Rick Springfield
USA Today, Jan. 24, 2018
Why did I pitch a story on Rick Springfield to USA Today? As best as I can remember, there were three reasons. The first applies to every proposal I’d ever sent to anyone: Money. The second was that his new album at the time, The Snake King, betrayed a side to the one-time pop headliner and daytime drama icon that hadn’t been previously seen. Add to that my third reason, which was that even when I first heard his massive smash single “Jesse’s Girl” some 43 years ago, I recognized that this wasn’t your typical release, with the same changes, the same structure, as most of what the industry was pumping out to the public.
Even now I think of “Jesse’s Girl” as a daring departure from formula, with its irregular line lengths, pauses, brief transposition and return to the original key after just eight instrumental bars. More than that, Springfield delivered the lyric with more passion than the genre was accustomed to. Was that intensity a foreshadowing of the darker hues of The Snake King? I resolved to find out, once USA Today gave me the green light.
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Your artist bio says “The lyrics aren’t what you expect. We’ll leave it up to the listener to decide what’s being said.” Why did you need to make this album, with its particular sound and message?
The messages are that I look around at the world and I see evil everywhere. We’re shitting on the planet and destroying everything as fast as we can. We’re getting close to a tipping point where it’s gonna be too late. When do we make the right decisions, the right choices? It’s very painful. And it’s very easy to feel insignificant where you can’t do anything about it “so let’s just ride it to the end.” That seems to be the prevailing thought. People are talking about aliens coming to save us or whether there’s a habitable planet in a Goldilocks Zone twenty-five lightyears away. Well, that’s not gonna happen. This is it. We’ll sink or swim with our attitude toward the planet.
I’m very much in favor of the planet winning but I just wonder where God is now. I mean, evil is crawling all over the planet, from the people who are supposed to be good to the monsters who are out there, raping and burying children alive. It’s fucked up. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I just wanted to do something with those thoughts rather than “my baby left me and I feel so bad.”
Artists often do cut and record songs that talk about these dreadful situations. But you do it with an unusual urgency and candor. Did you ever think about toning that back?
I did, certainly. I had fun writing it. I love trying to say what I’m thinking in some way that’s poetic and reasonably informed. Rather than just whining, I’m trying to say what’s in my head. After it was done I did think, “Wow, I’m probably gonna lose fans over this one.” I go to places down south where fans will hand me a bag of Bibles and literature on Jesus. They’ll probably get a look at the title and not even want to buy the album. But then I think, what, I’m gonna let someone’s dogmatic thinking rule how I conduct my life? Well, no, so I put it out.
“I was a pretty bizarre, fucked up child.”
You address these issues with an emphasis on the role religion plays, in particular concerning the failure of people’s beliefs. Why was this important?
There’s a song on there called “God Don’t Care.” It starts out “Little Ricky had a crucifix when he was just a kid. He bought it at the Eagle’s Nest where Adolf Hitler hid.” That was me. I was in Europe with my parents on summer vacation. We went to the Eagle’s Nest in Berchtesgaden, where I bought a crucifix. I’d pray to it when good stuff happened. When bad stuff happened to me, I’d break off a little bit of the crucifix. I was a pretty bizarre, fucked-up, dark child. It was that kid, with his beliefs in what God is and what he was taught, what he sees and what he experiences, that is the core of this record.
Did you have a listener in mind as you wrote these songs?
As I’m writing I don’t think, “This will make someone feel this way.” I only write for myself, based on how I feel and what I’m doing. All you can really do is express yourself. I hope I don’t sound preachy on it. I wouldn’t assume I can teach anybody anything. It’s just me spitting shit out and people will react to it. I want to share my music and my thoughts; otherwise I’d record it and leave it on the shelf. But for most artists it’s important to share what you do, whether it’s painting or dancing or writing or whatever. That’s part of our drive, our connection to other people.
Did these songs come out quickly?
Yeah, super-fast. I wrote “Orpheus in the Underworld,” which is about ten minutes long, in an evening. This was one of the first songs where I’ve written lyrics with the music because I was pretty firm on the approach I wanted to take. I didn’t edit myself like I sometimes do when I write. I just said, “I’m gonna write and I’ll look at it tomorrow morning.” A lot of songs do have the title at the end of a verse rather than have a big hook. I wanted to take that approach too. All the early Beatles stuff is like that too — I mean, “Please Please Me” and “Eight Days a Week.” They stuck the title at the end of the verses. I was raised on that stuff that tagged the verse with the title.
Blues, Pain & Release
You’ve got some really deep blues on the record, with Delta slide guitar, harmonica and so on.
I just decided to do a blues-based record and write my own blues-based songs before I really knew what I was going to write about. I thought it would be something like this, with the painful thoughts in my head and feelings of what we’re doing to the planet. There’s a certain discipline within the blues structure, which you either use or try to break out to go a little further. It’s a simple musical process, the blues. So the words became much more important to me.
Also, I’ve been playing slide for a long time. When I do acting stuff I take my slide guitar because there’s a lot of down time when you’re doing TVs or movies. I’ve never played blues slide on any record, so I thought, “Why don’t I do that on this album?” And if I could play any instrument well, it would be a blues harmonica. I play bad blues harmonica [laughs]. I played on one track but the rest of it is Jimmy Z [Zavala], who played harmonica on a song I had in 1984, “Bop ’til You Drop.” I’ve always remembered that. He’s an amazing player — very authentic, very Little Walter and Paul Butterfield. There are lots of riffs in these songs and I wanted to punch them up with some brass but especially with harmonica.
“The Devil That You Know” recalls Robert Johnson.
I took his lead on that one because of that whole mystique: Was he really in tune with the Devil? The Devil is like an instant connection between the blues and the dark side. I didn’t really want to do “My baby left me; I feel so bad.” That doesn’t ring true to me, so this was an authentic place to begin, even if I didn’t deal fully with authenticity.
You do an intense blues shuffle on “Judas Tree,” which has a rather astonishing last line. [“They say when you die hangin’ / you get hard as you go down. / I think I’ll cut poor Judas loose … / and I’ll take him underground.]
That’s strict blues format. You do the first line; you repeat the first line and then you have a tag line as the third line. You’ve got to say something in those two lines that you have in each verse, so I pushed myself to say something provocative but also convey an emotion I’m feeling.
“Orpheus” isn’t really a blues song, though. …
No, it’s not. There are some on there that you couldn’t say are blues.
It kind of reminds me of “Desolation Row” in the way the title comes at the end of each verse and there’s no bridge.
I think about Dylan; I’m a giant Dylan fan. He wrote a lot of twelve-bar blues but with Dylan lyrics. So I took that format too. If I wanted to change it, I’d change it. I didn’t say, “Whoa, I can’t do that because it’s four chords instead of three or fifteen bars instead of sixteen.” I didn’t limit myself. I tried to serve the song rather than the medium.
“If you’re not stealing from the Beatles, you’re not stealing from the right people.”
USA Today will premiere “Land of the Blind,” which does have some Beatles influence in the “ooh-lah-lah” vocals that recall “You Won’t See Me.”
Busted [laughs]! If you’re not stealing from the Beatles, you’re not stealing from the right people.
How did you write this song?
I wrote this in Germany while I was doing a tour. It was around the same time I was writing all the other stuff. But this just came to me in some little village. We were doing an orchestra show with a bunch of other artists, so I had a lot of down time. I’d just walk around with my guitar in my hotel, playing stuff to see if I can come with anything I like. This melody came up.
What about the lyrics, with its images of “Cyclops in the White House” and so on?
I understand how it is when you’re struggling to feed your kids. I’ve been there. I know that when the focus is on paying the bills so your heat doesn’t shut off, it’s hard to view the problems in the world and work to solve them. You’re trying to put bread on the table. Part of having some success is that you have the opportunity to free your mind to contemplate what you can do about this. Through the process of the election in America, I saw we were kind of walking around with blinders on, just hoping for the best. And it seems to be a pattern in the grander scheme of the world too. We’re handing control over to these useless people.
Sunshine & Shadows
The failure of religion plays a role in this song too.
Very much so. People will read different things into it, but I know what I meant by it all.
This song also has the first reference on the album to the “snake pit.” This mystical, voodoo, sexual thread kind of runs parallel to all the religious references. Do you see the appeal of sensuous pleasures of the sense as an antidote or remedy to the suppressive impact of religion?
I’ve always been attracted to the ones who have been suppressed, sexually or religiously. I’ve met a lot of them myself. You sense that they’re burning to burst out of it. But there’s a dark side of it. I’m a big believer in yin-yang. I understand that every front has a back. There’s no darkness without light. So I’m very attracted to the religious/sexual thing. To a degree, that was a theme in the novel I wrote, Magnificent Vibration. It was about this guy who’d had a very messed-up religious upbringing. Sex was like a big release for him but it also brought a lot of guilt with it.
You take a provocative approach to spreading this music, from the title of “Jesus Was an Atheist,” to even dissing Santa Claus.
That’s a little bit of humor [laughs]. I thought that with a song like “Suicide Manifesto” we needed it.
You even slam his stupid hat [on “Santa Is an Anagram]”!
There are no punches pulled.
“If my audience leaves me because of this album … I’ll [just] stay home with my dog.”
“Suicide Manifesto” is especially painful and personal. Did you write it in a moment of crisis?
I’ve always dealt with depression. I wrote pretty extensively about it in my autobiography. A lot of people point to that part of it rather than the salacious, sexual stuff. That’s great because that feeling is more pervasive than people want to admit. I’m okay with talking about it because it’s also been part of my drive, my belief that I’m not enough, that I’ve got to push myself to create and do new stuff. The song was originally six minutes long. I finished the demo and Matty Spindel, the engineer, and I looked at each other. And he said, “Dude, that’s too dark!” [Laughs.] So I chopped it down by about two-thirds and it ended up a quick, in-and-out, two-minute thing. It wasn’t depressing during the writing process. But to sing it and listen back to it was very depressing. It’s very personal. I’ve been there several times in my life. I hear about people like Robin Williams and Chester Bennington [of Linkin Park]. I don’t go, “Oh, my God, how could they do that to the people they love?” I get where they went. I understand that head space. It’s very painful and that’s what this song is about.
Writing and performing the songs are part of the process of dealing with it.
Exactly. I’ve always tried to be as honest as I can and write about it, even when it’s just about trying to score with a girl [laughs].
What would you say to your longtime fans about how to listen to and understand this new music?
I’d like to say I’m very sorry [laughs]. Wait for the next album!
It sounds to me like you’re not really concerned with the impact taking this kind of risk will have on your career.
That’s not really a concern for me. It’ll go the way it goes. I wanted to write this record. I knew there would be some kickback from fans who know me and are looking for the next “Jesse’s Girl” or the next pop/rock anthem. But I’m at the point where if my audience leaves me because of this album, I just won’t tour! I’ll stay home with my dog. I’m writing more prose. I’m working on another book. I love acting. I’ve been doing some roles that go against type. I did a thing on American Horror Stories where the reaction was summed up by one fan who tweeted, “Yuck!” That encourages me to not worry about who I’m going to alienate with this. If you do, you’re not really an authentic artist.
Are you sick of “Jesse’s Girl”?
I’m very proud of having written it. I’m very proud of the place it’s taken on its own. That’s nothing to do with me; it’s to do with how people viewed the song. That enabled me to have someone come to me and say, “Let’s put this weird Snake King record out.”
It’s a brilliantly constructed song. Some verses are cut short, others are lengthened.
It’s actually a pretty complex song. Within whatever medium I’m writing, I’ve always tried to do all I can.
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