Rick
Springfield was born Richard Springthorpe in Sydney, Australia
in 1949.His
father was a career soldier, and Rick grew up on army bases
around the country.He
received a guitar for his thirteenth
birthday and described his love of playing as "as hardcore as you
can get at sixteen."
Rick's first band, The Jordy Boys, played regularly
in the rough pubs of Melbourne, leading him to leave school and join
his first full time rock band, Rock House. They earned a
reputation strong enough to be invited to play to troops in Vietnam
during the late 60's.
Back in Australia, Rick moved into the now
legendary pioneering Australian rock act Zoot. He joined with
Beeb
B, who went on to join the Little River Band, and Daryl Cotton, who
went
on to form the also now legendary Sherbet.Zoot soon became
one of
the biggest acts in Australia and had a top 10 single with a cover
of "Eleanor Rigby," styled in the band's unique, relentless pop/rock
style. Rick
subsequently won awards for the country's best
guitarist and composer.
Rick's debut solo
single "Speak To The Sky" hit # 1 in Australia in 1971, prompting
record
company interest from the States. He was subsequently signed to the
Capitol label, which sent him to London to record his debut album, Beginnings.
Originally released in 1971 in Australia, the album was released
the following year in the United States, from which a remix of
"Speak To
The Sky" reached the top 15.
Rick
said at the time, "I raced over there thinking, this is it! But
things didn't quite work out that way." He went on to describe
the next few years as the worst of his life, mainly because he wasn't
in control of his direction. The record label was trying to mold
Rick
into the next David Cassidy.
"Yeah, 'Speak to The Sky'
was a hit over here, but it didn't really translate to the album.
The
album was a bit different... you know, marketing me as a teen idol when
the stuff on the record was not what teen idols were doing at the
time."
There was actually a lot more to Rick than your
average teen idol, as he was not exactly mainstream pop.
The 1973 album Comic Book
Heroes proved that. It was critically acclaimed but
commercially did not live up to expectations. The cover art to Comic Book Heroes remains
as legendary today as when
it was first released. It featured Rick in a white superhero
outfit,
with a gatefold sleeve that has comic book art for each song
title. "I had always loved comic book
artwork," Rick explains. "I saw something like that
in a magazine and thought it would look good on the album. It was
a little confusing for some people, though, 'cause some people
didn't quite get it."
Unfortunately
there were also problems with immigration officials and unhelpful
management. One of the questionable decisions made by management
and the label was to take Rick's Comic Book Heroes cover
concept and
turn it into an animated TV series. Starring Springfield as
himself, "Mission Magic" featured him as a crime-fighting superhero,
complete with musical soundtrack, released in 1974. In keeping with the times, the lead song was
titled "We're Gonna Have A
Good Time."
"Yeah,
that was a mistake," Rick laughs. "I don't know. They
started out with
all these great ideas of "Yellow Submarine" but ended up a Xeroxed
version of every other cartoon show on the air. So it was fairly
unadventurous and a little disappointing. But it was a writing
exercise for me, a new song every week. I played
myself. It was a very bizarre concept. I got residuals from
it for
quite a while. It was really strange."
This is where Rick
decided he had to get off. Fighting for release from his record
label
and management contract took two years out of his career.
"Yeah,
I took one of my infamous breaks. For about three or four years I
was
sorting out contractual problems, trying to get out of my
contract. I
signed everything away when I first came here(to America). I was
pretty green. I
got taken advantage of in certain ways, signed my life away; then
when I wanted to leave it was very difficult.
There was nothing I
wanted to do, so I just took the time off. I kind of made that a
habit, a couple of years between albums."
It was a financially strained period in which
Rick was for the most part flat broke. He continued writing and
recording and in 1976 released an album, Wait
For Night, for the Chelsea Records label.In
a bizarre twist, upon the release of the album the label promptly
went bankrupt and prematurely closed down his musical career once
again.This
time the gap between albums was not to be his own
doing.
"It
was pretty traumatic," admits Rick of the situation, "but I think I was
already working on some new
stuff, so as long as I am working on new stuff, I have a focus.
There
were certainly no telltale signs of it going under; it was a
complete surprise."How did he survive
during those
hard years?"Er,
girlfriends!"
"Actually, strangely enough, Mission
Magic supported me for a decent
amount of that time. Residuals from Australia, from the "Mission
Magic" show. I
remember being broke and getting a couple of
checks every now and then. That saved my butt. So there is
a reason
for everything."
Rick began to pursue
acting and was coached by people such as Vincent Chase and Malcolm
McDowell.With
a friend he rented a tiny theater in Hollywood to
present plays for friends and relatives and anyone else who was
interested.Springfield
created sets and costumes and worked out
lighting for the plays. A representative of Universal was
convinced
by one of these plays and signed the actor to a two year
contract.
What followed was an endless round of guest appearances on
shows like "The Six Million Dollar Man," "The Rockford Files,"
"The Incredible
Hulk," and "Wonder Woman."At this point Rick was
actually faring better as an actor than as a musician.
Another
set of recordings led to further trauma in Rick's life. Beautiful
Feelings was originally recorded in 1978. It didn't see
the light of
day until 1982, when it was released without Rick's approval or his
involvement, excepting the vocals.
"That was an album we
couldn't get a deal on. It was the manager I was with. The
next
album I did was Working
Class Dog; then I separated from them and they
put Beautiful
Feelings out as kinda, 'Well, we've still got this!'They took
everything off, except for the vocals.It was some old
songs and
they just added the horrible Hollywood studio crap."
Continuing
with his acting, Rick landed his biggest acting break by becoming a
regular on the hit daytime soap "General Hospital" as Dr. Noah
Drake.
You
were on there for a few years, weren't you?
"No, about a
year and a half, but it was at a time when it was a really successful
show."
Never giving up on music, Rick wrote and recorded
new songs, mainly because he needed new material to play live
and tour with. A tape of those songs found its way to
RCA.
"Actually, the boss at RCA had always liked Comic Book
Heroes. No one wanted to sign me
at that point, and they kinda thought about it for a year and said,
well, okay, let's try it! I had written a bunch of songs, because
I
was getting ready to go out and play 'em, and those songs became the
album."
The debut album for RCA was Working
Class Dog,
released in 1981. What was to follow was nothing short of
stunning. That year saw Rick's first U.S. number one single,
"Jessie's
Girl," a double platinum result for the album, a sold out U.S. tour,
and a
Grammy award for best male vocal.
source:
www.MelodicRock.com, phone interview, June 1997
