Rick Springfield is the gift that keeps on giving. The Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, musician, actor, and best-selling author who's been wowing fans for more than forty years, says he manifests life and what he wants out of it. And luckily for us, what he wants is to just keep doing what he's doing. 'I love what I do, and I think that's the most important thing...I don't want to sit on the beach and drink mai tais and retire. If I did that, I'd want to get a band together and go and play.' Ironically, while he has no plans to become a beach bum, he is promoting his new rum brand, Beach Bar Rum , with his partner and longtime pal, Sammy Hagar, and a whole heck of a lot of other stuff. It's hard to believe this iconic heartthrob is 74, still electrifying on stage and off as he was in the '70s and '80s, he's just released brand new material...his 23rd studio album, and first in five years, Automatic , 20 new songs he wrote, produced, and performed all on his own. Stylistically, he describes it somewhere in between his 1981 certified U.S. platinum Working Class Dog and 1985's Tao , filled with guitar-based power pop and keyboards. He explains the record's title track he dreamt about. "I'm really not quite sure what it's about. I woke up at three in the morning, wrote down the song I had in my head, got up the next day, and finished it. But it was just kind of stream-of-consciousness stuff. There's a message in there. I just haven't figured out what it is yet.' Whatever message you take from it, one thing's for certain -- you won't get the poppy tune out of your head or the remaining 19 tracks. His goal, he says -- 'solid three-minute tunes with the biggest hooks I could come up with.' Mission accomplished. The album was engineered by and dedicated to Springfield's friend and longtime sound man, Matty Spindel, who passed away late last year. We caught up with Springfield backstage before his New York performance at The Paramount in Huntington last month to hear all about it and more, including his keys to longevity, 39-year marriage to Barbara Porter (who was right there with us during the interview) strategies for positive mental and physical wellness, and his "pretend DJ" gig on SiriusXM. This is a LifeMinute with the one and only Rick Springfield.
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00:00 Hey, I'm Rick Springfield and you're watching Life Minute TV.
00:12 Rick Springfield is the gift that keeps on giving.
00:15 At 74, the Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, actor and best-selling author says he manifests
00:21 life and what he wants out of it.
00:22 Luckily for us, what he wants is to just keep doing what he's doing.
00:27 He's just released his first record in five years, Automatic, 20 power guitar and keyboard-driven
00:33 pop tracks he wrote, produced and recorded all on his own.
00:37 We caught up with Springfield backstage before his New York City stop at the Paramount last
00:41 month to hear all about it and more.
00:44 This is a Life Minute with Rick Springfield.
00:47 You know, you find inspiration where you can.
00:49 There's a lot more to write about as I get older too.
00:52 It's about God and there's a couple of songs on there celebrating the lives of two friends
00:58 that I lost.
00:59 Yeah, so as we get older, there's more to write about really.
01:09 The world is Gaga moving to Baja.
01:11 I can relate.
01:12 Yeah, we all want to go to Baja, I guess.
01:14 I dreamt that Automatic, actually, the song.
01:17 I really, not quite sure what it's about.
01:20 I woke up at three in the morning and wrote down this song that I had in my head and got
01:25 up the next day and finished it.
01:28 But it's kind of stream of consciousness stuff.
01:32 There's a message in there, I just haven't figured it out yet.
01:35 How does it work for you?
01:36 Is it mostly stream of consciousness or do you come up with the music first?
01:40 Well, yeah, it's inspiration first, which comes from no writer really knows where the
01:46 inspiration comes from.
01:47 But then it's just hard work, the sweat of finishing the song.
01:51 The initial inspiration is a gift if it comes.
01:55 So that's the joy of writing is really is hoping for that to come.
01:59 It doesn't always come and sometimes it comes and it's not so great.
02:03 Sometimes it comes and it's great.
02:05 So it varies.
02:06 How do you know when it's not so great?
02:09 Well, you don't.
02:10 You think every song's great.
02:11 I think every song is a great song.
02:13 If I finish it, I think it's a great song.
02:15 If I don't, then I don't finish it.
02:18 But the thing about writing is it's absolutely personal and that you're the judge and jury
02:22 as you're going along as to whether it's working or whether it's not or whether it's making
02:27 sense or has any kind of appeal.
02:30 So it's just you and I love that process.
02:33 Sure is you.
02:34 I mean, you did all the guitars, all the keyboards.
02:36 I did it differently.
02:37 I would write a song that I'd go in my studio and record it and finish it.
02:42 Whereas normally I'd write all the songs and then go in and record them all at once.
02:46 So I did one song, finish it, wrote another song, finish it.
02:49 So it was easier for me just to play everything rather than keep calling people in.
02:53 So I just did that.
02:54 Did you always know you wanted to be a musician when you were younger?
02:58 No, I wanted to be a DJ first, unfortunately, which be careful what you wish for.
03:02 I'm also a DJ on Sirius XM, but not real DJ, pretend DJ.
03:08 Music caught me about 11 years old.
03:10 I was living in England at the time.
03:12 My dad was in the army and we had a school fete and there was a kid in a crowded back
03:17 room and the kid had a guitar across the room.
03:20 And I'm like, as soon as I saw it, I said, "I want to touch that guitar."
03:24 So I went over to him and said, "Can I hold your guitar?"
03:28 And he gave it to me and I could play a couple of notes on it.
03:32 And I said, "Wow, I can play the guitar."
03:36 But I was just hitting open strings.
03:38 So from then on, that's all I wanted to do.
03:41 Were you totally self-taught or did you have any lessons at all?
03:45 No, I didn't have lessons.
03:47 I'm just ear trained and would find guys who were better than me and I'd learn from them.
03:53 My guitar playing kind of slowed down as far as the learning process when I started writing
03:58 songs.
03:59 And every time I'd pick up a guitar, I'd try to write a song rather than trying to play
04:03 a lick or something.
04:04 So songwriting really took over when I was about 20.
04:10 Keyboards too?
04:11 Same thing?
04:12 Oh, I actually learned the keyboards from getting a guitar and finding the notes on
04:16 the piano that matched the notes on the guitar.
04:19 And so I learned the chords on the piano.
04:21 And you just keep playing and you get better.
04:24 But I wouldn't really call myself a great piano player at all by any stretch of the
04:28 imagination, but I can play.
04:30 And that helps with synths and things like that because a lot of it is tweaking and experimenting
04:37 with all the different sounds rather than just playing like Victor Borg.
04:43 What about acting?
04:44 How did you get into that?
04:45 I got into acting because my brother was an actor in Australia.
04:49 And I always had it in the back of my mind, "Well, if my brother can do it, I could do
04:53 that."
04:54 But I got into it in between record deals.
04:56 I was doing nothing and got kicked off Columbia Records in 1973.
05:01 I wasn't touring and I was just sitting in my apartment.
05:05 And there was a guy suing me at the time.
05:08 It was an ex-manager of mine.
05:11 And his ex-wife, who he was divorcing at the same time, she saw me on the street one time
05:16 and she said, "What are you doing?"
05:17 I said, "Nothing."
05:18 She said, "Why don't you come to acting class with me?"
05:20 So I started going to acting class just arbitrarily.
05:23 And it really saved my life because I met the community of actors and fell in with them.
05:29 And I met a guy named Doug Davidson, who's still my best friend.
05:33 I started dating his sister at the time, actually.
05:36 And my mom always said that his family saved my life because I was really lost at that
05:40 point in America.
05:42 Finding their family was really what got me back on track.
05:48 Did your family see you become famous?
05:50 Oh, yeah.
05:51 Yeah, sure they did.
05:52 My dad died just as Jessie's Girl was going out of the charts, which was the real yin
05:56 yang of life.
05:59 But yeah, my mom toured around Europe with us and came over and lived with us.
06:04 And she was very-- she told me-- she was the one I was always fighting.
06:10 She'd say, "You've got to do your-- I'm supposed to be doing homework and I'll be playing my
06:13 guitar."
06:14 And she'd knock on the bedroom door and say, "Richard, do your homework."
06:18 So I thought she was always pushing me away from music.
06:21 But now I realized she wasn't.
06:23 She was just scared.
06:25 She really wanted me to go for it.
06:27 And when I had the choice to go back to school after I'd been asked-- I'd actually gotten
06:31 kicked out of school in 11th grade because I just wasn't going at all.
06:35 And I had a chance to go back to private school and kind of hopefully finish high school.
06:40 And this guy who was fairly famous in Australia-- I was living in Australia at the time-- came
06:45 knocking on my door and asked my parents if I was home, would I like to play in his band?
06:51 Which it was a professional band, you know.
06:52 So I went to my parents and said, "What should I do?"
06:55 And instead of saying-- which I was sure they'd say, "You've got to go back to school.
06:59 You have to have an education."
07:00 They said, "What do you want to do?"
07:02 I said, "I want to play guitar."
07:04 So I went with this guy and we ended up actually up in Vietnam in '68, '69 playing for the
07:09 American troops.
07:11 But it was the start of me being a professional musician, I guess you'd call it.
07:15 >>Oh, gosh.
07:16 You've seen a lot.
07:17 What's your secret to longevity?
07:18 How do you keep going?
07:20 >>Fear.
07:21 [laughter]
07:22 No, I just love it.
07:25 I love what I do and I think that's the most important thing is there's nothing I'd rather
07:28 do.
07:29 You know, I don't want to sit on the beach and drink Mai Tais and retire, you know.
07:35 If I did that, I'd want to get a band together and go and play.
07:40 Because when we go on vacation, I bring a guitar with me and I'm on the beach and I'm
07:44 playing, writing songs or just playing.
07:47 And, you know, I need to do something.
07:49 I'm not one of those guys that can just sit still.
07:52 So I love doing it.
07:53 It keeps me alive.
07:54 >>Yeah.
07:55 What kind of music do you listen to?
07:56 Like, what do you particularly like?
07:57 >>I've been listening to a lot of EDM lately because I love the big kick drum and everything.
08:03 But I listen to all the stuff that I loved when I was a kid, the Beatles and all the
08:09 '60s English stuff.
08:10 You know, I have playlists, Jackson Browne.
08:12 I love Louis Capaldi of the newer people.
08:15 Unless they're like a Taylor Swift where they're a phenomenon, it's really hard to kind of
08:19 pinpoint who's who now because there's no -- there doesn't seem to be a lot of loyalty.
08:23 The way I grew up in the music business and the way everybody that I know grew up, you
08:28 know, you started playing clubs and you worked your way through and you wrote terrible songs
08:32 and they booed you off stage or they didn't clap and then you got better and better and
08:36 better and better and you learned your art, you know.
08:39 And it became part of you.
08:41 These, you know, these American Idol kind of things, the way they happen, bang like
08:45 that, the artist doesn't really have a chance to find out who they are or what kind of music
08:50 is really in them.
08:52 They get songs presented to them.
08:54 And I see songs now with like 20 writers on them and I don't know.
08:57 I mean, I love to see just one person writing a song because I know the song came from them
09:01 and that's -- it's what, you know, their heart.
09:04 I do hear great music.
09:06 It just seems very fractured now to me.
09:08 Back when I was growing up, it was us versus them.
09:10 It was the parents versus, you know, you radical kids that loved all this wild music.
09:17 But now it seems so fractured, you know, so many different types of music, so many judgments,
09:23 you know, and the whole social media thing where there's so much criticism.
09:30 So it's a different business, very different business.
09:33 What about guitarists?
09:34 Any guitarists that you admire?
09:36 Yeah, Jeff Beck was my favorite player and Hendrix, of course.
09:40 Hendrix was amazing on stage.
09:43 But Jeff Beck was just beyond belief.
09:47 I don't even know what he's doing.
09:49 I don't know if anybody knows.
09:50 No one -- you hear no one copying him because it's just impossible to -- David Gilmour and
09:55 that kind of ilk when there were solos in songs.
10:00 Now I don't -- I mean, you don't hear solos in songs anymore.
10:03 So there's no guitar gods now.
10:06 I mean, there's no new ones anyway, you know.
10:09 I mean, after Eddie Van Halen, there's really -- the rock guitar has gone the way of rock
10:13 music.
10:14 It's just not played.
10:15 You know, there are great bands still.
10:18 I mean, all the bands that I still like are rock bands, like, you know, Queens of the
10:23 Stone Age and I like -- you know, and the Foo Fighters and bands that are bands.
10:30 It's not a Broadway show, you know.
10:31 It's a band up there sweating and screaming their way through a set.
10:35 I love that.
10:36 And tell us about your partnership with Sammy and your cocktail over there.
10:46 Let's whip it out.
10:48 Yes, I -- well, I've known Sammy since, you know, I've Done Everything for You that he
10:53 wrote and thank you, Sammy.
10:55 Well, he created Beach Bar Rum and I kind of partnered in with him, but it's amazing.
10:59 It's great rum and he knows what he's doing with it all and, you know, we've got the music
11:04 thing in common and so it's a very natural kind of thing.
11:08 He's another one, revered by so many.
11:11 You guys together make sense.
11:12 Yeah, he's already had a home run with the tequila, so I mean, you know, it seemed the
11:17 right move.
11:18 What do you make with that?
11:20 Do you drink that straight off or do you make cocktails?
11:22 I actually like the Cola Spice, which is a dark rum and it's amazing.
11:25 I just have that straight out of the freezer.
11:28 It's incredible.
11:29 What's your favorite comfort food?
11:30 Anything my wife makes.
11:32 She's the source of me eating well, because she does too and she loves all that and so
11:37 we've gone into it together.
11:39 We eat very clean, you know, organic and so it's hard on the road too.
11:43 You know, you go to a very restaurant and it's still not like the great food that you
11:47 can get at home, so that's one of the most difficult things, actually, is eating on the
11:51 road.
11:52 What about workout regimens?
11:53 You're in great shape.
11:54 What do you do?
11:55 Planet Fitness, if I may plug you.
11:57 The purple torture chamber.
11:59 Right.
12:00 I go there and do like an hour every day.
12:02 When I'm home, I have a trainer and I have a gym just up the street from me.
12:07 What about mental wellness?
12:08 What do you do to decarbonize?
12:09 I drink heavily, yeah.
12:11 No, I try and be grateful and have gratitude for what's going on in my life.
12:16 I love being home.
12:18 Home is very nurturing to me.
12:20 My family's very nurturing.
12:22 I hug a dog when I'm down and you have to constantly monitor it.
12:26 It's like working out your body.
12:28 You have to constantly do it.
12:30 Dark thoughts will creep in and you just have to be constantly aware.
12:34 You guys have been together a long time.
12:36 We have, yeah.
12:37 What do you attribute it to?
12:38 Any tips for that?
12:40 We work through things.
12:41 We work through things.
12:42 We've had a lot, especially because when we started dating, that's when everything started
12:47 to hit with me, so it was a tornado for both of us.
12:50 It was hard enough with just one person, but we basically knew we were right for each other,
12:57 even when we just wanted to throw the other one out a hotel window.
13:01 You knew after the storm that you would get back together.
13:07 We eventually just got to the point where when we started to argue, I'd just start laughing.
13:13 "Okay, this is argument 14B."
13:17 Or you'll take time out and then go away and then come back and go, "Okay, that was bull.
13:24 I'm sorry."
13:26 Basically, we just never got divorced, I think, is really the key.
13:29 You want to tell us any more about Working Class DJ?
13:32 My laughable DJ gig.
13:35 Why is it laughable?
13:36 Because I don't know what I'm doing.
13:38 When I originally got into it, my manager kept saying, "No, you've got to write it out
13:41 and read it and be like professional."
13:44 I said, "That's not what I do, dude.
13:47 I'm just going to get up there and have fun and I'm not going to pretend that I do or
13:51 that I like the song even.
13:52 If I don't like the song, I'll say it."
13:56 Rick Springfield's I Want My 80s Tour.
14:03 And then playing live, you just finished a tour, the 80s tour.
14:07 It was amazing.
14:08 I have an incredible band and we love each other and it shows on stage and that translates
14:14 to the audience.
14:15 We went out with some great people, the Hooters, Paul Young from England, Tommy Two-Tone, who
14:20 we've kind of taken under our wing, and John Waite from the Tubes, we did some shows with.
14:26 There's really some great people out there coming back to play.
14:29 And how will tonight, for example, be different?
14:31 Well, it's a longer show.
14:33 We have an hour and a half to two hours so we can play.
14:37 We throw a lot more into it, a lot more songs into it.
14:40 Some of the deeper cuts and some of the songs we don't have time to get to when we're doing
14:46 a shorter set with a bunch of other artists.
14:49 It's all the same kind of energy.
14:51 We all just love to play live.
14:53 I hope the audience go away with a feeling that they had a release for a couple hours
15:00 and peace and joy and we're able to take some deep breaths afterwards and go, "That was
15:07 great," you know, and just find peace for two hours.
15:11 I mean, that's what I do on stage.
15:13 I find peace and excitement on stage.
15:18 That's really hard to be down and worry about what's going on in the world when you're engaged
15:24 so fully.
15:25 The ones that engage fully, I think, they get the most out of it.
15:29 What does music do for people?
15:31 Music touches you in places that nothing else does.
15:35 And not even a movie or, I mean, music can play up here all day long.
15:41 It can trigger a moment.
15:42 A moment can trigger music.
15:43 It just hits you in a place that you don't fully understand.
15:46 I don't fully understand either.
15:49 Why it is a melody, there's 12 notes.
15:51 How is there so many amazing melodies out of 12 notes?
15:55 And yet, you know, like the Ninth Symphony can make me cry and I don't even understand
16:01 half the words.
16:02 It lives with you and it becomes part of you, really does become part of your life.
16:06 I have songs like that myself that are really meaningful and certainly remind me of certain
16:12 times in my life.
16:14 What's something you want to do that you haven't done yet?
16:15 Yeah, I like to skydive.
16:16 I haven't done that yet.
16:17 What does Barbara think about that?
16:18 She's going, "Ew."
16:19 Yeah, what do you do when you're not working?
16:24 I hang out with my family.
16:27 The one thing with COVID was that we found we really love to be together.
16:32 You know, it was high and high and high and high, but we hang out a lot now on the off
16:36 times.
16:37 You know, there'll be, there's writing times when I go away, but I can also write now around
16:42 the house, which I never used to be able to do.
16:44 I used to have to kind of lock myself in a room and don't make any noise or anything,
16:48 but now I can just do it in the middle of my life, which is great.
16:53 What's something your current self would tell your younger self?
16:57 Don't trust everybody.
16:58 When I, early on in my career, I thought it was everyone was in for my benefit.
17:03 You know, a writer was coming to do a story on me for my benefit.
17:08 He wanted to help me.
17:09 I didn't realize that they were more interested in their career and that I was just an adjunct
17:14 to that.
17:15 And that's okay.
17:16 That's normal.
17:17 That's how it should be.
17:18 But sometimes you can get yourself in trouble thinking somebody is doing it for the good
17:22 of you and it's really for their benefit and you can get hurt by it.
17:26 And so, you know, I mean, everyone has to learn that their own way, but I did learn
17:30 it.
17:31 And you generally end up losing money and friends and all kinds of stuff if you go,
17:37 you know, if you are unaware of that.
17:39 So everybody has to go through it.
17:41 That's really the only thing I'd say is don't believe everything you hear, I guess.
17:45 Don't believe everything everyone tells you.
17:47 I've had people try and talk me out of managers and they're terrible.
17:51 They're doing this.
17:52 Let me do this.
17:54 And I was, you know, young and we're all inexperienced because it only happened, you know, the first
18:00 blush of success only happens once.
18:02 You know, it doesn't happen a second time because there's only one first time.
18:06 And so we're all new at it and we can all be swayed by it.
18:11 So yeah, there's not really much I'd say because it's really a learning process and that's
18:16 how you grow.
18:17 What's your biggest life advice?
18:19 I'm a big believer in, you know, manifesting what you want.
18:25 And I've done that since I was 17 when I read a book called Think and Grow Rich, which is
18:30 not about getting rich.
18:31 It's about, it's actually a more spiritual book about visualizing and not just kind of
18:37 generally wishing, "Oh, I wish I could do that," or something.
18:40 You focus on what you want and it's very powerful because it's the only thing that we have that's
18:45 different from the animals.
18:46 We can envision a different future for ourselves.
18:49 And I started then visualizing what I wanted, which was to be in America.
18:53 I was in Australia in a band and visualized being in America and being successful and
18:59 a musician.
19:00 I see it every night and I meditate on it.
19:03 That's very powerful stuff.
19:05 It's hard to keep up, especially when something doesn't happen right away, but it's not a,
19:09 "Okay, I want this to happen by three months," or "I'm going to give this crap up."
19:14 But it's just staying with it and not saying no.
19:19 And I've had no said a lot of times.
19:20 Every artist has had no said a lot.
19:23 It can get pretty lonely late at night when it's just you and you've heard no for the
19:28 hundredth time.
19:30 There needs to be a spiritual sense.
19:32 You have to have some kind of spiritual sense.
19:34 You can't do it on your own.
19:35 Whether there is a God or not, or whether there is Jesus or Buddha or whatever, you
19:40 need a spiritual belief.
19:42 And I've certainly gone like this with my spirituality and I've seen when it's not
19:47 been there and how dry and empty I felt and I felt like I was totally on my own.
19:52 So when you do have a spiritual belief, it gives you courage and it gives you, it's
19:56 not just you.
19:58 You could ask any writer, any writer, where they got their inspiration for their most
20:03 successful whatever and they don't, "I don't know.
20:06 I mean I knew this person or I had this story in my head, but where did the story come from?
20:11 Well, it just happened in my life, but where did the whole story come from?
20:15 I don't know.
20:16 I just wrote it, I guess."
20:19 It comes through you.
20:21 There is hard work of sitting down and actually finishing it, but the initial inspiration
20:26 is still I think from the gods and the muse, a big believer in the muse.
20:31 When he's on stage, are women just all over you?
20:33 Does that ever bother you, Barbara?
20:35 No, she knows where it is and I know where it is.
20:39 A lot of the fan thing is memories or it's something that's projected on you.
20:44 I mean I'm just a guy and at first it's a little, as far as I'm concerned, at first
20:49 it was a little, "Whoa, maybe I am cool."
20:52 But then after a little while you go, "No, it's not me.
20:55 It's not me."
20:56 It's not you.
20:57 I was walking down the street a year ago and nobody was looking at me.
21:01 The girls weren't turning and going, "Hey, that's a handsome fella."
21:05 Eventually you realize it's not about you, it's about them, it's about the fans.
21:09 And I realized that a couple of years into it that for them I'd still be playing to three
21:14 people at a holiday inn.
21:17 Feeling.
21:18 Nothing more than feeling.
21:21 To hear more of this interview, visit our podcast, Life Minute TV on iTunes and all
21:25 streaming podcast platforms.
21:27 (upbeat music)