Renowned psychotherapist Virginia Satir once said that individuals should not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define them. It’s a mantra Rick Springfield has embraced throughout a career dating roughly six decades since he first plugged in a guitar.
Springfield’s cultural imprint can be found on the singles charts, the soap opera landscape and other roles that have found him popping up on prime-time television, Broadway and on the silver screen. And one he’ll be sharing when he comes to Westbury on July 9.
Throughout his career, the septuagenarian Aussie has never abandoned his first love of playing guitar and is still recording new material while still accommodating a diehard fanbase whose roots date back to his early ’80s success.
Springfield’s latest move is being part of the “I Want My ’80s Tour,” a live music package that’s finding him share a bill with a handful of peers from that decade and an opportunity he’s excited to be part of.
“We’re going to have wall-to-wall hits played by some great bands and artists,” he said. “Wang Chung, who I was a fan of in the ‘80s is on the bill along with John Waite, who is a good friend and who I think has one of the best rock voices. Paul Young is also coming out on the road. I was a fan of and brought his bass player out from England after I heard him play on some of my songs. There is a lot of love there.”
Springfield’s early accomplishments found him scoring success as both a guitar-slinging pop star and a soap opera heartthrob back in 1981. That was the year his fifth studio album, the multi-platinum “Working Class Dog,” hit the racks at the same time that General Hospital became a must-see soap opera.
The former yielded a handful of hits (“Jessie’s Girl,” “I’ve Done Everything for You,” “Love is Alright Tonight”) along with a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. The latter found him playing fictional playboy Dr. Noah Drake, a role that calcified a teen idol image he neither wanted nor sought.
“It was a good starter and a good match to the rocket ride that followed,” he admitted. “It’s been a double-edged sword. When I first started, everyone thought I was this daytime one-dimensional guy who someone handed a song to and happened to stay in tune for three minutes in the studio. And then ‘Jessie’s Girl’ was right there and it’s a natural thing to think the two go together. They don’t and never have. They wanted me to sing on my original appearances on General Hospital and I knew it was going to be a problem with me being on the show because it was becoming so successful. I was just doing it for the money.”
He added, “It just happened that summer it became the show around the same time ‘Jessie’s Girl’ went to number one. They’ll probably be forever entwined, even though they aren’t from where they were born and everything. They are two very disparate children joined in fame, I guess,” he added with a laugh.
One lifelong struggle the 75-year-old singer-songwriter has been grappling with is depression. Transcendental meditation and plenty of self-reflection have helped him cope and this battle is something that gets shared whenever he takes the stage.
“I feel a lot better [lately] and have been working on it,” Springfield said. “I talk about it in my show every night because I think it’s an important thing to talk about it and I know what it is. It’s been with me since I was 16. I’m doing better with it. It hasn’t always been that way, but I’m doing better with it.”
Throughout Springfield’s prosperous career, his creative drive has been unabated, as evidenced by the release of Big Hits: Rick Springfield’s Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. Comprised of material starting with 1999’s Karma up through Automatic (2023), this double-CD anthology reflects the rather wide net Springfield casts whenever he hits the studio.
“There are a lot of those songs that are fan favorites and a lot of songs that I think are the best ones from the past 20 years,” Springfield said. “Some unreleased stuff like one I did with Sammy Hagar called ‘Party at the Beach Bar.’ There is also a song with the Foo Fighters called ‘The Man That Never Was,’ a new single called ‘Lose Myself’ and ‘Jessie’s Girl’ because we threw it on there as a re-recording. It sounds like the original, only bigger and stronger.”
Rick Springfield will be appearing on July 9 at Flagstar at Westbury, 960 Brush Hollow Rd., Westbury. For more information, visit www.livenation.com or call 877-598-8497.
