If you're wondering what Rick Springfield has been up to since his unanswered crush on "Jessie's Girl" become a pop classic in 1981, first check the numbers: The 69-year-old has his name on four platinum albums and 17 Top 40 songs and still plays around 100 concerts a year. Give ten minutes to the 2012 documentary "An Affair of the Heart" about his relationship with his fans who annually attend dozens of those shows or 10 pages to his 2010 autobiography "Late Late at Night" which Rolling Stone named one of the Top 25 greatest rock memoirs of all time. Or turn on the TV and catch him lately as Meryl Streep's bandmate/boyfriend in the 2015 film "Ricki and the Flash," a psychiatrist on Season 2 of "True Detective" or Lucifer on "Supernatural." Find yourself wondering what Springfield has been up to and the answer probably doesn't lie with him, but you.
Rick Springfield will be touring this winter and spring in support of his newly-released 17th studio album "The Snake King." We spoke to him over soba noodles and green tea before an appearance at San Francisco Sketchfest about the timing of fame, an Australian's sense of humor and the real identity of Jessie, whose girl he once wished he had.
Your new album "The Snake King" is a blues-rock album. Where did the idea for this approach come from?
For the lyrics I was writing, I thought a blues-based sound would lend itself better to them than pop rock. And I love blues, I was raised with blues.
If blues musicians were baseball cards, who is in your all-star pack?
Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King. Robert Johnson, Little Walter. I love Blues Harmonica. I had a great blues harmonica player named Jimmy Z who played on the album.
Did the title "The Snake King"" have something to do with [Doors lead singer] Jim Morrison calling himself The Lizard King?
No, I wasn't aware of that. Or I had forgotten about it by the time I was writing. The album has to do with God, the devil and sex. A guy named The Snake King was an appropriate character to talk about those things.
You said you wrote the lyrics first for this album?
For this album, they came together. The words guided which way I went musically, which is unusual. But I wrote them together.
The album's last song "Orpheus in the Underworld" is twice as long as the other songs on the album.
Four times as long. A lot of people fill out a long track with instrumentals. I just felt I had something to say so I kept writing until I felt like I'd done it. I was surprised it was that long. If you're doing a long track, you can't be just noodling.
Economy is kind of a hallmark of the songs you're famous for. And at the same time, you like to tease, build up to a guitar solo, by having a shorter version of it come first before the whole solo kicks in.
Keith Olsen, who produced "Jessie's Girl," taught me a lot about editing a song, keeping it interesting and not jerking off for your own sake. Maybe I dropped that a little on this album because I wanted longer solos.
I hate empty bars. We have a joke: "If we have spare tracks, put a guitar on it." It's probably just part of a natural path I take when I write. If you're writing a three-minute song, you don't have a second to waste.
You were already 30 years old when "Jessie's Girl" came out and was your first and biggest hit. What was it like having fame at 30 instead of 20?
I was famous in my 20s for releasing albums that didn't sell, for getting my picture in teen magazines and for being on a soap opera when I really saw myself primarily as a musician, not an actor. Gloria Stavers, who was in charge of 16 Magazine at the time, became my champion, telling anyone who would listen that I was more than a pretty face. But really I was famous for nothing. Or at least that's how I saw it.
I wouldn't have gotten this far if "Working Class Dog" had come along when I was 21 instead of 31. My dad had died right when "Jessie's Girl" came out. I'd already made a lot of mistakes and done a lot of growing up.
I'm real glad it worked out that way. Being successful at the age of a teen idol would have been a giant thing to live down.
Did I read in your autobiography that you weren't really interested in Jessie's girl?
No, I was very interested in her. She was part of a couple in a stained-glass class I was taking. But her boyfriend's name was Gary and "Gary's Girl" just didn't sound right. The name "Jessie" came from a Ron Jessie Los Angeles Rams T-Shirt I had at that time.
The documentary "An Affair of the Heart" seems to be about a certain kind of fame, enough to have fans who have supported you for decades but not so much that you're say, going to get assassinated by having a close relationship with them.
It came from meeting a lot of them. I couldn't meet them in the '80s because I might have lost an arm or a leg or something. Now you hear of people who've grown up with you, who have lives, who have families — judges, doctors, dog wranglers, people who have lived their life. And it hits me when I hear I've become a part of that life. I get it. I'm a fan of people like that too, who've been with me my whole life. It can make you a bit of a diva or it can make you very humble. I've chosen [to let] it make me humble.
Your autobiography is a lot more brash than that. And a lot of owning up to past mistakes.
I tried not to image-polish. It's kinda warts and all.
It feels like there are two very different sides of the same person. Your book is "I did a lot of crazy stupid stuff and I hurt a lot of people." The documentary seems to be about generosity.
They [filmmakers Sylvia Caminer and Melanie Lentz-Janney] took a tack with the film that it be about the fans. I've done a 180 on that for sure. I initially thought they were there to serve me. It took me a while to realize I'm there to serve them. That's how a career is built.
The autobiography does go chronologically more or less, and lists a lot of young dumb stuff. The documentary was about understanding that shift, that it was about them and not about me.
The autobiography ends before you reach that point in life.
Yeah, I guess so. Where I am mentally now would come in the second installment. People ask me, "Hey, are you gonna write another autobiography?" I need to leave a few years before that.
We're in the middle of an '80s pop culture revival with "Stranger Things" and "The Goldbergs" and soon, "Ready Player One" in movie theaters. You've obviously benefited some from this. What's your thoughts?
Everyone wants to be current. But I'm really OK if you see me as a memory from childhood. We all like music from that time. It's comforting. And mostly people who listened to me back then have been willing to come along with what I've done more recently.
What are you listening to now?
A newer band called Porcupine Tree. An English band from more my era called Be-Bop Deluxe. I really like the Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age. And the music from when I was growing up in Australia like the Easybeats still makes me happy.
What's the most Australian thing about you?
My self-deprecating sense of humor. Aussies don't want to know what a fucking big shot you think you are. Tall Poppy Syndrome — think you're big, you get your head chopped off.
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