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February 12, 2025 • 13 mins
Jeff chats with Rick about his new album and tour!
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks for checking out my Eighties Show podcast. I'm Jeff Stevens. Well,
he's got his big I Want My Eighties tour going
on this summer. He's about to release a Greatest Hits
Volume two package. So much going on with my longtime
pal Rick Springfield.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey Jeff, Rick, my old pal. How you doing, man?

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Good? How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm good?

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Thank you very much. I'm happy to see that the
Greatest Hits Too is out. Obviously all of us crazy
Rick fans are excited about because you've done I mean,
obviously everybody knows all your big hits, but man, you've
done so many great works beyond the stuff in the eighties,
and we finally get that in a awesome package.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, I was, I was hoping to do something like that.
I think the best stuff I've I've written and recorded
is the later stuff from like the last like twenty
twenty five years. I can't believe it's that long, I know,
but there we finally put it together into an album.
You know, there are a lot of fan favorites and

(01:01):
just good stuff that I work. I'm proud of, you know,
men that never was with the Food Fighters and yeah,
party at the Beats Bar with Sammy Hagar and a
lot of good stuff and the new single Loose Myself
plus as a re recording of Jesse's Girl because we can.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Why not, right, I mean, you know, it's not like
anybody ever gets tired of that song. So and Ricky
and I have talked a thousand times. I always think
it's so cool because artists that have been around playing
as long as you have, I could easily go, you
know what, you guys have heard this a million times.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I'm not going to play Jesse's Girl.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
I mean there are artists out there that will do
that where they leave out purposely a couple of their
big hits, and I always think that's kind of that
kind of stinks.

Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, it does. I think it's an ego thing more
than anything. And I'm you know, I'm very proud they've
written a song like that that has its place somewhere
in the eighties, you know, pop format. So yeah, I
celebrate all that stuff. And I really I put on
a show, a live show, to you know, to give
joy and to free people from their daily anxieties for

(02:08):
two hours. Yeah, that's really what I think my job is.
And to leave Jesse's Girl out with kind of a
bit of a disappointment the least.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well that's see, that's cool though, But you get that,
and you you are more connected with your fans like
me and so many others around here than the average person.
You get it, you know, you know the connection that
I just have never seen anything like it, from when
you go in the crowd on human touch and how personal.
I mean, we obviously did a show with you last summer.

(02:40):
You and I left the venue at I don't know,
twelve thirty. You are still signing autographs and still meeting people,
and I'm like, man, you get it, and I just
think that's so awesome.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Man.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah, you know, I U when at first happens, you know,
you think it's all about you, but if you're in
the game long enough, you realize it's actually not about you.
It's about the and they're the reason you're anywhere. And
so I did get that early on in life. I
used to be a bit of like most people. I
was a bit of a at first, you know, but

(03:12):
I got it together and I honor the fans, you know,
and give them as much as is possible, you know,
without any root stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah, and yeah, and you know. The other thing that
I think is so great too, is that it's like
just one big hug. Your show is so much energy.
And I was I was with a bunch of bunch
of friends of mine at the show last year, and
they're they're just all looking at me, like, man, maybe
I didn't get you know, these are guys right, And
they're like, I don't know, maybe I didn't get Rick

(03:44):
back in eighty one, but I get him now.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Man. It's like it's from first of.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
All, you put on a rocking show and the energy
is just off the charts, and and I think that
just sets you apart from so many other people.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
But I love to play live, you know, and I
have an amazing band, as you know, and we all
love each other and it shows on stage. You know.
They're not not one of these bands it has to
take separate, separate tour buses because I hate each other.
You know. We're all we're all friends and hang out,
you know, and we've been out of we haven't been

(04:22):
working for December and General took those those months off,
and you know, we're texting each other all the time
and sending stupid stuff to each other.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
And.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
It's a great, great relationship and that translates on stage
as well, which I love. I think people get that.
It's nothing spoken, it's just just it's felt.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, And you can tell when bands are just up
there going, Okay, we're playing this song. Now we're playing
this song, and now we're playing this song. You're so
spontaneous and everything else. It's just cool.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
And I am so glad again to.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Get back to the the new album, which is big hits,
Rich Springfield's Greatest Hits Volume two, song from Karma, and
songs like Our Ship Sinking, which to this day may
be my favorite Rick Springfield song ever, Venus and Overdrive,
so many other great songs that I think people are
gonna maybe here for the first time in some cases.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah. Yeah, there's some songs on there that you know,
didn't get the didn't see the light of day quite
like my g I'd hoped, you know, like I mentioned
The Man That Never Was, the song I wrote with
Dave Grohl, Yeah, and the Foo Fighters. And because it's
in a documentary, you know, the Sound City documentary The

(05:37):
Day of May about the Great Recording Studio or I
recorded my first you know, my first successful album with
the last Dog and Nirvana recorded Nevermind, and Tom Petty
recorded there, and Fleetwood Mac and Foreigner and at Benatar
and so many of the eighties acts and nineties acts

(05:59):
that it was. You know, it was a life changing
studio for a lot of us.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Really, oh absolutely.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Gro He said his life was divided into two parts
before Nevermind and after never Mind, and it was for
me with Working Class Dog. You know, it was life
changing stuff in that in that little studio where was
hole in the wall basically in van Nis, but it
just happened to be a great sounding room. And so
he did the documentary on it. And documentaries are hard

(06:27):
a hard sell, you know, they're not like movies, and
so a lot of people haven't seen it and should
see it because it's really amazingly made doc It's really great, Yeah,
it is.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
It's one of those that you're just you almost want
to just turn around and watch it again. It's like
because you learned there's so much history and so much
connection there with like you said, a lot of those
artists that you just mentioned. The cool thing about this
is I have gotten so much more back into vinyl
and I was in Burbank back over the summer and
they had. It was just my friends. We just were

(07:00):
trying to find record stores on like I'm buying vinyl again.
And then I went to Amiba and all these different places,
and right right.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
I found some great little Rick nuggets.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
I'm like, because I flipped through the Rick Springfield section,
I'm like, got it, got it, got it, got it.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
And I found like.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
A single of Jesse's Girl and maybe it's maybe it's
the new version that ended up on there, but I
was like, on the new album. But I was like,
what it was like a record a record store day
special or something. I'm like, well, I'm buying this, so
I'm always looking for stuff. But the packaging on the
big hits looks awesome.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah, a little throwback to Working Class Dog. Obviously, it
was my dog Ronnie running on the cover of Working
Class Dog and success hasn't stolen me up. And he
passed away in the early nineties unfortunately, but this was
Ronnie on this cover. It'd be you know, a couple
of hundred years old and dog here right obviously, so
we had we had to find it look alike.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Well you did pretty good.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah, yeah, we got photos and he was one and
I thought was the most you know, the most similar
to Ronnie, but he was adoptable and he got adopted.
He's living in Chicago now.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Actually, oh nice.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Somewhere in Chicago's Yeah, you know, we wanted to do
something positive as well as just getting a dog on
the cover, so we went to a rescue place up
in tom Springs actually, and yeah, so as a concept
I had in my mind for a little while to
to do the setup that is on the cover. And

(08:33):
I love vinyl too. I'm so happy it's coming out
on vinyl. I just bought a record player as well.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
I did the same thing last summer because I thought, well,
I've got because I still have hundreds of vinyls from
back in the day that I've been out onto.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
But I'm like, I got to have something to play
it on.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
No, it's great. My son, my youngest son has his
has a record collection. Yeah, the whole tactile thing of
an album where you can put the record on it,
of the whole needle drop and then you get the
album cover and you get to look at who who
did what on it, who played what, and it's just

(09:11):
the whole experience that, you know, the whole streaming thing
just misses completely.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Totally, totally agree. We could talk for hours about that.
I want to also talk before I let you go
about your new coffee table book, which also comes out
here on February fourteenth. So that's part of the deluxe
edition of the Greatest Hits volume too, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Yeah, it comes with with it and what they call
the Luxe Passage. I guess it's a coffee table book,
which I I'm not sure anymore what a coffee table is.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
But you go to Starbucks. I know you like Starbucks, Rick,
So yeah, there's.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
A coffee table, a couple of coffee tables in there,
but I certainly don't have one in my house. But
I think they mean, you know, the living room the
living room table, But that doesn't sound as good as
a coffee table. Coffee table book is kind of like
short shorthand, like kleenexes for you.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Know, tissues for tissues. Right.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Well, in addition to by the way, we got to
hear Lose Myself. You played it live because you were
here in the end of last summer and you're like,
I'm gonna play something new, and you have this way
of writing songs that sound instantly familiar, but I knew
it wasn't. I mean, obviously it sounded like a new song,
but it was like I just was singing Lose Myself
the minute you finished playing it. So I think you

(10:33):
said we were one of the first ones to hear
it live last summer here, so that was pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, as an infectious hook, which I always always the
hook is the most important thing to me. And yeah,
I thought I thought it came out well. It's got
a lot of energy in a guitar bass, which is
always a positive thing for me. Although you're not hearing
a lot of it on AM radio anymore, which is

(10:59):
kind of sad.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
That is.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
I don't know if it's gone for good or if
it'll come back. It's really hard to tell. It was
guitars were dead and throughout a lot of the seventies
with the disco and ballad thing, and you know, Jesse's
Girl was one of the first group of songs that
came that brought guitar back onto the radio, along with
like Pat then Guitar, What's That? What's was her first

(11:23):
one called Heartbreaker, Heartbreak, that one with Highway to Hell.
It was kind of the first bunch of you know,
and the Cars. Of course, that was the first bunch
of songs to bring guitar back to the radio. So
I'm hoping you know that I'm a guitar player and
I love guitar. I know some of the Olivia Rodrigo

(11:48):
and a couple of those singers have have some big
guitars and choruses and stuff, but it's kind of the
processed guitar, right, you know, the digitally processed stuff. But
it's still so bringing guitars, and I just hope it
comes back in full force because I love guitar songs.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, you're right, good player.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
You're a great player and great songwriter and those are
desperately missing. And again, just like always, I could talk
to you for an hour and a half, but real quick,
you are you have a big tour again this summer.
You're not hardly taking ever any time off. And this
looks like a really really fun show.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah yeah, we're announcing it, I think in a day
or two. But it was taking some friends out that
it's called this thing is I Want in my eighties
tour is what the show is called. So obviously that's
a clue to who might be on the Bill. But
it's some cool, cool acts, some friends and some new

(12:45):
possible friends, and we really looking forward to the show.
It's going to be great.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Well, we'll be talking about that when it's officially announced
here on Mixed one of seven seven of course. But
everybody should go out and get the well, either the
regular or the deluxe edition of new album The Big
Hits Greatest Hits Volume two. And by the way, glad
your house is okay, Holy cow, that was crazy from
the fire.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah. No, I've got life changing moment for everybody here.
Even if you didn't didn't lose your house, everybody's kind
of shell shocked about what the fire did. Crazy. So
it's probably going to be an annual event now or
everyone's thinking, I know a lot of people are thinking
of moving.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Actually, oh wow, Yeah, I saw the comments on your post,
and you know everybody everybody wants you, Rick, So you
got forty nine other states if you decided to move.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
All right, I know, I know.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
How's the fire danger in Ohio?

Speaker 2 (13:36):
It is zero, my friend, okay, and you play you
play here every year. Anyway, we may be looking all right,
all right, I'll help.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
You, all right, I'll get you connected. Rick, so great
to talk to you. Always my friend and look forward
to seeing you on tour and checking out the new album.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Thanks Jev, nice to talk to you.
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