Transcript of #2550 - Rick Springfield New

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I think something's going on. I don't know what that something is.

Yeah, I know. It's the whole argument of, um, you know, a species living long enough to surviving long enough to actually have faster than light or faster than light travel is— it's a tough one.

It is a tough one. Are we rolling? I think they probably have some unique propulsion system that has nothing to do with moving in one direction to another. I think they fold space and time. Yeah, this is what— yeah.

What is it? The, the The wormhole that brings the 2 things together so you skip all this.

Yeah, I think that's the theory, but I mean, obviously in practice—

But then that's them living— that's that species existing long enough, because we're like, we're getting close to it.

Yeah.

You know, and we're nowhere near that. So the species living long enough to achieve that and then come here is the, you know, that's the stumbling block I have.

Yeah, well, a lot of people have that stumbling block. I think it's also the possibility that they didn't evolve in the same violent world that we did. But then there's the question, well, then what gave them the motivation to innovate and move forward? Because for us, a lot of it is survival and competition, and that's the reason why people innovate in the first place.

Wars create great innovation.

I mean, the real— the more interesting theory is that they're monitoring us to make sure that we can successfully past this sort of adolescent phase of evolution that we're currently in.

Yeah.

That's why they hover over nuclear bases and shit.

We hope, we hope we get there. It's very debatable.

Yeah. Well, listen, man, thank you for being here.

Yeah.

It's kind of cool to meet you. It's fascinating. I mean, I listened to your music when I was in high school, which is crazy. And to see you look as good as you look now, I mean, we played a video. I don't know if you ever saw it. We were freaking out, like, this guy's like— how old are you?

77.

77? That's fucking incredible, dude, because a lot of your contemporaries, when they've, you know, even guys younger than you, they're falling apart. And you were out there singing Jessie's Girl like you wrote it a week ago. It was crazy.

That was actually a great comment. I really appreciate that because it's, uh, I'm, I'm still very passionate about playing music. And, you know, and they say, how did— why do you How can you deliver a song that you've played a million times? It's because of the energy of the audience, you know? I mean, I wrote the song, and to see an audience react like that to it, it's pretty difficult to just sit back and go, you know, so it charges me up too.

Well, it's nice that you still enjoy it and appreciate it because I think even though it's the dream for everyone to become a rock star, for some—

Yeah, it used to be.

I mean, for some people, something happens along the way and they just get so accustomed to it and they get, you know, worn out by it. And then they don't love it anymore, which is crazy.

I know. Well, obviously it depends on the person, you know, and it depends on whatever experiences they have. Um, I've had pretty good experiences. Um, and I just— I've always wanted to do it, you know. I mean, I— since I was 11 years old, when I first saw and held my first guitar, that was what I wanted to do. And really, it's kind of centered around playing guitar, although that's not what I'm necessarily known for, but that's what I enjoy the most, you know. And when I started to write, that kind of changed everything for me too. You know, it gave me a great forward focus rather than just playing, but going somewhere with the writing.

How old were you when you first started performing in front of people?

About 15. 15, I started playing. I, you know, I had a school band together, and then I'd I got kicked out of school, actually. I got kicked out of 11th grade. For what?

What happened?

I didn't show up anymore. I just, you know, I discovered the guitar and, um, and, and I was having— I was— I had a serious depression when I was a kid. I still deal with it, but, but, um, it— I was failing in the only arena that was available to me at the time, which was school. you know, with friends and school and work and all that, schoolwork, and I just wasn't doing well and it was really dragging me down and I started— discovered the guitar, started staying away from school because I couldn't face going to school. But, you know, instead of playing video games and getting stoned, which wasn't available to me at that point, I was reading Robert Bloch and August Derleth and great writers, because I loved horror, and playing the guitar. And that was my education, really, after— once I learned to read and write, you know, that was what I took out of school.

Where were you living?

I lived in Australia till I was 10, then we moved to England till I was about 13. And that was a big— that was a game changer for me.

Because your accent is weird.

Yeah.

It's like it's all over the place. It is, yeah. I'm trying to lock it in and figure out what the hell's going I know, there's some words I can't say with American accent.

I can't say Australia without— with an American accent. It's just not possible. Yeah, we moved to England. That's when I discovered girls and guitars. And that was like this— the beginning for me. It was a band called Cliff and the Shadows, Cliff Richard and the Shadows. They were before the Beatles. And yeah, it was— and then I moved back to Australia and then I went to Vietnam for a couple of months. And then I was, uh—

What were you doing in Vietnam?

Uh, '68, '69. I was, um— there was, uh, promoters in Saigon and Da Nang, and they were looking for— the closest Occidental country was Australia. So the GIs wanted to see, you know, girls that reminded them of home. So as long as we had a couple of girls in the band, they would hire you and you could tour Vietnam during the war zone. It was, it was pretty insane. We were there for about 4 months.

What was that like?

It was insane. I thought, oh, great, we'll make money, you know? And of course, we didn't make any money. We spent it all at the PX, and we weren't making much money anyway. But we based out of Saigon and Da Nang, and we toured from Cam Ranh Bay up to the DMZ. We were at the DMZ the Tet after the Tet where they'd crossed over— the Viet Cong crossed into the cities and everything and, like, done the big assault, you know, the Tet assault. We were there. We were 2 miles from the DMZ on that next Tet. And I remember New Year's Eve and the flares, you know, parachute flares start going off like this. And there's like a line of guys heading towards us. And it was freaking freaky. They, you know, they kept them at bay, but we got shot at and rocketed. And we'd be playing and there'd be mortars landing.

Yes.

Stayed over and we befriended some Navy guys at Marble Mountain, which is outside Da Nang. And we went back there for— to give them a free show, you know, because they were so appreciative, you know. I mean, they loved seeing the girls, but they wanted connection with home, you know.

Yeah.

So they'd take you into the tents and we'd play Hendrix and get stoned. And, you know, I mean, even though we're Australian, there still was There was a connection there. And so we met these guys, and we really got along well, and we stayed overnight with them at the— and we went out, all got in the bunkers, in the perimeter bunkers, and I stayed in the radio shack. And we got attacked, and I'm throwing mortars down the freaking tube of the radio shack. And it was—

You were throwing mortars?

It was freaky. Yeah, this is before— you couldn't do any of this now. This is 1968, '69. And it was, you know, you'd see tracers going off. The guys, the rest of the band were in perimeter bunkers. And it was pretty insane.

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We actually went up on a mission in an Apache helicopter too, um, because they said, you guys want to come? And we're all like, yeah. But it was, you know, we— it was pretty hairy.

Holy shit, man. That's got to be insane. Were you— when you were over there, were you like, what the fuck have I done?

It was fear. Sorry, it went down the wrong way. It was pretty much a fear factor the whole time.

Holy fuck, man.

We'd be, you know, we slept With, um, hang on. As you get older, you get a dry throat. We slept a lot of the times where the GIs slept in their, you know, their hooches and wake up with dust all over.

Is that you over there?

Oh yeah, there we are.

Holy shit, man.

That's what we slept in, the hooches, a lot of the time.

How old were you then?

Was I, uh, '67, '68, '69? I was 18. Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, and those jeans hadn't been washed in about 3 months.

You had to be like rethinking that decision to go over there.

Um, I was there and it was okay. We make the best of it. I mean, there was You kind of fall into a mindset, although I wasn't, you know, I wasn't going out, you know, shooting with the GIs, and that you fall into a mindset there that everything's legal, you know, anything goes. We did some pretty nutty things. At one point, we were standing in line with 40 other guys in a hut. And being serviced by this one Vietnamese hooker, and it was just—

Just 40 guys waiting for one hooker? Yeah, it was just tight. Holy shit.

And there was nothing much to do but smoke, you know. I smoked dope, started smoking dope there.

That was the first time?

Yeah, but I haven't— I didn't— I have not really been a doper, you know, but I did there, and it was kind of considered just the thing to do. Everybody was stoned. All the soldiers were stoned. All the time?

Yeah.

Wow.

You know, the last thing I would want to do is be high in a war zone.

Dude, I— we were in a— we're in Nha Trang, right, which is this beautiful beach town, and they go there for R&R because they could surf, right? But it was still dangerous. And we were in a— we'd stay in these— sometimes if we weren't staying on an army base, we'd stay in these old villas That were old French villas that were once beautiful and now were rat-infested, you know. I mean, we'd be sleeping on cots and rats would be going underneath. We got stoned. I remember one night we got stoned and the next thing you hear, machine gun right outside the house. And you hear the guy goes, hit the lights, hit the floor! So the lights go out and we all hit the floor. And you didn't know what was going on, but when you're stoned, it's like, oh my God. It could have been anything.

Holy shit, man.

But it was freaky. But being stoned helped you deal with it, you know, not have the constant fear. Although when the fear hit, if you're stoned, it's like you go over the top, you know. But it was just the way we deal with it. I remember we'd be playing for the troops, you know, we'd be playing on the back of a truck. And we played in firebases. We didn't— we all thought it was gonna be like a Bob Hope tour, you know, you come in a fleet of helicopters, you play, they, you know, they were sitting in bleachers, they applaud, you get in a helicopter, fly away. It was nothing like that. It was just a guy out of Saigon that hired us. And, um, what was I talking about? I get lost very easily. I have ADHD, and there's so much awesome shit around here to look at that I'm kind of a—

We were talking about getting stoned and—

Oh, yeah. We were sitting on a plane on the back of a truck, and there's the guys sitting there on their helmets with their M16s, right, just watching the show. And we finish, and this guy comes up to me, and he's stoned out of his head. He goes, I'm going to go out and see what I can kill now, man. And he puts his helmet on and walks out into the jungle with the company. But it was just bizarre experiences like that that now I look back, and go, what the fuck was I thinking? You know, it was unreal. And it's so weird because I remember Arthur C. Clarke telling the story about how he's sitting with a guy on a plane. He said, what do you do? He said, oh, during the war... And he went on for 2 hours about what happened during the war. And he says, what do you do now? He says, I'm an insurance salesman. And that was it. You know, like, what he does now was a—

Yeah.

But the whole— the war experience, you know, it's— you could go on forever because so much happens and it's such a— in a space, so much is lived, you know? And the fear is kind of one of— having that much fear constantly is pretty taxing. And I wasn't even— we weren't even going out and shooting, although we did We'd shoot everything from .45s to tanks. And we'd be driving along and get shot at. And like I said, we'd be playing, and the rockets or the mortars would start landing, and they'd hustle us into a bunker. But it was— you know, we weren't actually going out like those guys were and walking point, you know?

Well, that was also one of the strangest wars ever because it didn't make any sense why we were over there. And then when the soldiers came home and said, Instead of being greeted like heroes like they were in World War II.

That's spot on, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it was, uh—

It was really terrible for them because I know meeting them over there, they go, you know, that you think, oh, when they get over there, probably, yeah, we're here, we'll do a job, you know. All the ones I met were, dude, I don't know why we're here. I don't know what I'm doing here. All of them while they were, you know, fighting. So it's, uh, It was a bad war for sure.

No, one of the worst wars ever. And these guys coming back from that, it was just that— that experience must have been so different because you're over there, you're killing people, you don't know why you killed people, and then you're in the grocery store like that scene from— what's that movie? You know the movie I'm talking about?

Metal Jacket?

No.

Apocalypse?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Rainbow Road? Hurt Locker.

Remember when a guy comes back, he was, you know, defusing IEDs. He comes back and he's walking to the grocery store and he's just like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, the, the contrast between the two places is just too much. It's too crazy.

Yeah, it's— my mom said when I came back and they picked me up at the airport, she said a car backfired and I like jumped, and I don't remember it, but she said, you know, my eyes look kind of haunted.

I could only imagine.

Took me a while to kind of get through it.

Did you see people die over there?

What's that?

Did you see people die over there?

We saw trophy albums, which were kind of scary. They said a lot of the GIs kept trophy albums where they'd photograph like body parts or a guy that had a 50mm shell go through his head, you know, and it was pretty freaky. The leader of the band actually died when we got home from a disease he picked up over there, a lung disease. Died at 25.

What was it?

His name was Pete Watson. He was the leader of the band. I was the guitar player in the band. I wasn't the lead singer or anything. And he must have gone somewhere where we didn't go on the days off and, you know, picked up something.

Just some jungle disease?

Yeah, the doctor said, you been anywhere exotic lately? He said, I just got back from Vietnam. Why? Well, you got this thing in your lungs that is pretty rare. So, you know, I don't know if it was Agent Orange or if it was something he picked up from the— from, you know, whatever was in Vietnam. But yeah, he lasted about a year.

Oh, wow. And fortunately, none of you guys got it.

Yeah, we all raced to the doctors and got, you know, chest X-rays, but it was okay. It's weird. He, um, I said I was looking at— looking him up the other day, and it's, uh, didn't realize he was so young when he died. You know, he was older than me then, so seemed like an older guy, but he was only 25. Wow.

How much time in total were you over there for?

Uh, about 4 months.

Holy shit, man.

And there was a point where they wanted us to go play in North Vietnam. He said, we'll keep the choppers going. There's a troupe over there that wants you to come and play, and we'll keep the choppers going. So if we ever— if we get into trouble, you can get, you know, and luckily he said, no, we're not doing that.

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We'd had enough, uh, you know, of that experience.

What was the decompression like when you got back home?

I don't really remember because it's just one of those— I mean, I— the hardest thing for me was that I'd thrown a mortar down and it had hit somebody. And they came in the next day and said, hey, you got one, you got one. And that was— it still has a place, hard place to land in me, you know?

Yeah.

And that's really the— kind of the one thing I brought back with me that I couldn't really find a place for that to land. And still, it still seems like, you know, years ago, another guy, another place.

So, explain to me how this is happening. Like, where are you? Where you're throwing these mortars down?

Oh, it's a place called Marble Mountain. It's outside Da Nang. And it was a Navy encampment on the beach. And I was in the radio shack. And the guy— the band members were in the perimeter boxes, you know. And they said radio— you know, it was like the movies. Radio came in, actually, we're seeing movement over here, check for friendlies. And they said, no, no friendlies there. So they said, hey, you want to— You want to come over here? Throw some mortars down the tube. And it was John Wayne time, you know. I mean, I, as a young kid, I didn't really understand what I was doing. I said, oh, yeah, let's fire a gun, you know. So I threw the mortars down, about 5 or 6 mortars, which I could have easily lost a hand, you know. I mean, you kind of— that kind of thing. And they came in the next morning and said one of them had hit A VC.

Wow. How long did that sit with you for?

What's that?

How long did that sit with you for? Like, how long?

I think it's still there. You know, I mean, it doesn't— I— it's hard for me to, you know, kind of face that I was responsible for the end of a, you know, life, even though it's distant and it's war and I didn't really have anything to do with it and didn't really know what I was doing. But, you know, I was a kid and playing, like I said, John Wayne, but it was, um, it's, it's pretty heavy when I, you know, when I think about the reality of it.

Did you write any songs about that experience?

Um, no, I wrote about it in my autobiography, but, uh, It's not really— well, not yet. Hasn't been song material.

Yeah, because it seems like there's probably something there.

Oh yeah, there's definitely something there for sure.

I have—

I mean, not to commercialize it, but I have a record, new record coming out that deals with which probably could be elements from that. It deals with getting older and, you know, like my first album, Working Class Dog, was where I was 29, 30. It was all about getting laid, you know, because that's all a guy thinks of and that's what you write about. And but as you get older, there's other things to think about. So there's, you know, getting older, you know, the thinking of death as somewhere out there. And so you write about— I write about stuff that I think about, and that's what I've been thinking about. You know, sex is still in there, but not as much as it was when I was 29 or 30.

Of course not.

Yeah.

Well, it's kind of amazing because when you were young and when you first started on this musical journey, there were no 76-year-old rock stars. It didn't exist. And it was thought to be a young man's game, period. And when people got to be a certain age, they just stopped playing. And, you know, the Rolling Stones were like sort of the first to defy that.

Yeah.

I remember in '88, they put out an album and it was a big deal that, God, the Rolling Stones put out a new album? This is crazy. These guys are gonna go on tour. This is crazy.

I know, and they just recently said, well, I don't know if I can do it anymore. Keith did, right?

I know, recently now. I saw them at Circuit of the Americas, the racetrack out here. It was like 100,000 people 4 years ago, 3 years ago, whatever it was, when they played in Austin. It was fucking incredible, man. Mick has 2 trailers that are just gym equipment. He has 2 huge tractor trailers and the inside of it is just a gym.

That's awesome.

And that guy works out every day just so he can keep doing it.

Yeah, I mean, he's the inspiration as far as how far you can push it.

He's the canary in the coal mine.

The last— I mean, their last album, he sounds incredible.

Incredible.

Like he's 18, you know? I mean, Paulie is now starting to, you know, I love Paul McCartney. been— he was the guy I looked up to as a kid, you know, and he's starting to get a little, you know, a little weaker, but, um, but he's still amazing. I mean, to me, he's one of the great rock voices.

Oh, for sure.

Um, but Jagger is— it's crazy. I mean, he still sounds the same.

Not just sounds the same, but when he's on stage, he's moving.

He's nonstop.

Nonstop and dancing and moving and singing with emotion and And it seems just like when I saw you perform Jesse's Girl, like he's singing it like he still loves it, like he still appreciates the experience and never got jaded by it all.

Yeah, I think— I mean, I saw an interview recently with him and he said— and the guy said, you know, do you feel different? Is it because, you know, you've been this all your life? He goes, yeah, I feel different than other people because of it, you know. I feel separate from them. And I understand that there is a degree of that that just happens because it's not normal to get up in front of, you know, a thousand, a couple of thousand people and have them want to be there and to be with you and to sing, you know.

Yeah.

It's— I guess that's kind of the element of everyone wanting to be a rock star is as an actor, you're not— an actor's done on film or whatever and then played, you know, but the rock star has it on record, plus he's got it live. That live connection is, uh, I think what everybody kind of looks at in the end, as far as that's what I'd love to do, is have all those people go, yeah!

Well, it's also that experience is such a positive experience for everyone.

Totally.

For you, for them. It's a— when you— when I go to a live concert, I'm always amazed at how good it feels. Like, there's a— it's like you're on a drug. Like, you're feeling it. Like, it's like everyone is loving the music, the sound, the performers there, and the fact that they're actually right there. There's so much going on that it's like you walk out, they're like, that was fucking awesome.

I know. I feel like it's kind of taken the place of church, you know, where we go to commune with with our fellow, you know, humans, and we're all— it's different than a sports event because sports event is generally 2 sides, right? But when you're at a concert, everyone's pointing the same way.

Also, it's all positive. Yeah, like if your team loses, you don't leave there dejected. Yeah, if you're there to see, you know, fill in the blank, whatever band, and you leave there, you're like, fuck, that was awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, I say actually that our job is to give the audience 90 minutes, 2 hours of freedom from the crap that bothers them during the day.

Yes.

And it frees us too. You know, frees me when I don't think of all the shit that, that, you know, that the monkeys talk in my head. So it's a mutual, you know, mutual good feeling.

Yeah, 100%. And it's also, it's like, it's such a uniquely positive thing that you can give to people.

Mm-hmm.

And what if you, if you can perform to your fans every night, the amount of positivity you're spreading and the amount they're receiving and you're receiving is just— what a unique life, because the average person will never experience what you experience on a normal night.

Yeah, that's probably true. I think there are different very, you know, version of that. I mean, like, you're, you know, you understand that. You get a lot of attention for what you do, you know. It's basically someone— somewhere inside you going, someone's noticing me, what I do. I'm not just— it's not just, you know, because we create art. Art, art, we create art Because we just have to. And art doesn't exist to be liked. Our ego wants it to be liked. And it's our ego, I think, that that whole thing charges, you know, the whole audience thing charges. But I think if you don't have any, any ego, you're not going to get into the business anyway.

Right.

And I think it feeds that. And I think It's the smart person who can try and put it into perspective and not, you know, like certainly Mick Jagger has put it into perspective.

Yeah.

He certainly had time to put it into perspective and his is, you know, a huge experience. But I think Paul McCartney, the same way, is very— seems, you know, considering what he's done, he's amazingly grounded, I think.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, just to be not completely insane.

Yeah.

When you're that famous for that many years.

The most famous.

I think everyone has to have an ego, and the ego kind of gets you to the dance. But if— I think if you're objective about it, and if you're smart about it, you realize that, like, serving the ego is— it's a fruitless effort. It's— there's— That's not the way to do it.

No, I agree.

I think the way to do it is to eventually transfer from, I want all these people to like me, to, I want to put all my energy into whatever it is, the craft, whatever it is, and making it amazing. And don't think about anything else like, oh, they're gonna love me for this. I think that poisons the well.

I agree, and I think that's what I meant by, you know, art just is. You just create art out of, you know, because you have to, because you need to. But it's the ego that makes it want to be liked, you know, which is not— I don't mean that's a good thing. I just mean that's—

It gets you to the dance.

Yeah.

There's no— without ego, without wanting that, and most people who start out in it, they start out from a place of being an outcast and feeling like they don't get enough attention. So, well, me too. And then you decide, oh, this will get me way more attention than I've ever had in my life, and it'll fill that hole.

Fill that hole, but it never does.

Never does. But I think once you become centered or grounded in this experience, then your focus should not be on you and attention. All of your energy should be into what you're doing, whether it's making songs or writing jokes and performing them, whatever it is. It's like, then it becomes, okay, now the, the new task with all this energy is just Let me do the best I can with whatever this thing is that I'm doing.

Yeah, I agree. I think, like, the first— I always say the first couple of years when I— when it first hit for me, I thought it was all about me. And then I realized it was all about the audience, all about the fans.

Was Jessie's Girl your first big hit?

I had one when I first came over here in '72 from Australia. I had a song called Speak to the Sky. That was— it got me the deal over here. It was the first hit, solo hit I'd had in Australia. And it was, um, like number 10. Oh, got to number 10 over here and was a hit in Canada. But it was, it was kind of a weird country, you know, holy roller kind of song. I wrote it for my mom. And, um—

Oh, that's cool.

Very different than, you know, what I became known for. But it was, uh, that was kind of the first hit. And then they kind of, they managers, I started getting picked up by teen magazines, which I'd never seen before. In Australia, they didn't have them. They had one music paper and that was it. And they're asking me, you know, doing all— I'm doing all these interviews, music interviews, and I, I look at the finished article and it's like, you know, cuddle up with Rick. You know, is Rick too tall? Rick too tall to love? I'm going, what the fuck is this? This is not what we talked about. I talked about, you know, yeah, I came over here, I'm a songwriter and I want to, you know, all this kind of stuff. Right.

What is this?

So I started, you know, I— my ego got the better of me and I started going, well, I'm, you know, I'm getting noticed in America. It's the Big Apple, you know. So I— should I kind of lean into this, I guess, you know, because I'm getting a lot of press. So I did for a little while and it was going nowhere. I wasn't writing the music. that, you know, I was writing songs about a guy that committed suicide, writing songs about a woman that was trying to decide if she should leave her husband because he's cheating on her. And they're going, where's, you know, where's Cherish? Where's Doesn't Somebody Want to Be Wanted? We're giving him all this press, you know, and there's no hits here after Speak to the Sky. So I eventually left my managers who were kind of pushing me in that direction. Which was a drag because I loved— one of the guys was Steve Binder, who actually I still talk to, who was the director of the Elvis special, you know, the comeback special.

Oh.

And I met Elvis on a plane once, and I said, you know, my manager, Steve Binder. And he goes, oh, I love Steve.

You met Elvis on a plane?

Yeah, yeah, going back to Australia, because I was having trouble with Getting a visa here, I had to prove I wasn't putting an American out of work, right? That was it. That was their phrase.

Who was president back then in America? What year was this?

This is '71, '72, '73.

So that was post-Nixon. Was that Lyndon Johnson or was that Nixon? When did Nixon get kicked out?

I think— was it still Nixon?

When was Watergate?

Watergate was when I was over here. '74?

So it was Nixon.

'70s, yeah. Yeah, so I had the proof, you know, and we're taking all these, like, it was really weird. We're taking these scrapbooks full of these crappy stories from the teen magazines.

Cuddle up with Rick.

Yeah. Look, here.

Mr. President.

Look how much press I'm getting, you know. An American— this is not going to put an American out of work. Anyway, so the plane stopped at Hawaii before to refuel because it couldn't go all the way to Australia back then. And I get on the plane, and I walk in, and there's Elvis sitting, like, right there. I was in the back of the bus back then. Elvis sitting in the first class. He looked great. He was skinny, jet-black hair, his skin looked great, powder blue suit on. Looked really just— I wasn't a fan really back then because I was more into the British Invasion and everything. But I said, oh, that's Elvis. That's cool. So I go back there and— Um, And I had a girlfriend in Australia at the time who was a giant Elvis fan. So he did a thing I've never seen anybody do. Now, when you get on a plane and you see a celeb, they've got like a hood on and glasses and they're like, they're looking down. He got up before the plane landed in Hawaii and walked back signing autographs and taking photos with all the, all the people on the plane.

Wow.

And he got to me and I went, hey, Steve Binder, my manager, you know, because I know him and Steve got along really well on the Elvis special because the Colonel wanted it to be Elvis in a Christmas sweater singing Christmas songs. And Steve walked into the dressing room one time and there's Elvis playing with his buddy, his buddies, you know, and he goes, I'm gonna put that on film, which became the, you know, him jamming in the boxing ring.

Yeah.

And the Colonel's going, absolutely not, absolutely not, we're keeping it you know, a family thing. And we— and so they butted heads like crazy, but Elvis was on Steve's side. And for once, Elvis took— yeah, I want to do this, you know. He didn't go with what the Colonel said. So, uh, I know he got along really well with Steve. So anyway, I'd heard that before I met him, and, uh, and I— and said, yeah, I love Steve, he's a great guy. And I said, would you sign this to Allison, who was my girlfriend at the time? And he signed it, and I put— I had my little tape recorder that recorded all my songs in it, and I put the autograph in there. And we went through Australian customs, and they saw my tape recorder and said, oh, we're gonna see what's in this. Might, might be porn in here, who knows? You know, so they took it and came back, and the Elvis autograph was gone.

They stole your Elvis autograph? These motherfuckers.

I know, don't trust them. They're bastards.

Oh, back in the day too. They don't— they didn't have any cameras on them.

No, exactly right.

Ugh.

I know.

Dirty people. Oh, that must have been so wild. His relationship with the Colonel was so creepy. That movie was fantastic. Boy, did Tom Hanks kill it as the Colonel. It was just like, what a creepy relationship. And it's so common, for whatever reason, for these really talented people to have some person managing them, this like fucking creepy character.

Clueless.

Yeah.

Weird. And I think enabling them— the Beatles were rare in the respect that they had Epstein, Epstein, however you pronounce his name, Brian Epstein, that was a smart guy and on the cusp of, like, pop really happening and did good things with them, you know, cleaned them up, told them, you know, bow. And the music was the music, but he was one of the really few that really— I don't think he knew what he was doing, but he had a good intent. And so He found ways to make, you know, do the right thing. But I've never met anyone or read anything that the Colonel wasn't a friggin jerk, you know.

Yeah, I just don't understand how Elvis had no one who was capable of separating him from the Colonel.

Yeah, well, if anyone could have, Steve Binder could have. But, but he, I think, you know, he felt secure around the Colonel.

Yeah, well, there's certain people that Especially because Elvis had a pill problem, right? So it was probably— he was his enabler. Yeah, he was, you know, shielded everybody from him, kept him safe, and kept him isolated, you know? Yeah.

Oh, it was great, Elvis. How was the performance? You know, when he was overweight and—

Yeah.

Oh, it was great, man. You were great.

One of my favorite performances of his was when he was really fat, when he was singing in Vegas, and he sounds like he's mumbling, and it's And then what is the song that— do you remember the song, Jamie? We've played it before.

Wish...

But he— once he starts— once he starts belting out the song, you're like, my God, he's good!

Oh. On the piano. He's on the piano.

What is it?

Unchained Melody?

Yes! Unchained Melody. My God, it's good.

Yeah.

And you just realize, like, you see him, and the way he's talking, he's clearly high as a kite. There's something wrong. He's so fat. It's like so sweaty, and he looks terrible.

You're like, oh my God.

Poor Elvis, what's wrong with him? And then you sit, you hear him sing, you see him sing, and it all goes away. You're like, who fucking cares? Who cares? My God, that's magic. That's magic. That is live performance, like, personified. There's something about the magic of an insanely talented person performing live, and that one Elvis song was that.

And it came through all the drug use and everything and all the Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I mean, I know exactly the thing you're talking about.

Yeah, here it is. I can't play it. It's getting harder and harder and harder. Yeah, we keep getting kicked off YouTube.

Are you too, the music?

Copyright strikes and shit, you know, which is unfortunate because like, look how fat he is.

Yeah, poor guy.

And that's when he was performing— was that when he was living in Vegas?

Oh, uh, I think it was probably— I think it might have been after that, but he was doing the Vegas things, right, to pay for the Colonel's gambling debts.

Yeah, isn't that nuts? Wow. Well, I bet it also was probably easier for him too to not have to go anywhere.

Yeah, he didn't like planes. I heard that.

So 1977.

Wow.

So that's right before he died, right? Didn't he die in like '78? When did he die?

Yeah, I think that's, uh, yeah, I know where I was when he died. Wait, what day did I say that was? That was 2 months before he died.

Wow.

2 months before he died? Yeah, he died on August 16th, 1977.

Wow.

And he— and how old was he, like 40?

42.

42.

Isn't that insane?

That's crazy.

And look at you. Keep on trucking, dog.

What do you do to stay healthy? How do you stay healthy? I work out every day, or 6 days a week. I eat well. My dad died early. My dad died when he was— well, he died twice actually. He died when he was 51 and they brought him back and he had an ulcer on his major artery in his stomach. And he was worried about it. He didn't— he thought it was cancer, and so he wouldn't— didn't want to go to the doctor. He didn't want to hear the bad news, you know. He thought, what you don't know, you know.

Right.

So, and, and he eventually— I was at home actually when he passed out, and they took him into the hospital, and he's in bed, and he's— but the ulcer bursts, and he starts bleeding, coming— blood coming out everywhere. Luckily, there was a doctor just down a couple of beds down. They rushed him into emergency, but he did die, and his heart stopped, and they took 15 minutes to get it going again.

Oh my God.

And he came back, you know, he's a real in-charge guy, just really loving, really amazing person. He came back as basically a 5-year-old.

Oh wow.

And I remember sitting in the backyard trying to help him remember who was who in his life. And he'd go, so Michelle is married to— no, no, George— Michelle is George's daughter. He's married to Nan. You go, okay, so Nan is the daughter. No. And it was just— it was heartbreaking trying to get him to remember his old friends.

Wow.

And so I— that stuck with me. because he hadn't paid attention to it. And so I'm kind of the opposite now. I do Prenuvo. I do blood draws.

What's Prenuvo?

Prenuvo is a body scan, MRI body scan. I mean, you were asking about, you know, just how I stay in shape. But this is all part of it, is knowing what is going on inside you, you know, and not ignoring anything, which is not to say, you know, I won't sip a curb and get hit by a bus one day. But, you know, you do what you can, as you know.

Yes.

Yeah. I have a blood draw as soon as I get home, actually, just to keep an eye on things. And anyway, so he didn't pay attention, and that kind of stayed with me. And so I started focusing on what I ate. I started being aware that earlier, maybe, than normal, that, you know, there there is a use-by date, you know?

Yeah.

And so I guess I started, uh, I started running. Running just happened to be a new thing, uh, in the early '70s, so I started that. And, and I'd always loved running. The only thing I was good at at school was actually was running and English. And, um, so I started running, and kind of got me into the whole— well, if you're running, then you maybe may as well eat well, and then you want to get some upper body strength and work out. So I just started doing— I've run all my life until about 15 years ago when my knees suddenly said, nah, we're not going to do that anymore.

That's pretty good.

Find something else.

To get that long running is pretty incredible.

Yeah, it was great. I did love running. I'd get, like, on the tour bus, I'd get up in the tour bus, and wherever we were, I'd just put on running clothes and start running. I'd run 20 minutes one way, 20 minutes back. Sometimes I'd go into some pretty weird areas, you know, of a city, and you start worrying about who was around. But it was, you know, a great way to stay in shape.

We actually went on—

came off the road in more better shape than we went on. We'd go to gyms and work out, and I wasn't a big druggie or alcohol guy back then. And so it was— that was what I did with my time off, was stay in shape and watch what I eat. And my wife's an amazing chef, and we always eat real clean, organic. And I have, you know, she turned me on to to skin routine back when I was kind of too embarrassed to tell my band members that I took care of my skin. Because they'd call me a freak, you know. I thought skin was, you know, I thought, well, guys' skin's different from women's skin. You know, we've got whiskers. We don't need all that stuff. But skin is skin. And she got me— my wife— she got me— my girlfriend then— she got me into, you know, taking care of my skin. And I still do that. I still take care of my skin. And I'm actually in a trial with a company called Bemi that is really unique, and I've been in the trial for 4 years with this stuff where they take a sample of your cells from behind your ear and they grow your cells, and the growth serum— they pull the growth serum from that and put it into something that you put back on your face.

Hmm.

And it's— have you heard of SkinMedica? Has one, only they use baby foreskins.

Baby foreskins?

For real? Yeah, newborn foreskins.

Really?

Yeah, that's what they get the, the, the growth factors from. But this is your own growth factor, so you're putting that back on your own body, back in your, you know, on your, on your face. It's been pretty amazing.

I would prefer your method.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not into baby foreskins on my face. I know they're doing it with different stem cells. They're doing it with, um, what they do is they do microneedling. Yeah. And so they kind of like microneedle your whole face, and then they They use exosomes and they also use something called Mu cells, which is the latest and greatest version of it.

Right, but that's outside stuff. The Bemi stuff is your own cells, which is pretty great. I think that's a difference.

I think the thing that's different is that with your own cells, as you get older, they're just not as good.

Oh, you think the younger ones work?

Well, they certainly seem to, like Mu cells in particular, which is the newest iteration of stem cell technology, seems to work much better than cells that they used to get from either fat, they used to get it from your fat, or they used to get it from bone marrow.

Yeah, I've had the bone marrow stem cells done. I had that injected into my hips. It works.

Yeah, well, it definitely works. It just doesn't work as well. These MEU cells, I mean, there's people that are going over to Saudi Arabia and doing it in Dubai.

That's right. It's always— it's never here. And I got into Regenecine, OrthoKine. I've done Regenecine. Yeah. 'Cause Kobe used to have to go to Germany for it, right?

Right.

And now they've bypassed the law somehow, and so I get that pretty regular— not regularly because it lasts a couple of years, but I'm due for it now in my shoulders 'cause, you know, it's lifting weights, you know, no matter what, how heavy you go, you still, you know, as you get older, the wear just happens.

How long are you in town for?

I'm leaving actually after this.

Oh, okay. I was gonna send you down. This is a great clinic that my friend owns in Austin called Ways to Well, and they do all the latest and greatest, like state-of-the-art, all the latest and greatest stem cell technology. They have hyperbaric chambers, red light therapy, all this. I mean, everything that's state-of-the-art they have.

Wow.

Yeah, I wish I'd known that you had a bunch of injuries. I would have had you come in there.

I'd make a trip back to check that out.

Russell Crowe comes down all the time. He comes down specifically just for that.

So they do red light and—

Oh, everything.

Everything. Yeah, I've done hyperbaric.

You should get one. You should get one at your house. It's a fucking game changer.

Really?

Yes. There was a study out of a university in Israel. They did these— right, they did— the protocol is 60 sessions of 90 minutes over 90 days, and they show that it lengthens your telomeres, it's equivalent to a 20-year difference in biological age.

I saw— I read that too.

It feels different. Like, when you do it, you feel better.

Do you have one at home?

Yes, I do. And if you have like a Whoop strap or Oura Ring or anything like that, it'll show that you've had an incredible recovery. It'll like specifically show from one session, you have an amazing recovery today, and it's specifically because of this hyper-oxygen saturated environment of the hyperbaric chamber.

I wonder if that'd help me sleep. I have I've had trouble sleeping.

Do you?

Terrible trouble sleeping, yeah.

Why do you have trouble sleeping? What's going on?

I don't know. I wake up, uh, every, you know, every couple of hours and, uh, haven't been able to sleep all the way through for quite a while, actually. Huh.

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Uh, not a lot, no.

Okay, that's another one. There was a study out of Finland that followed—

Red light therapy?

No, no, no. Red light— the thing about red light is like, I'm Infrared. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think it's good for you for sure, but there's not robust studies on it like there is with the dry sauna.

Mm-hmm.

So the Finnish have been using dry saunas forever, and they did a study over 20 years with quite a large sample group, and they found that the people that use the sauna 4 times per week for 20 minutes had a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality. 40% less strokes, cancer, heart attacks, everything. And it's because of heat shock proteins that your body develops when you're exposed to that. It's— it also, it has an effect of increasing your endurance because it's essentially like static cardio, because as you're sitting there in that heat, your heart beats faster and it actually literally increases your cardiovascular output.

Wow.

It's incredible.

And I'll check into that.

And one of the ways that they use it is contrast therapy. So what they do is they'll go in the sauna for 20 minutes, and then they, they usually have their saunas by a lake, and they'll like go in the cold water of the lake and then back into the sauna. And so what I do is I have a cold plunge. So I have a cold plunge just right next to my sauna, and I go back— How cold is it? 34 degrees.

Wow.

And so I go back and forth. It seems cold, but I'm so used to it, it's not cold anymore. I mean, it is cold, no doubt about it, but I'm so used to it. I just climb right in and it's nothing. In the beginning, I was like, I can't do this. This is crazy. I think the first time I did it, I did it for like a minute. I was like, this sucks so hard. I got to get out of this thing. And then eventually I got to the point where I do 3 minutes like it's nothing. It's easy.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

But that's also incredible, not just for your body. You don't want to do it after workout. So one of the things about after workout is it's bad. It's not good. It's not terrible for you, but it's not good in that it decreases hypertrophy, which is like increasing muscle size, because a lot of that is dependent upon the inflammation that happens during exercise. So when you exercise and you, you know, you break down your tissue, the strength comes because your body heals after the exercise. So you blunt a little of that recovery by getting in the cold right after exercise.

Yeah.

So the way I do it is I get in the cold before I exercise. So first thing in the morning, I hop in that thing.

Every day?

Yeah, I do 3 minutes, and then after I do 3 minutes, then I start my workout. And the first thing I do is a series of mobility exercises. I usually do those right after I get out, right outside, right after I get out, I start warm— I do these like swings and twists and all these different things, these like golf swings, and it's all just loosening the body up and getting my heart rate up and warming my body up since it's been cooled down. And then I start my strength workout. So I do my workout after that, And then after I'm done with my workout, then I get in the sauna.

Wow.

Yeah. It's awesome. You feel so much better. First of all, the— just the cold, when you get out of that cold, your endorphins are flying. Your norepinephrine spikes, your dopamine spikes. You feel fucking amazing. Yeah, it's worth it just for that. It's worth it just for the— if you could sell a pill that makes you feel as good as I feel when I get out of that cold plunge, that shit would be on every shelf. Without the cold plunge? Yeah, without the cold plunge. But it's available. You just do it. And also, it, it gives you a certain amount of mental toughness. That's a bad—

Yeah, I know. I get that.

Yeah.

The discipline of it.

Perseverance. You have— there's like, there's a thing where you don't want to do it, but you do it. And when you can just train your mind to just do things you don't want to do routinely, all the time, it's just better for you.

That's what I do with working out. I hate walking into a gym, and I love walking out.

Yes, exactly. Everybody feels the same way. So many people, it's the daunting task is the first few steps. It's just so hard to get going, but once you get going, then it's not hard at all.

Yeah, I agree. It becomes the good habit rather than—

Yes.

And you make it— I have a gym. I've had a gym at home for a while, but I prefer going to a gym, so I work out, but I have it close by so I don't have an excuse to, ah, it's late. Right, right, right. Yeah, I get, I get all that. I do. And being on stage, when you said the endorphin hit, is kind of— I get that on there too.

For sure. Oh, for sure.

Like, wow.

Yeah, the thing is like you can't live on that. Like you can't perform every day just to feel better.

You know what I mean?

Well, you can, I guess, if you're on tour. But it's nice to have that in your actual life as well as your performing life.

I get it. I get it.

Are you a supplement guy? Do you take supplements?

Yeah, I do actually. I've been through a lot of different ones, but right now I'm doing IM8, is it? IM8? It's the one all-in-one.

Oh, okay.

And I do creatine before workout and the protein after.

Creatine is actually good just for mental benefits. Creatine increases cognitive performance, and it's really good if you're tired. One of the studies they've shown is that people that have sleep deficit, like if you're sleep deprived, one of the very best things for performance, mental performance, is creatine.

Oh.

Yeah, it does.

So you take it before you work out anyway, right? That's what I do.

It's good for just overall metabolic health, but taking it just as a regular part of your day, pre or post-workout, doesn't matter, just taking it as a regular part of your day will increase your mental performance. But like, if I'm flying and if I have to go somewhere and I'm on the road and I might be tired, I bring— I take it every day anyway, but I bring it with me everywhere. And I like routinely, if I'm tired and I know I'm gonna be tired, I take creatine. I can soar through.

Really?

Yes.

Has an instant— you feel it right away?

It completely mitigates any of the sleep deficit brain fog.

How much do you take?

I take 10 milligrams twice a day, or 10 grams rather, twice a day. So I take 10 grams in the morning and I take 10 grams at night. And how much protein do you do? Me? I eat mostly protein. My diet is like 90% meat. That's mostly what I eat. Wow. Yeah, I eat meat and fermented vegetables. I'll fuck around and have a sandwich or a slice of pizza or some pasta. Like last night I had chicken Parmesan. It was great. But most of my diet, like 80 to 90%, is meat. Yeah.

I can't eat chicken. That's off the menu for me.

Why?

I had chickens when I was a kid that I named, and then we ate them.

I have chickens now, and I still eat them. I don't eat my chickens. My chickens are pets, you know. They're wandering around the yard. I talk to them like, hey ladies.

That's what we used to do. Only my dad, every Sunday, we'd— and I, you know, I was like a kid. Oh, I want to chop its head off, Dad. So he'd throw it, and it would like flap around, and then, and then And then he'd take them and he'd drop— we had this laundry room and he'd throw it in the laundry room in the, like, boiling hot water in the laundry room to get the feathers would come out easier. And that smell— I walked into a group dinner somewhere and they were having chicken and that smell came back to me about when I was about 30 and I have not been able to touch chicken ever since.

Really? Yeah.

Wow.

I have no problem eating chickens.

I know. It'd be much easier for me. I eat turkey, which is weird because it's not much different, right? It's just a little stupider. But, but I just— the thought of chicken, I just can't, man. I just can't.

You think turkeys are stupider than chickens?

Uh, they're the one— aren't they the ones that will drown if they hold their— look up at the rain and rain will drown them?

Really?

Oh, they're stupid, man.

Well, they're very cautious and they have, they have very good eyesight. I've turkey hunted before. It's like—

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, wild turkeys may be different from, you know, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, if they're on the wild— if they're wild, they're probably—

Yeah, well, yeah, they stay alive. There's a lot of them in my neighborhood, actually. But they are, uh, they see really well. Like, you can't move at all if, you know, you're turkey hunting. You have to be very cautious.

Wow.

Yeah, they have some of the best eyesight of any wild animal.

Really?

Yeah, yeah. That's why you see guys when they turkey hunt, they have these crazy ghillie suits where they're completely covered, and they sit with like their back to a tree or like completely motionless. And then— and they usually have like a fake turkey, like a turkey decoy sitting out there, and they make noises like—

I'd probably rather not go turkey hunting if that's what I gotta do.

You'd probably like to go turkey hunting?

I'd probably not go turkey hunting if I had to sit there and go—

Yeah, you have like a little box, and I have this little box, and it has like— it's almost like a fiddle, and it makes a turkey noise. Yeah.

And you've done that?

Yeah, I've only done it once. The thing about it is my thought was we hunted for a few days for one meal, and I'm like, I would rather go deer hunting or elk hunting. You got a week's worth. Months and months of food. And, you know, and it's better food. Like, I'd rather— way rather eat elk than I would turkey. There's nothing wrong with wild turkey, and I certainly would do it again. It's just not what I prefer. I prefer mammals. I eat mammals. I think they're better for you. They're more nutrient-dense. There's a lot more iron and a lot more amino acids and all the—

Have you had kangaroo?

I have had kangaroo, I think. I think I had it when I was in Australia. Let me make sure I did. No, I had— I've had ostrich a bunch of times.

Emu?

I haven't had emu.

I don't think they've—

God, I don't know if I've had kangaroo. It was so long ago the last time I was in Australia. you. Maybe I did.

It's gamey.

But, uh, I have some friends that live over there and they've had it a bunch of times. Oh yeah, there's an infestation. Australia is crazy.

Camels. Got more camels in Australia now than there are in, in like, you know, any of the Arab states.

That's nuts.

But kangaroos for sure. And they had rabbit infestations.

Yeah.

They bring— except for the kangaroos, everything's imported, you know. But the kangaroos They're like, you know, you've seen the videos among the golf course. They come up and stare at you while you're about to whack a ball. It's freaking hilarious.

Well, I've seen these videos of these fields where you have like thousands of kangaroos bouncing down these fields.

It's a wild look. They have so many wild animals in Australia. I didn't appreciate it when I lived there, but it's pretty freaky. They brought— when Captain Cook, who supposedly discovered Australia, brought back a platypus to England, they thought it was— they thought they stitched it together from 3 different animals because it had a duck bill, a body like a beaver— no, a body like a, like a, you know, yeah, I guess like a beaver, and webbed feet. Yeah, and it laid eggs. And they, they thought, this is not a real animal.

Well, it doesn't seem like a real animal. Such a strange—

Everything kills you in Australia.

Oh yeah, yeah. I have a good buddy, my friend Adam Greentree, he lives there. And it's, uh, there's so many weird things they've done in Australia by bringing in invasive animals to deal—

Cane toads.

Yeah, they brought in a bunch of cats to deal with a bunch of different animals, then the cats wound up killing all the natives.

Maybe they brought something in for that.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Yeah, the cane toads were— they brought in to get rid of the rats in the, in the cane fields. And now they're the problem. They're like everywhere. They did that with rabbits. Rabbits came— the English brought the rabbits in because they wanted, you know, for food, and they're friggin' everywhere now.

Yeah, Australia is very strange in that a giant percentage of the animals that are there are completely invasive.

Yeah.

The Asian water buffaloes they have.

Do they?

Yeah, in the North Territory.

Yeah, well, the ones that kill you are all the local ones.

Well, those water buffaloes will kill you too. They're huge. But they're massive and they're everywhere. And, you know, they— the only way they die is by people hunting them.

Yeah.

These are just—

Okay, they got a cull of kangaroos too. It's just, you know, I mean, there's— I would— you'd often see kangaroos lying on the side of the road out in the bush because if you get hit by a car, it would demolish your car.

Oh yeah, some of them are huge.

And you had to see the guy defending his dog with the kangaroo.

Yeah, we punched him. He's lucky that kangaroo didn't fuck him up.

Oh no, they do. If they get up, the red Red kangaroos can stand on their tails, and with their back legs, they can disembowel a guy.

Those are the big ones, right?

Yeah.

Some of those get like 6 feet tall.

Yeah. What do they say? They're like deer that went to prison.

That's a good way to describe it. Do you live in America now?

What's that?

You live in America now?

Yeah, yeah. I'm a citizen. I became a citizen a bunch of years ago because I love this country. And because I wanted to be available for jury duty.

Have you done that yet?

Yeah, I have actually. It was—

That must have been weird for people. You know, you're getting tried. Is that fucking Rick Springfield? Holy shit, dude, I'm a fan. Please make me not guilty.

Don't convict me. I'm a fan, man. I didn't get selected because I was actually in a lawsuit at the time with this woman who claimed that I hit her with— we called it Buttgate. I'd hit her with my ass while I— because I go in the audience sometimes. And she said I'd hit her with my butt and she'd fallen and, like, hurt her brain or something. So it was obviously bullshit. But so I could— they called me back twice to New Jersey to testify because I wasn't going to go down, you know, pay this woman money to go away. I was going to fight it.

How much did she want?

She didn't have a figure because it didn't get that far. It was still to find out who would win the case, first of all. And so, yeah, it was like crazy. What was I talking about? Now I've totally lost— see, it's all this space shit.

Buttgate?

Oh, buttgate.

This room is distracting.

It's very distracting.

Probably not the best thing for conversations.

I love the whole UFO thing, man. Anyway, I forget what I was talking about. Buttgate.

You had to go back.

Yeah, I had to go back, and it was—

So that's how you got out of jury duty.

What's that?

You were talking about jury duty.

Yeah, right. And oh, that's right, I was called up for jury duty. See? Called up for jury duty.

Preaching.

Well, you're used to this room. I'm not.

I'm used to this room too.

Yeah. And I was called up for jury duty. I said— and they And they said, is there any reason you wouldn't— you would be, you know, not eligible for this? And I said, oh, I just got called up. I mean, I just got in a lawsuit myself, and I think it's all bullshit. And they said, you're out of here. So it was great. It was good timing.

Yeah.

But no, that's not the reason I became a citizen. I make that— that's a joke. I just— I mean, I— it's actually because if I go first, Or if my wife goes first, I'd get screwed by taxes.

You mean die first?

Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I thought you were gonna say go.

And we're always saying, you know, I'm gonna go first. I don't want to be the one left.

Oh, that's funny. Well, the last thing I'm worried about if she goes first or I go first is taxes.

Yeah. But no, I know. But I mean, no, that's not why we talk about it. But that's why I became a citizen, was for the tax thing. But yeah, no, it's—

What year was that? When did you become a citizen?

Um, 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

And were you living over here the entire time?

Yeah, yeah, I've been here since '72. I mean, except for the trips back, you know, to meet Elvis on the plane. It was, um, yeah, I've been here, you know, since '72, basically living here.

Just for your career?

Yeah, well, I mean, this is my life. My family's here, my life, my friends are here, my life is here. No. Yeah. I used to go back to Australia until my mom died. My mom lived till she was 96, so I'm hoping some of those genetics are in there.

I am curious to see how long Mick can keep cracking. Because how old is he now?

I'm curious to see how long Keith can keep cracking.

Right. That's the funny one, right? Because Keith is not doing any of the things that Mick is doing. He's still shredding. He was shredding.

Drinking beer and—

Drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, doing acid.

I did a movie with, uh, which we shall not name, but it was with, um, his girlfriend, who was Patty Hansen at the time. It was his girlfriend at the time, is his wife now. And, uh, and we got along really well, right? And so Keith came down to the set to find out what was going on with this Springfield guy and his girlfriend. And he was— ah, he looked like fucking Dracula, man. It was like '83 or something. And this— I got— we took photos, and he looked so bizarre.

And yet here he is.

Yep, here he is, still cooking. You know, everyone's going, yeah, it's gotta be this year he'll be gone.

No.

And all these— you know, Bowie's gone. My God, that one hurt. Bowie gone. Yeah, that was a tough one. But, you know, he was a lifelong smoker and was okay, you know?

It's amazing. But I mean, it's gotta— something's gotta be said for the love of what you do and that energy keeping you alive and the fact that there's still Like I said, the Circuit of the Americas show was over 100,000 people. I mean, they're still drawing giant crowds.

Who was that now?

The Stones.

Stones, yeah.

The Circuit of the Americas is the local racetrack.

Oh, okay.

So Circuit of the Americas is where they do Formula 1, this huge racetrack, and they also have a giant theater out there, amphitheater, and then they do concerts out there where they have this massive concert venue, like for huge acts. Like Post Malone was there, it was like 100,000. Eminem was there. It's just a giant performance theater. But seeing the Stones there and seeing Keith there, if he gets to do that all the time, like, just the energy from that is probably what's sustaining that guy.

Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's really, really important for your longevity that you love what you do. Yeah, I think that has been a big driver for me, and I've seen it in other people. And certainly someone like, you know, Mick Jagger, he admits, you know, he still loves that the roar of the crowd. And it's— and a lot of people, so many people do— I like— I have friends who did a job because the retirement was, was good. And I get that, but I— but they don't love the job, you know. It's just something that they do.

Yeah.

You know, I'm— we're fortunate You know, that we do something that we love.

Insanely fortunate. Yeah, and it's very—

I mean, it's a lot of luck. It really is a lot of luck, and I don't— yes, I don't deny that. It's luck with everybody when they, they, they're lucky enough to— did I just see a shooting star up there?

Yes, you did.

Oh, that's freaky.

Sorry.

I should have told you.

I should have told you that it does that. I've had a lot of people just go, what's going on? Yeah, we have shooting stars on our ceiling.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's freaky. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's a lot of luck, but it's also working really hard to make that luck so that when— if luck does happen, you're ready for it.

Exactly right.

And being able to capitalize on that luck. Some— so many people get so terrified of the unknown and the possibility of success that the anxiety of whatever it is, they can't handle it, and they'd rather just live a simple life and not have the pressure.

Fear of success is a real thing.

It's a real thing. It's a real thing. Fear of success and, and maybe even more fear of failing to succeed when you're attempting to succeed.

Yeah.

You know, that cripples people.

Yeah. No, I get that totally.

Yeah.

And it does hurt when, when things don't go your way. But, um, it's— it still drives me, you know. It's still— I mean, there's still things I want to do. And I think that's, you know, I mean, I love playing, but I do that. That's kind of my day job, you know. But the outside extracurricular stuff is—

What do you do extracurricularly?

Um, I write. I've had a couple of novels out. I wrote my own autobiography. I'm writing a book on And just, you know, what I've done with my life to, you know, be where I am, you know, health-wise and everything. Yeah, I do. And just, you know, there's all kinds of things on the side that you can do that— and I just love to write. I mean, I consider myself a writer really before anything.

Wow.

I only started performing because no one would do my songs. I said, fuck it, I'll do them. For real?

That's crazy.

I used to be in a band. If you go on YouTube and you look up Zoot, Z-O-O-T, and look up Eleanor Rigby, I was the guitar player in this band. It was like a 3 or 4-piece band, and I arranged this version of Eleanor Rigby that was— it's, to me now, it sounds like Black Sabbath, although I'd never heard Black Sabbath back then. But it's, um, a lot of— like, I did Billy Corgan's thing, and he was like focused on this band because we were kind of like psychedelic before, as that was just starting, you know? Oh, there it is. Yeah.

Wow.

And then Beeb, he became part of— formed Little River Band, actually, the bass player.

What year is this?

And that was our singer. He passed away a few years But it was a great band. It was, um, that's me.

Look at you, dude! What year is this?

'69, '70.

Wow.

Yeah, it was, uh, was kind of very heavy. It was much heavier stuff than I'm doing now. Well, maybe not now, but it was for— they'd been a pop band and they dressed in pink, and, and I'd been in a band and, and my band split up because I got to sing the single, and the bass player was so pissed off they didn't pick him that he broke the band up. So I was a free agent, and they said, well, you want to join us because our guitar player's leaving? So I said, okay. So I wore the pink thing for a while, and I said, this has got to go.

You couldn't deal with pink?

Yeah, there's photos. It's horrible. But, um, so I said, I got this great idea. We'll, we'll get rid of the pink, and we'll do a photo of us like looking over our shoulder totally naked, like in our original pink suits, and we dumped the pink thing. So, but we'll have it high contrast so they won't really see anything. But they printed the photo like full-on. Oh, there we are.

So what was up with the pink thing? Why?

They had a theme called Think Pink, Think Zoot, and it was good for the little girls. It was like, you know, yeah. Oh, I'm so pissed at that album. That was the first album, the only album we did, and they cut out our heads to stick in those before Photoshop. And they miscut my hair.

You got like a granny haircut.

It's horrible. What a horrible album cover. One of the worst ever made, I think.

Well, at least you weren't wearing pink. So, but that was such a weird choice that that was a part of the theme.

It was, yeah. It was, it was, uh, this guy in Australia that thought it would be a great— it caught on for a while, but it lasted about 6 months. I find it very strange. Yeah, 6 months. It was about 6 month, life of 6 months, and then everyone got sick of it. So I said, we gotta lose that. So we had this photo taken and they printed it in full color of our bare asses, and my mom lost her shit when she saw it. She goes, oh, Richard, how could you do that?

I said, no, Mom, it's supposed to be like high contrast.

You weren't supposed to see all the creases and stuff. And you can still see it. It's still online. The photo's still online.

Oh, I gotta see it.

I have to sign it every now and then. I get to sign one. Be careful what you put on it. Oh, that's funny.

Hardcore fans bring you that? That's funny. They must know, and it probably bugs you too.

They want you to slide it. Oh, it's pretty bad. And so I pushed him more though, because Led Zeppelin was on the horizon. I pushed him more into the guitar, you know, because I play guitar and I wanted the guitar to be the kind of the center of the thing. So I pushed him into a much heavier thing. And this Eleanor Rigby was, was our first really big hit that we had over there that I arranged. You know, it was like that kind of thing. And we actually got a deal. We had a— EMI were interested in us over here, but our manager kind of screwed us by saying, oh, you're still under contract here, which we weren't in Australia. Anyway, so we split up and I came over here and Beeb went on to form Little River Band, and the singer became a TV star in Australia.

Oh, wow.

So it was a— we all went on to other things, you know, but it was God, you've had such a great run, man.

You've done so many different things.

Yeah, I look back, and I guess I have. I've— I always thought I'd be a band guy, you know, and I had this— when they split up, I said, I'll just join another band. But I had this writer, woman writer, who was a big fan, and she said, no, you got to go solo. I said, I don't want to go solo. And she said, no, you got to, you got to go solo.

Why did she say that?

I don't know. She just thought it was the next step for me, you know. She thought getting back in another band and being the guitar player was— she said I— she thought I had more to offer, you know, more going for me and a better career if I, if I went solo. So I released this Speak to the Sky song that I wrote for my mommy and it became a hit. And though that got me the deal over here and, you know, when they were signing everybody in the '70s.

So it was the weird time, the, the, when you were— the Zoot time, 1969. So such a strange time musically.

It was changing pretty drastically.

Well, I mean, I always point to the difference between '59 and '69 as being like one of the most radical changes in culture and music in, in all of human history. It's just such a strange— if you go like from Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix, I mean, is there a more radical transformation of rock and roll than that time. Like, there was something amazing. A lot of it was the drugs, for sure. It was the whole psychedelic movement. It was the anti-war movement.

It was— Yeah, it was definitely sociological, and I think music is always driven by what happens.

And it drives what happens too. I mean, a lot of—

Yeah, I think— I know people think that it— I think it becomes a soundtrack of what's happening. I think more that that society drives what's happening in music, and then they adopt what the music is, you know, we got a tune, you know, that says what we're— but you're talking about '59, and you're talking about '69 where the changes happen, right?

Yeah. Well, that 10-year period is just massive.

Yeah, yeah.

It is just an incredible transformation between the '50s and the '60s.

Yeah, and it was considered kind of disposable, you know, well, that's the kids do that, and by '69, '70, it was suddenly— it had this more, more weight. Yeah, you know, and, and people got older and they were now almost adults and they still liked it.

Yes. Well, it's also that music has had a shelf life that is above and beyond anything that came after it. Like stuff from— like there's a lot of rock and roll music from the '80s that just, you know, it doesn't have the same feeling as like Cashmere. Yeah, you know what I I mean, like, if you go and listen to Whole Lotta Love, like, to this day when Whole Lotta Love comes on, I'm like, oh, turn that up.

They were the originators of that. I mean, they would really push that, that whole— his idea to get the kind of the bluesy singer. Yeah, the blues riffs and that was, it was all his idea, and, and it was so friggin unique and And like he wanted Terry Reid. You know Terry? Familiar with Terry Reid?

No.

He's a great English singer. I think he's passed now. I hope I'm not wrong in saying that because I hate it when they say, oh, Rick Springfield's dead. You know, you look up someone, the first line that comes up on Google is, is so-and-so dead?

Right, right.

Anybody.

Especially when you get older.

Yep, yep, yep. And Uh, yeah, so it was amazing. Terry Reid had this great voice, but he was going to actually tour with the Stones, and Jimmy Page asked him if he'd be the singer in Led Zeppelin, and he said, I can't, I got this gig coming up with the Stones, but I know this guy, there's this guy down in this club, and it was freaking Robert Plant and John Bonham in the same band.

Wow.

In a pub band. And Jimmy Page walks in and he goes, they might be the right ones. How amazing. I mean, Bonham, one of of the, you know, just a unique feel. He wasn't just a drummer. He was a— just an incredible— sonically, he was different. And the sound of his drums, what he did with them was unique. His feel was just so laid back, but so right on. And it was just in the same band as Plant. And it was like, that's crazy.

That is crazy.

Like a little club band. And I— and you were saying, you know, music has more weight had more— certain music has more weight. And I think England has always amazed me because this little tiny friggin island, the Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Kinks.

Clapton.

Yeah. I mean, well, Clapton actually was Canadian.

Was he really?

Yeah, he's born in Canada.

Oh, I thought he was from England.

Or he had Canadian parents or something. But he—

He wasn't from England?

I bet he is. Right? I like it when you— He's born there, yes. Where?

He's born in the UK.

He was born in the UK in, uh, but Canadian parents, right? Let's see, am I right on that? I'm right on that, aren't I?

Aye. Aye.

Uh, born to Canadian soldier from Montreal, Quebec.

There you go.

Anyway, but the little island that had all these amazing bands—

Incredible.

And I I think it's because everyone wanted to conquer Britain. The Romans, the— they all— the Vikings, they all came in, you know, the Germans, they all came in and spread their seed. First thing they did was, you know, have sex when they came. And I think all that came together, and I think that's a lot of reason there are so many great bands, is it's a collection of all this genetic material from you know, from Europe and all around. And the Romans, I mean, fuck, look what they did.

Yeah. But it is interesting how Europe, if you look at it, the UK uniquely contributed to music.

Totally.

As opposed to all those other countries. Obviously, they're English-speaking, which helps how it spreads the word, but it's kind of amazing how much of an impact they had on America. I mean—

And how much— how long it didn't have an impact, you know? I mean, it was— it was— and it was because it was bottled up for so long, I think, that it exploded so much with the Beatles. It was never— it never crossed the Atlantic. It was always America. Same with Australia. It was always America to England. There was America to Australia. There was one Australian guy that had a hit when I was a kid in England in school named Rolf Harris called Timey Kangaroo Down Sport. Timey kangaroo down sport, timey kangaroo down— horrible song, but it was a huge hit in England, and it was the only one that ever came over from Australia. And the same with England. There was really nothing that crossed over. And then suddenly Kennedy was killed, and America was looking away from America. They didn't want to look— I think it was a big part of the—

With the Beatles.

They didn't want to look at America right then, at that point. Suddenly, here were these 4 mop tops, and they came and smiled and sang great music and took our attention away from, you know, darkness.

Well, they were probably the first real superband, right?

The Beatles?

Yeah. That was just so huge that people would faint when they saw them and just scream when they saw them.

Well, they used to faint for Frank Sinatra.

That's true.

They used to faint for For Mozart. I mean, there were, you know, they had groupies that would pass out. They thought they were so hot.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there were pop stars, you know, there were pop stars back then.

But it wasn't on television.

It wasn't on the radio. Exactly. I mean, well, that's what the internet's done now. You have a friggin' opinion and now you can put it out there.

Welcome to this show.

Yeah.

That's what it is.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's just, um, it must have been very strange to be the first global supergroup like that.

I think, yeah.

I don't think there was any— I think Elvis was probably the first super famous individual where, I mean, he got to a point— first of all, I think that level of fame is almost unsustainable for a human being. I think it's just too I don't, I don't think it's manageable, and especially when there was no roadmap.

And he was the first.

Yeah, he was the first. And then Michael Jackson was like, hold my beer, I'll show you the next level of this shit. And Michael Jackson took it to a place that was—

Totally, totally agree. Yeah, totally agree. Unbelievable. I mean, I'm just young, but the Jackson 5 and Beatles both starting off in '64 is crazy. '64.

Wow. McCartney was 22 and Harrison was 21.

Yeah. Wow, that's crazy when you think about what you were doing at 21.

Wow. And Jackson 5 is same time. Wow. '64, the Jackson 5. Wow.

I guess they were— I mean, it took a year or two, I guess, before they got famous, but still same time.

Amazing.

Yeah, I just saw, uh, This Is It. Is it This Is It?

Oh, the Michael Jackson documentary?

Yeah, where he's preparing for the show. Yeah, it's pretty wild. They're just amazing. I mean, you see him just kind of going through it like, you know, like it's nothing. I mean, he's cutting back, but he's still doing, you know, he knows what he's doing. And just, he did seem kind of weak to me and didn't know if he could sustain all of that by that, that point. But God, he was amazing.

Well, I think the pressure and the stress was probably just overwhelming for him.

Unbelievable.

That guy couldn't go anywhere. He would get swarmed, like, like no one ever is people loved him in a way. He was so big that— I don't know if you're familiar with Boston radio, but they had WC— I think it was WCOZ, Rock of Boston. It was like the big Boston rock and roll station. And when Thriller came out, it was such a big album, they go, look, I know— the DJ goes, I know this isn't rock and roll, but this is so awesome. I'm gonna play it anyway. And I think it was Billie Jean they played. And I remember like thinking, this is crazy, they're playing this on the Rock of Boston? Like, this is nuts. But it was that big. It was that big. It transcended everything.

Well, they wouldn't let him on MTV, right? They, they wouldn't play it. They said, we don't play— we can't— you know, they were saying, come on, this is huge, you gotta play it.

Why weren't they playing?

We don't play black artists.

Really?

Yeah, initially. And I forget who it was, one of the Atlantic— someone at Atlantic, Ahmet Ertegun or somebody called up and said, if you don't play this song and Billie Jean on the next— in the next 10 minutes, we're pulling all our artists. And they played it, and that was— that was it. It was just—

That's crazy. Yeah, because Thriller was obviously the biggest music video of all time. It was a film. I mean, he got Rick Baker, the guy who did The American Werewolf in London.

The—

you know, I know you're a horror fan. That wolf outside, by the way, we have 2 of those.

Yes, I just posted a photo of me with my arm in that guy.

The reason why we have 2 of those is because Rick Baker saw the original one that Pat McGee did that we had back here, and he said the proportions were wrong. So Pat McGee, the guy who made that for me, said, I'm gonna make another one that has the right proportions.

So Rick Baker saw that one? Yes. Oh, that's—

so Rick Baker came to my studio, did my podcast, and said, that's great, but the legs are too long, the body's too long, this is the wrong proportions. And Pat McGee went crazy. He's like, fuck! And so he made another one. And then the, the new one that he made though is even better because it's all animal hair.

Yeah, it's incredible.

I'll show you the other one.

The other one's in the other room. The one not—

the not so good Right, it's in the other room. I still have both of them. But he saw—

So you don't get rid of Werewolves?

No. I mean, I'd give it to someone cool. But the— he did the special effects for Thriller when he turns into that cat monster thing, like, he turns and the girl screams. I mean, then he's a zombie. Like, that fucking video was crazy. I remember everybody waiting for the premiere. All my friends in high school, like, waiting around the TV for the premiere. here. It was incredible. There was like nothing like it. And, you know, I mean, he was a superstar in a way that like I don't think anybody's ever even come close. Maybe Taylor Swift? Like maybe she's in that sort of realm now?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's Elvis, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson were the 3 that absolutely transcend.

Yeah.

I mean, ever, you know, there's been people as famous, but They did something so different. You know, first of all, Elvis was Elvis.

Yeah.

And the Beatles, they wrote the best songs. There's not many songs left to write now because the Beatles wrote them all.

Right.

And, and they also had such a different range of music.

You know, you go from Love Love Me Do to the more psychedelic—

How fast they grew.

Oh, yeah.

That's just— I mean, I don't even know if that's possible anymore. because the audience is so fragmented now. Back then, it was, you know, your parents or you and your friends. There was nothing, you know, in between. There was no— now it's like, well, if you're 13 years old, you like, you know, K-pop. If you're, you know, 15, 16, you like this. If you like heavy stuff, then there's this. And everyone's— it's so fragmented. There's not like— us against them anymore. Right, right, right. And so it— I don't know if it allows for— I think Taylor Swift is actually the first one to really get that amount of gigantic following. And it seems to be a lot of, like, young girls still.

Yes.

But I mean, I like a lot of the songs. I think she's a great writer lyrically. I think the girls are killing it in pop right now. I mean, you know, I miss rock and roll on the radio for sure.

It's weird that rock and roll has kind of faded.

What's that?

It's weird that rock and roll has kind of faded.

I never thought the guitar would kind of become uncool. I thought once we got through disco where it was just in the background and suddenly there was AC/DC and you're going, oh, thank God the guitar's back, you know, now it'll never leave. It's left again, unfortunately, but hopefully it'll, you know, I don't know if it'll come back.

I think the window's open.

What's that?

The window is open. I think people still love the old music.

Yeah, yeah, but there's— I mean, I hear great stuff from rock bands still, you know, but you don't hear it unless someone sends it to you, really. Yeah, or there's a specific old rock, you know, like I don't know where you hear, you know, new Foo Fighters other than You certainly don't hear it on, you know, any of the AM stations anymore, do you?

Are there even AM stations?

Yeah, I know. I mean, I don't know what even plays.

FM is what played real— played big music in this country, but I mean, there's no real radio presence anymore as far— I don't know of any. My mechanic still listens to FM music. I know that because when he fixes my car, when I get it back, the radio's on the local FM rock station. But it's all like, there's no DJs anymore, and if there is a DJ, they don't have control of the music anymore.

Exactly right. And Jessie's Girl was a, was a product of the DJs. It wasn't released as a single.

Really?

Yeah, it was back when the DJs, if they liked a song, they'd, they'd play it. They said, oh, I like this song, let's put this on. And they started doing that with Jessie's Girl, and I started getting a lot of phones. And they called up the record company and said, you probably should put this out as a single. It's getting a lot of phones. And the record company goes, okay. So they put it out, but it wasn't their choice. I mean, it was actually— back then, RCA was me and Elvis. That was pretty much it.

Wow.

It was old Elvis and, you know.

What year was Jessie's Girl?

'81? '80? '81.

'81.

I throw it over to our maestro at the controls over there.

Yeah, I was a freshman in high school.

Yeah. Wow.

I was 14 years old when that song came out.

Oh my God, really? That's wild. Yeah.

What was that like for you? That had to be insane. That song was so giant. Every girl in my high school was in love with you. It must have been nuts.

Yeah, it was, it was I mean, I was 29, 30 by the time that happened, 31. And I'd imagined it for so long because I'm very— one of the things I really believe in is, you know, as I'm sure you do too, manifestation, believing, you know, visualization, seeing what you want and committing to it. And I'd seen it so much, so many times in my head that when it happened, I went, Yeah, that's how it is. Okay.

Really? So you expected it?

Yeah. I always expected something. I knew something would happen. I had faith. You know, there was times when I was— because of the teen magazines, I'd get letters sometimes, I can't wait to come over and meet you and visit you in your mansion. And at the time, I was living in a $180-a-month apartment in a seedy area of Hollywood, eating TV Man dinners and fishing you know, quarters out of my goofy piggy bank so I could go down and, you know, buy milk. So yeah, it was quite a dichotomy, you might say.

So when it first started happening, it started happening because of DJs. And like, how long was that before it became like a massive hit?

It was quite a haul. It was actually a long time on the charts crawling up. And it was— I thought, oh, she's never going to make it. You know, it's going so slow. Usually they go boom, boom, boom.

Right.

And it crawled and crawled and crawled and crawled. And I remember Joe Gottfried, who owned Sound City, which is why— one of the reasons I happened to be in the Dave Grohl Sound City documentary was because I used to hang out there all the time. And he came in with this cheap bottle of champagne and said, we just made number 1!

Wow.

And it was, uh, yeah, it was a long time that it climbed, and they weren't gonna release it. I actually, uh, I took General Hospital because I didn't think they were gonna release the album.

That's right, I forgot you were on General Hospital. You were on a fucking soap opera.

Fucking soap opera. And, and it was—

By the way, the biggest soap opera.

Well, it happened to be—

The whole Luke and Laura thing was crazy.

Yeah, it was the biggest soap opera that's ever got, and I just happened to be on it that summer. And it was— but I got— this guy called me up. I just— I hadn't worked as an actor in like 9 months. And this guy called me up and he'd seen me for a— they were trying to do a male Charlie's Angels. Thankfully, thankfully, I didn't get that and that didn't work out. But I'd gone up and auditioned for it, right? And it didn't work out. But this guy obviously remembered me and he called up my agent who hadn't done a fucking thing for me in 12 months and said, I remember this guy Springfield. We'd like to see him for this part on General Hospital. And I said, General— fucking soap opera. I don't want to do that. And he said, go on. Just go in. And I'm thinking, well, it's mostly old ladies ironing in the afternoon. That's not going to have any effect on my music career, I guess, because they totally— you know, it's apples and oranges. So I went up, and I wasn't that interested in it. And I did the reading.

And then he calls up and says, you got the part. part. And Keith Olsen, who was a big producer at the time and who'd produced Jessie's Girl, he'd done me a favor because he was— because the Sound City connection. He'd done Fleetwood Mac and Pat Benatar and Foreigner and a lot of big hits. And so he said, I'll do a favor for Joe, and I'll— And he'd actually cut together my very first album. He'd been the guy that cut all the clicks out of my first album where they punched me the vocals in. And, and so he did that, and he said, you don't need to do this. This is a great record. You don't need to do this soap opera. I said, I didn't know, man. I've had 4 albums and they've done nothing. So I'm— I don't know what this one's gonna do. So I'm gonna— I had no money. I said, I'm gonna take it for the money, because it was $500 an episode. It was like mind-blowing money to me back then.

Wow.

I'd never seen regular money, and I'd never seen that much regular— that was a hell of a lot of money to me back in 19— 1980. '80. So I said, I'm going to take this show. So I took it, and, uh, and the record company was not releasing the album. I'm going, oh God, it's going to happen again. Then, you know, it's going to hit 100 in the top 100 and go away because there was disco and there were ballads on the, on the radio. They didn't know what to do with a guitar-based pop record. So they finally released it, and, uh, and that— the whole DJ thing happened. And then—

You know, what was the single that they released?

What's that?

What were the singles that they released from that album?

They released I've Done Everything for You, actually, because Sammy was a known quantity and I wasn't, you know. And they— and it, it didn't do—

Is that Sammy Hagar?

Yeah, Sammy. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he wrote it, and Keith would— had worked with— Keith Olsen had worked with Sammy on a bunch of his solo albums, and he really liked the song, and he brought— and he said, I'll do 2 songs with Springfield. So he picked one of mine, Jesse's Girl. I had my demos that I'd done on my little 4-track, you know, and I was pissed that he didn't pick a second one. He said, I want to bring an outside song in. I went, ah, fuck, because, you know, I'm a writer. I wanted to do my songs.

Right.

And he brought this song in. I went, okay, you know, he must know what he's talking about. He's got a lot of hits and everything. So I did it, and it It happened to be the right second song. It was absolutely the right second song. But that was the first one. And then I thought, oh, you know, and then they picked Jessie's Girl. So fortunately, it was the DJ's call. And I'm forever thankful for that. And I don't know what would have happened if, you know, if they hadn't picked it or if they were still like now, they're on, you know, you play these 10 songs and that's it. Right.

Well, it seems like now it's all sort of pre-programmed by executives. They just decide what is gonna be pushed and what's gonna be famous.

Yeah, I mean, I don't really understand it, and I don't know if anybody does, why some are pushed and others aren't. But—

Well, there's no tastemakers anymore. That's the thing. Without DJs, without Wolfman Jack and these big DJ guys— he was awesome.

He was so good. I did an interview with him. him my first album. He goes, I don't know, Rick. I don't— I said, this is a song about a woman— a guy that commits suicide. Oh, I don't think so. Not on my radio station. He puts it on and he listens to it and he ends up playing it. It was really great. We actually got along really well and he would introduce me occasionally at shows and things. He was a lovely guy. Funny as hell, man.

Well, there were tastemakers back then.

Yeah.

There were people that you believed in that were DJs that were cool.

call it.

Yeah, and they were kind of cool guys who liked cool things.

Like, they had personalities.

Yes.

People, you know, yeah.

They had personalities, and they were interesting to listen to, and they would tell you why, like, you're gonna dig this, and they would play it, and you're like, ooh, what is this?

And they'd know shit about the songs too.

Yeah, they were real music aficionados, and they were, you know, sort of like the Siskel and Ebert of music. Like, they would tell you what was cool. And slowly but surely, that all just completely went away. I can't name a DJ currently, and I think that's nuts. When I was a kid, you knew everybody. Mark Parenteau and all these different people, and Charles LaQuedera. Those are the guys in Boston. Yeah, everybody knew who they were. And it was, it was a national thing. In every city, every city, they had your morning DJ guy, you know. And these morning—

Sean Shannon.

Yes. And all these guys would play— Kevin and Bean in LA— and all these guys would play cool music, and they knew cool stuff. stuff. And it was like, you know, you learned about culture from these people pre-internet. They were the tastemakers.

Yeah, it's trippy. I mean, I don't know how you fall in love with an artist anymore, you know, because I, you know, it's the old story. You get the record, you open it up, and you could, as it's playing, you read who's playing what, who wrote what, and you read about them. And I remember years ago, I had a copy of record, like a No Doubt CD or something anyway, and this young girl's daughter, a friend of mine, I said, oh, I got the No Doubt CD, the new CD, if you want to— she said, oh no, it's okay, I download it. Well, it's got the album cover and everything. She said, nah, it's okay, I just download it. I know, it's weird.

Yeah, yeah, I used to buy albums based on the COVID Yeah, I'd go to the record store and I'm like, wow, I know, it's impossible, but you would go and see an album like, wow, this looks cool, cool artwork.

You open it up. Hypnosis, hypnosis, whatever, however they've spelled it. Oh, they were brilliant. And look at the, you know, I mean, the Pink Floyd one is still an epic image. Yeah, they still— you see it everywhere, you know.

Well, when I was a kid, my Uncle Vinnie was, uh, he was an artist and he worked for Howard Marks Advertising, which was a company that did all of the album covers for KISS. And so when I was a kid, I was really young, I was like 7 or something like that, I got to see— I got to go to his office with him and he would take me around and, you know—

You'd see them before anybody did.

I met Ace Frehley with no makeup on back when— it was the craziest thing I'd ever seen in my life. He has no makeup on, this is nuts! This is back before KISS had taken the makeup off. It was, it was so insane. Like, he came into the office and everyone's like, what's up, Ace? I was like, what? That's him? Because I was— God, I don't remember how old I was. I couldn't have been more than 10. It was so strange to me. I was like, this is crazy. I can't believe he's right there. This is nuts.

Isn't that wild? Yeah.

Actually, I might have been a little older. I might have been 11 or 12. But either way, I was like blown away by it. I couldn't believe I was actually meeting Ace Frehley with no makeup on, but their advertisement, uh, company would do all the album covers, and the album covers were a work of art. There was so much going on inside of them. You would open up the album, there's artwork inside. It was like, even like when they had their solo albums, the albums themselves had an image of each individual band member printed on the album.

Oh, really?

Yes, like the album itself. Like when you look at the record, you saw the image of their faces on the record. It was crazy.

I remember when they came out, I think I'm thinking, this has got to be huge. I have a photo. Ace Frehley actually came back to see us at a gig we were doing, and I had a photo taken with him. And my drummer was a star, you know, KISS were his Beatles. So I had— I was selling guitars at the time, like these, uh, just these red Fernandes that we had a bunch of. So he had Ace sign it, and he did, you know, the Ace card and everything.

Mm-hmm.

To Roger, rock on, whatever Ace Really, I copied it exactly onto another one, exactly like the guitar. And in the middle of the show, I got— the guitar tech brought it out to me and I smashed the shit out of it like this.

Oh wow.

And Roger lost his shit. He got— oh my— he thought it was a real one.

Ah.

And it was, it was a— he played so many terrible pranks on us that it was fucking worth it. That's hilarious.

That's hilarious. So you kind of knew that eventually it was gonna hit, but when it did hit, what was the feeling like to go from being someone, you know, you'd been in pop magazines, but then all of a sudden you are the guy? Like, for a year or two, whatever it was, in the early '80s, you were so huge, man. I mean, it was, it was crazy. What What was that feeling like?

It was exciting. It drove me to write more and more, you know. I mean, I directed it into performing and writing. I really don't know what else, you know. I didn't party a lot, you know. I mean, we did a little bit on the road, but it wasn't— I directed it into what I was doing, and it was exciting, you know. I remember getting on the phone with DJs and saying, oh yeah, the record's gonna be— it's going up and up. And, you know, it was all real exciting stuff, but it was kind of like I said, I expected it, you know, and it wasn't like, oh my God, this is so weird. It was like, yeah, about fucking time. You know, I've been here for 10 years.

That's crazy that you like totally were comfortable with it and expected it.

Yeah, it was, it was, you know, were, you know, like 4,000 fans around a police car trying to tip it over. And I was like, okay, this is what it feels like.

God, it's so wild. It's so wild that you were like, okay, this is what is happening.

It was exciting, you know. I mean, it didn't lessen the excitement, but, but it was, uh, I prepared myself for it, you know.

Do you remember what it was like the first time you started playing the first few chords of Jessie's Girl and the whole crowd knew what it was?

Yeah, I do actually, because I'd seen— we saw all these English bands in Australia because they all came to Australia. I saw the Stones twice in '65 and '66. I saw the Beatles in '64, and I saw the Kinks in like '65. I saw The Who in '65 and And they started out with You Really Got Kinks, started out, da-da-da-da-dum, da-da-da, and the audience went apeshit. I said, oh man, that is so fucking cool. I want to feel what that's like.

Do you remember the first time you felt it?

What's that?

Do you remember the first time you felt that?

Yeah, and we did the Beach Boys 4th of July show from the Queen And I was like the new artist.

In Long Beach?

On the bill, yeah, on Long Beach. It was the Beach Boys, Three Dog Night, and I had Brian Wilson was still with the Beach Boys, had come back with the Beach Boys, right? And we started, we were on there, I started playing, and the audience went nuts. I went, that's it! That's the feeling! And it was so weird because we came on after the show So after the Beach Boys finished, we walked onstage, right? And Brian Wilson's like a god, right? And I'm walking onstage. He's at the piano. And he goes— he follows me like this. I'm going, is the zipper open? What's he following me for? He was a giant soap opera fan. Him and his wife used to sit and watch fucking General Hospital.

That's crazy!

Here's Brian Wilson with his mouth open. and following me across the stage when I'm doing the same thing, going, that's Brian Wilson, holy fuck.

Wow.

That was pretty— and, and same thing with Sammy Davis Jr. where we did the— I was on the first Night of 100 Stars, and, and I'm walking, we're walking along the, the red carpet, and I feel someone tugging on my jacket. I'm going, what the fuck? I look around, it's Sammy Davis Jr. Hey man, love you on this show. And I'm going, what? What the fuck? That was the stuff that was weird for me, was that kind of thing. And like, I met Paul McCartney later, like, I don't know, maybe 20, 15 years ago at a thing. And I went to see him because I'm a giant fan. And he said, oh, what are you here for? Meaning, you know, he obviously knew who I was and what was I coming to the event for because everyone was announcing new projects. I just said, I'm here to see you. He goes, oh? And I know no one was taking photos, and I didn't realize at the time. He said, I want to get a photo. So I said, that'll be 10 quid. So I go like this. He said, no, I'm only joking, I'm only joking.

So we had a photo. It's one of my— I keep that photo. That's a pretty cool photo.

Wow, that's awesome.

And speaking of album covers, the Sgt. Pepper's cover was, you know—

Oh yeah.

I have the— because I War of the Worlds, Time Machine. H.G. Wells, one of my favorite writers, right? I love sci-fi. Always loved H.G. Wells. He was very political too, and he wrote some great, great, great novels and articles about the war and the possibility of atomic war. And I mean, he was a really deep guy. And he was one of the cutouts, right? Was H.G. Wells on the Sgt. Pepper figure thing, you know, all the cutouts, the heads on the front, you know what I mean?

Mhm, sure.

Yeah. And he— and so I got that actual H.G. Wells, I got that actual cutout, and Paul had signed it. So I got one of my favorite writers and my favorite artist, and it's a really cool thing. I have that in my studio.

Wow. The, the, the people don't understand today the General Hospital General Hospital was a soap opera, but it was a soap opera that transcended regular television shows somehow.

Yeah, it was the most popular show in the summer.

Very strange. It was very strange, and it was a completely— it was an organic viral moment for whatever reason.

No idea still.

Never happened again.

No, never happened again.

Only happened once.

The most popular soap now has about about a third of the viewership that General Hospital had at the time. And it was, you know, like, I was on it. I'm this one— and you're talking about, you know, new fame and all that kind of stuff. And I was, um, I was— had a little house that I bought on BMI advances because I had a record deal, which they don't do anymore, but, um, in Montrose, in, in La Crescenta. And I'm walking down the street one day and, you know, nobody's looking at me. I'm going, yeah. I was walking down, and then 2 weeks later, after being on the show for 2 weeks, I'm walking down the same street, people are going, isn't that— you know, and it was like so sudden that that was like, you know, it was before MTV, so you had to have at least 3 albums out before a musician was recognized. So to get it that fast was— that was kind of odd, and I wasn't ready for that, for that amount of recognition.

Well, it was just so strange. My whole family was watching General Hospital. I was watching it. My sister was watching it. It was like— it was a television show, but it was a soap opera. And soap operas were like— housewives would watch it.

Yeah, it was, you know, your cousin in the— where he invented the toothpaste.

It was like low production value, shitty writing, bad acting. Very low.

Bad writing, horrible writing, terrible acting.

But something about that Luke and Laura storyline Uh-huh. For whatever reason, caught the nation and held it captive.

And I believe he raped her, and then they became boyfriend and girlfriend.

Is that really what the storyline was?

That's terrible. And Elizabeth Taylor was on the show too, and I got to do a scene, a couple of scenes with her, and that was weird. I'm walking, uh, down the stairs as she's walking up. She goes, Noah! And I'm going, wait, stop, Elizabeth Taylor, no! And, and we're walking, we would do a scene, and we're walking away together, you know, off to a blank alleyway until they say cut. And she goes, isn't acting stupid? And Tony Geary actually did the best thing. He's doing a scene with her in rehearsal, and he goes, oh my God, it's Elizabeth Taylor!

Wow.

And everyone went, yeah, that's what we all wanted to say, right? But it's amazing, the people who were fans of the show. It's, you know, crazy.

It was literally the biggest show in the country.

Yeah.

And it was a soap opera, and it was on during the day.

It made no sense. And the acting sucked, and the writing sucked, and the lighting sucked, and the— it was— if you got through the scene, they printed it.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, I got really good because they handed us a 3-page scene once, me and a character I was working with. Said, we're shooting this in 20 minutes. So I got really good. They'd have the camera here and they'd have the words right, you know, coming down the—

Teleprompter?

Yeah, the teleprompter down the screen and a red light. And I got good at looking at them while I was talking. And as soon as they went— as soon as I saw the light go off, I'd look at the screen and memorize the words for the next line and look back at them and go, yeah. It wasn't about acting for me then. It was about line memorization. But there were good people on it. Like, my best friend, actually, Doug Davidson, was on Young and the Restless as Paul— God, what's his last name? Sorry, Dougie. But anyway, Paul Drake. No, wait. Oh, there's me and Liz.

Wow.

Yeah, babe. Yeah. Hey, let me invite you to— you want to come? Oh, that was That was it. Isn't acting stupid? That's the scene.

Wow. That's nuts. Isn't acting stupid? That's so crazy. How weird.

Yeah, so he was really good. Doug Davidson played Paul Drake. I think that was his name. Sorry, I forgot it. But he was great on it. You know, he would cry and get angry, and he was really very, very good. And there are some great people that can do it. Not everybody can. And they pick, you know, they pick young, pretty people who aren't necessarily the best actors, but they have a presence, you know. And I remember walking by the phones when Demi Moore was on the show, and they would take calls from everybody and listen to everything. And I walked by as a woman's going, oh, doesn't like Demi Moore's voice.

They would take calls from the audience to find out what they thought about it?

Yeah, people would call in and and say, oh, we really like this guy, or we don't like this guy, or hate this storyline. They'd listen. And Gloria Monty was— she was the— oh, Tristie Moore passed away. And Bryan Cranston together. That's just— he just passed away. He's a good, a good, a cool guy. There's another Aussie.

Bryan Cranston, that's crazy.

Wow. Lovely, lovely guy. Funny guy. Is that the main—

So strange. Yeah, yeah, sorry, it's, uh— Wow.

Yeah, a lot of people—

1982.

Wow.

Trippy.

Trippy, yeah.

That's amazing. I can't believe Elizabeth Taylor was doing a soap opera. That's so strange.

Yeah, but there were fans, and it was a big show, and it was like, it was like, um, kind of like Baywatch, how Baywatch became this big cultural thing. And I remember reading Paul McCartney saying, yeah, my daughters love Baywatch. going, fuck that, man.

It's just so strange that it never happened again. That General Hospital moment is like a strange anomaly in culture.

It totally was, yeah. And it was a combination probably of the characters, you know. I mean, it was kind of the best of the worst storylines, you know. And there was, you know, a lot of characters, good characters on it. Plus, you know, they were aware by that point that I had a recording career, you know, and they wanted me to sing on the show. And I—

There it is.

There it is.

Wow.

And Tony took us around and we were in Amsterdam.

30 million viewers.

Yeah, that's insane.

For Luke and Laura's wedding on General Hospital. I mean, what has even come close to that?

Yeah.

What has even come close to that in terms of soap operas? Is there anything even close?

No. No, no, that was a golden age.

Fucking bananas.

Yeah.

It's kind of insane.

Yeah. Wasn't it during the middle of the day too?

Yeah.

Yeah, we still have no real explanation, you know.

I don't know what time it was on, but I remember it was like right after high school.

Yeah, they used to cancel, rearrange classes in universities because they knew people wouldn't show up.

That's nuts.

And I had no idea that these people, you know, they were the same people that come into concerts.

Wow!

And I had no idea that it would— there would be any kind of crossover, you know.

How crazy is it that the guy from General Hospital all of a sudden has the number 1 song in the country?

Yeah. They had no idea. I was on the show for, like, 6 weeks, and Gloria, the producer, who was really responsible for the success of it— she was so smart. Her and Tony used to get together and go over the scripts at night, and, you know, they had something to do. with it. And she came up and said, I hear you're also a singer. I went, yeah, but it's not happening on this show. I've already got enough shit that I'm on the show. So—

Oh, they wanted you to sing on the show? Oh God.

Which I did. I did as kind of a callback later on, way later on, you know, after I'd left the show. And then I came back for like the 50th anniversary or something and did. But yeah, when it was, you know, she wanted me to to like go up there and sing Jessie's Girl as this doctor suddenly, you know, that— we'll make it work, you know.

How weird must it have been for those Luke and Laura actors? Because like no one had ever done that before. No, no, no soap opera had ever gotten that huge before. And then after it was over, nothing. Yeah, the girl who played Laura was 21 and still lived at home.

Wow.

What's that? That's— she was 21 and still lived at home at the time.

Yeah.

Wow. Wasn't allowed to drink the bubbly because she was underage. How was she underage? Oh, not even 21, it says. Oh, not yet 21.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah, that didn't stop him from getting drinking. We got so drunk on the set one— we had a party. There was supposed to be this party, and the professor from Gilligan's Island played my father. I'm going, wow, that's fucking cool. And we're sitting around this, and we're supposed to be drinking, and we all drank. of got— was so bad they had to reshoot it the next day. Because you're all drunk. But, you know, everyone kind of, let's cut loose, it's the end of the day, you know.

Wow, that's nuts, man. Tell me about your writing, like, like the novels. Like, what have you written novels about?

Um, they're very bizarre. Uh, one— they're the ones, uh, they're both about plague that comes to the world and takes out, like, 2/3 of the people.

Both of them are about that?

Yeah, they're one— the other's a continuation of it. One's called Magnificent Vibration, the other one's called World on Fire, and it's dark humor, very dark humor.

Had you written before that? Like short stories?

I wrote my autobiography by myself.

But you— had you written any fiction?

Yeah, as a kid, that was the only thing I was any good at at school, was I got great marks in my essays. Nothing else was any— I was terrible at everything else. Math, geography, history, all that shit. And so, you know, I was already doing what I was planning on doing anyway. So, um, yeah, I started writing poems and then, you know, and I— songwriting, to me, the lyrics are, are something I really take time— yeah, music just comes through. It either is there or it isn't there. But the lyrics, you have time to sit back and go, does that work or does that not work? Whereas the music, it's kind of instantaneous or it doesn't happen. Um, so yeah, I've always Kind of written.

And when did you write these novels?

Um, I don't know. Can you tell me that, my friend?

You don't remember?

I don't know. It could have been the '90s, could have been the 2000s. It was, um, probably 2000— 2014 and 2021. What is it?

2014 was the first one, follow-up 2021. Oh, so 2021 is recent.

Yeah. It was, yeah, fairly recent.

Yeah.

Um, the first one was on the New York Times bestseller.

Wow.

I sign them all the time, you know, fans bring them and that. But, uh, um, yeah, I like writing. I like— I'm writing something now, but it's, uh, just something that I do when I'm not writing songs, you know. I kind of gravitate towards that. I've got to be doing something. And it was like I take a guitar to the beach, we go to Bora Bora and I take a little guitar when I sit on the beach because I can't just sit on the beach. It feels like, uh, kind of wasted time.

That's wild.

So I do relax, but I gotta have a guitar. I gotta be doing something, either writing or, you know, whatever.

And when you write, do you write longhand? Do you write with a—

No, I write on computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and that's the thing, like, I have, uh, I have a bunch of Beatle lyrics, handwritten Beatle lyrics, right? And they don't exist anymore because everyone writes on the computer. I write— I like— I have Jessie's Girl there. I have the original paper that I wrote Jessie's Girl on.

And what are you doing with that? Is it framed?

No, I got it, I know, in a closet somewhere or something.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh God, you should frame that.

Yeah, I probably should. I, you know, I have all this, all my songs, really, the The ones that— some of the ones that made it and the ones that didn't. I have them all. So I got interested in that, and I started collecting Beatle lyrics because I loved that moment of creation.

How did you get those?

Through friends. I have a friend who trades— he's the guy that validates them all for Christie's and for, you know, Sotheby's and all the big auction houses. And he, you know, he knows where all the bodies are buried. So I collect stuff like you obviously do, you know. I have the Titanic number 2 lifeboat plaque that says SS Titanic on it, and it's in a show now in Branson or somewhere. We rented it out.

Wow.

I love collecting stuff. I have robots and old '50s robots and—

Well, there's something about What's it like about collecting something like Beatles lyrics that you know were written by the Beatles? Like their hand touched that paper and wrote that down.

No, it's a— as a huge fan, it's, it's very powerful stuff. The coolest one I have is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Whoa.

Which they both have written on it, which it didn't happen much, you know, towards— they mostly, they wrote their own songs, you know, but they both got their hand on this. And there's even Wednesday morning at 9 o'clock written at the bottom 2, the first line from She's Leaving Home. But Paul did a drawing of the, uh, the Sgt. Pepper cover when he still pictured it as them in Victorian, you know, with, with curtains. He— that was his original idea. And there's a drawing of that, and there's a drawing of Rocking Horse People, which is really good because they were really good artists, him and John. And, um, and that's really cool. It's got a lot of mojo, you know, that looks like there's time been spent on it.

What was the origin of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Wasn't that supposedly about LSD?

No, no, it was not. Everyone thought it was, but it was a painting that actually Dave Gilmour owns. David Gilmour owns the painting that Julian Lennon did of a painting that a girl, Lucy, Lucy, his friend at school who recently passed away. But he brought it home and his dad said, what's that? And he said— and Julian said, that's Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. And John took that and it just happened to be almost, you know, an anagram for LSD, which is crazy.

Wow.

But it's one of the millions of things that happened in the Beatles' lives that you went, that didn't really happen. They had to manufacture that. But no, it really friggin happened. And that's part of what made them, you know, almost like angels that it was just so supposed to be. And that was one of the things. And it was— but everyone thought it was LSD because Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Right, right, right. But it was really about the painting that Julian did. And John just took it and, you know, he was doing drugs at the time. And— but he really loved Lewis Carroll. And it's really what it is, is Lewis Carroll was— is the lyrics are Lewis Wow.

Wow, that's crazy. But Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland, you know, Alice in Wonderland was also about LSD.

I don't know. I mean, I think there was a lot of influence. The Caterpillar was probably high, you know, and I don't know how much— how aware that they all were then, but I know that the Beatle John loved him and loved his writing, and he would— I mean, I'm sure he had a wink in there somewhere about it being dope, you know.

But, or, or, well, there was all these substances.

What's that?

There was all these substances.

Yeah, yeah, sure. In it.

Yeah.

Oh, he was— yeah, they were definitely, you know, high at the time and, and high a lot of the time.

Yeah.

But they had that talent. And, you know, a lot of— I, a lot of people think that, you know, the drugs, but it wasn't. It was they had the talent, but the drugs just maybe took that talent somewhere that they maybe wouldn't have gone if they hadn't done the drugs, but it wasn't drugs that make people creative. It's what they have inside them that the drug, you know, frees whatever resistance there is.

It was the talent, and it was also the volume. Have you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers?

No.

Well, one of the things it talks about is— it just talks about— it's a great book. And one of the things in the book, it talks about why something became extraordinary. And they talk about— he talks about the Beatles and what the Beatles did. They were in Hamburg and they got a gig, I think it was at a strip club. And so they were like playing every night, like 5, 6 hours a night, 6 days a week, and they were constantly playing. And so they did this for a couple years and they went back to Liverpool and everyone was like, what the fuck happened to you guys? They were just just tight. They were just so locked in and so good that that's when they really became the Beatles. And it's just volume. It's where he came up with the concept of 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in something.

Right. I've heard that.

Yeah. I mean, they're a great example of that. It's just an incredible amount of volume of work.

It's like Robert Johnson too. He was an okay guitar player and he went away like for a year or something and came back and suddenly he was this amazing slide player, you know, cross Yes, and that's why everybody thought he sold his soul to the devil. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, it just happened, you know. But, but they— I don't really— I don't know if they realized they were woodshedding for the great moment, but that's absolutely what they were doing.

I think they were just doing it to stay alive.

Yeah.

It was just— it wasn't paying much. It was just— I mean, they're working at a strip club.

Paul, yeah, one of the greatest bass players of all time, he said, I got lumbered with the bass. because he was a guitar player and Stuart Sutcliffe was the bass player, right? And he fell in love with Astrid what's-her-name who gave him the haircuts. And he said, I'm leaving the band. And they said— and John said, well, I'm not playing bass. And George said, I'm not playing bass. So Paul said, I guess I'll play it. So he got the Beatle— found the Beatle bass in Germany. And there's a photo where you can see it and it's still in its case up against the wall where they're playing. and he's playing the piano in the strip club. And what he became, you know, with that is just freaking unbelievable.

Incredible. Yeah, it's just so strange how after the fact you go back and look back on all the different events that had to take place in order for them to become the Beatles and many bands to become what they became. It's just so fascinating to me to see that.

I think everyone's life has that, you know, you can look back. Like, I look at my marriage. I've been married for 40, 42 years now. And, you know, I was in Australia and my wife was over here in Beloit, Wisconsin. And I went to England and she moved to California and I went back to Australia and she moved back to Beloit and I came over here and I happened to hook up with a manager at Sound City. And at the same time, she happened to meet this woman who she liked her accent. She was an English woman and she became friends and she worked at Sound City. So Barbara came in to work at Sound City, and I met her there. And, you know, there's all these— I mean, it happened in everybody's life, and it's just amazing that we have successful lives.

It all seems like it's meant to be, but I always wonder if that's like just you're looking back and you're looking for a pattern why it makes sense.

You're just tracing what happened Yeah. But that ended up in a good way, you know?

Well, when— it seems like whenever anyone has had an extraordinary life, there's always this fortuitous series of events that take place that enable this to just become what it became.

Yeah. And I think, you know, you said a lot of it's luck, but the luck happens when you stay in the game. I think that is the core of it, is staying in the game so that, you know, when the moments happen, that you are ready.

It's certainly not just luck.

No, no.

There's certainly a lot of other elements involved.

You've got to be ready. I mean, you've got to woodshed. You've got to have your craft down. You've got to be competent. You've got to have something to offer.

And you've got to be able to believe in yourself enough to perform when the moment is there. And that's, that's, that's daunting for a lot of people. The anxiety of it all is very—

I played with my back to the audience for the first 3 months of being in the first band I was ever in.

Really?

Yeah, yeah.

Why?

I was nervous, you know. I was, I was a blues band. I mean, I would— I kind of was raised— my guitar playing was based on, you know, because of Clapton and all those guys, was based on a lot of the blues players, B.B. King and, you know, all the early players. And I was in a blues band and I was like 15 and they were like 25. And one of them had been in prison. It was a really rough group. One of them had been in prison and there was one guy that had been in prison a couple of times and they all were the kind of guys that would go to pubs on the weekend and go out and fight, which is an Australian tradition. It's the only place I've ever been where you You go into the men's restroom and there's a sign says, this is what you do if your buddy gets into a fight, like in every bathroom. So I play, and I was, you know, I was shy. They were all like, seemed like adults to me. And they went to my mom and they said, why does Richard play with his back to the audience?

My mom goes, oh, he's probably shy. And they accepted that. And eventually I turned around.

Do you remember the first day you turned around?

No, I wish I did, but it must have been a girl or something that I was eyeing. I'm sure it was.

Wow.

I was the last virgin in the band too, being the youngest. And believe me, did they give me shit because of that.

I'm sure. Listen, man, you've had a hell of a life, and it's just awesome to see you out there kicking ass. It really is. Like, that video of you that went viral with your shirt off singing Jessie's Girl, like, that pumped me up.

Great.

I watched, I was like, fuck yeah, good for him. Look how good he looks. Like, this is kind of crazy. I just love— I love, first of all, that the passion that you had for singing that song was really like it was a new song. And the fact that you've been— I mean, you've been singing that song for how many fucking years, man? 40? What, 46 years?

Yeah, that's closer to the— when that was released, it was written, it was closer to the end of World War II than it is now.

That's crazy.

That's crazy. And she is probably in her early, late 60s now.

Wow.

The girl I wrote it about.

Who is the girl that you wrote it about?

Well, I never learned her name. She was at a stained glass class. It was one of those moments where I was between record deals. And I always wanted to do things with my hands. I would make things out of clay. I was making mirrors out of clay, like sci-fi things, and selling them at the local, you know, swap meet. And I started thinking about stained glass, and I thought I could support my family doing stained glass, which was bullshit. But— So I went to this class And there was this girl, and she was hot. You know, it was just another girl that I found hot. And she had a boyfriend there, and I would try and chat with her. I never really had chat with girls. That's one of the reasons that the guitar really helped there. I was— never could go up and go, hey, babe. You know, I was not that— I was never that guy. So, um, and I tried to talk to her, and she had nothing— didn't want anything to do with me because she had a boyfriend. And so I went home and wrote about her in this song.

His name was Gary. But— and I tried Gary and didn't sing. So I tried Randy. And that didn't sing right either. So I ended up with Jessie, and that seemed to work. So—

Wow!

But, yeah, she— Oprah went looking for her, actually. She was looking for the women behind the songs. And they found the stained glass guy, and he died 2 years before, and they'd thrown all the paperwork out a year after that. So—

Wow.

But they could have found her. They missed her. But I'd be— it'd be wild to meet— I'd probably— I don't know if I'd recognize her now. I remember her, what she looked like. But, um—

I wonder if she loved that song.

No. Yeah, I mean, she had no idea. She has no idea it was about her. No one's ever come up and said, that was me, right?

That's crazy.

Wow.

Well, listen, man, it's been awesome meeting you.

Yeah, I really enjoyed this very much.

Thank you very much, and thanks for everything, and congratulations.

Thank you.

And you're, you're a bad motherfucker. All right, uh, go see Rick Springfield in concert, ladies and gentlemen. He's still out there kicking ass. I love it. All right, thank you very much. Bye, everybody.