't Talk to Strangers was about sexual paranoia. There were very few happy songs."

Despite the painful times that inspired his music, Springfield says he's comfortable with his body of work and even holds some fondness for his time on daytime TV.

"I'm very proud of it," he says. "I struggled for a long time to have some kind of voice in the musical world, and there were roads that maybe would have been better not taken, or some that would have been better taken, but I don't really regret anything, because acting and the music was definitely an interesting symbiotic relationship that kind of worked, and it surprised me that it worked to the extent that it did."

Springfield says performing live is still his favorite part of the music business because it gives new life to his music every time he plays it.

"It's a great feeling, and it's a way the songs continue to live for me, just to see the connection that I still have through them, with an audience," he says. "It doesn't get any more personal than singing about your life, and having someone go, 'I hear that, and that was part of my life, too.' "