Ravinia 2019, Issue 1, Week 2

“Now you’re not really playing a song; you’re playing an emotion. … When you hear a song that you love and know very well, you want it to sound like you remember it.” –Rick Springfield on playing the hits I still have the guitar I wrote it on and the original lyric sheet. …There are a lot of good moments in the song. There’s a re- lease in the chorus, and then there’s a good strong bridge, a key change and a breakdown and a hook, and it’s strong, lyrically. I mean, it’s about a guy having dirty thoughts about his best friend’s girl. [ Laughs .] There’s a lot in there. When it first came out, it was viewed as a nice pop song, but those [elements] helped it to stick around. Being pulled into movies and stuff like that has helped the longevity. Like there’s a movie with Jennifer Garner, 13 Going on 30 , the first movie she did [in a leading role], and her character is a Rick Springfield fan. Did you write “Jessie’s Girl” in one take or did it take you a few days, weeks? I took a couple of weeks because I generally write a couple of songs at a time when I write a lyrics sheet. This one had “Jessie’s Girl” and “Love Is Alright Tonite” on one side and “Red Hot & Blue Love” and some other song I never finished on the other side. It was kind of two pieces that I put together: I had the riff, and I think the chorus was a separate part, and I realized they were in the same key and actually went together. And then I then brought in the lyrics. In addition to the “full band” rock show and now the symphony tour, you also go on the road for stripped-down, storytelling, almost acoustic evenings with “a lot of humor and stories about the songs.” Is it hard to bare your soul on stage in these intimate acoustic shows? That’s what I do as a writer—writing about what’s going on with me and putting it out there, the way you’re feeling, the way to share it. That’s why I wrote the songs about my mom and my dad, to deal with the grief and do something positive with it. I’m not a pri- vate person, but as a performer I understand that’s where I draw my inspiration from. You’ve been very open and honest about your depression and all your struggles over the years. I think that’s why people can relate to you, and on some level I think that helps people deal with their own issues. Can you talk about your suicide attempt and the depression that drove you to that moment? I was, I guess, 16. I tried to hang myself. I didn’t know what it was. In the band I was in at the time in Australia, they always called me the “moody one.” Truth is, I was depressed but nobody had a term for it [especially for a kid]. When I wrote my autobiography, there was no grand plan to help people by mentioning it. It was just part of my life, and it wouldn’t have been truthful if I didn’t talk about it. It was 32 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | MAY 31, 2019 – JUNE 16, 2019