Rick Springfield returns to Honolulu this weekend less than two years after he last performed here. As far as he’s concerned, that’s too long to wait and the trip from his Los Angeles home is too far to travel.
And on this visit, he’s planning to do something about that.
“We’re gonna look at houses when we’re there, my wife (Barbara) and I,” Springfield said, calling from L.A. “Hawaii’s always been our favorite place.”
The notion of rock stars — almost too limiting a term for the Aussie native, who was maybe the biggest cross-platform star of the early ’80s — retiring to Hawaii, or taking up part-time residence, is nothing new, but where most seem to settle in on Maui, Springfield will not be joining the likes of Paul Simon, Willie Nelson and Mick Fleetwood on the Valley Isle.
“I love all the islands,” he said, “but I really love the city of Honolulu. I remember going there in the ’70s and it was like ‘Whoa.’ And now it’s amazing. It’s cosmopolitan. It’s got great restaurants. It’s alive and kicking. We had an amazing time there last time we were there. … We’d love to live just outside of Honolulu, so we can enjoy the quiet of the island living but still have a really happening city to go to when we felt like it.”
If Springfield and his wife do buy a home on Oahu, it will not be to retire here.
“I don’t think I’m ever gonna retire. I’ll just wait for God to retire me,” he said.
He loves touring too much to stop. And he keeps it fresh with three different kinds of shows, all featuring his 1981 chart-topper “Jessie’s Girl” and more of his 17 Top 40 hits.
Springfield’s concert at Hawaii Theatre on Saturday will be one of his “Stripped Down” affairs — “me and a bunch of guitars and a bunch of stories, some personal photos” — just one of three starkly different configurations he takes on the road. He also does gigs with a full band and yet others backed by an orchestra.
“It keeps it interesting for me,” Springfield said. “I look forward to doing each one because I’m not doing the same thing over and over and over and over. It changes it up for me. … I do it because I love to do it, and if I ever stop loving to do it, then I’d stop doing it.”
AFTER NEARLY 20 years in music, half of that in America, Springfield’s fame came all at once.
He’d moved to the U.S. in 1972, hoping to build on his top-20 Australian hit of the year before, “Speak to the Sky.” His music gained no traction, so he tried acting, taking a class from a friend he’d run into on the street and landing one-offs in prime-time shows such as “The Rockford Files,” “The Incredible Hulk” and “The Six Million Dollar Man.”
Then, in 1981, all the success he could imagine came to him at once. He was offered a role on daytime soap “General Hospital” as Dr. Noah Drake.
With his music career stalled, moving deeper into acting was a no-brainer.
“I didn’t want to do it, but I was broke,” Springfield said. “It was the only regular money I made in my life.”
Not long after, a DJ discovered “Jessie’s Girl” off the just-released album “Working Class Dog,” and gave it a shot. Suddenly Springfield had two successful careers where months earlier he hadn’t one.
For Springfield, there has been no feeling to match notching his first chart-topper.
“The first song is always kind of magic, because it comes out of nowhere,” he said. “You have no backstory, nobody knows who you are. It’s pretty powerful.”
To top it off, “General Hospital” exploded into a phenomenon that year, propelled by the wedding of characters Luke and Laura, still the biggest pop-culture event in daytime soap history. The show landed on the cover of countless magazines.
Though Springfield still takes acting roles once in a while — including an episode in the first season of “Hawaii 5-0” and an extended return to “General Hospital” — the main focus has always been his music. And recently, real life has both distracted him and given him an opportunity to put his music toward a greater good.
Springfield is putting seven guitars up for auction to raise money for a charity that rescues animals threatened by the devastating wildfires in his native Australia. He is directing his efforts toward helping animals because “humans have a choice, animals don’t, and we’ve been terrible caretakers,” he said. “And the fires are mainly because of humanity.”
Springfield also raised money for threatened Australian wildlife through a streamed concert last month with fellow ’80s rocker Richard Marx, with whom he shared the bill on a bunch of shows last year.
THIS SUMMER, he hits the road with Chicago. He enjoys spending time with some of his contemporaries, he said — but it has been sobering watching many of them die in recent years.
“It’s scary. We’re all gettin’ up there,” he said. “I’m 70 now. I think I’m pretty healthy. I’ve always paid attention to my health, but you never know. …”
Last June, classic rocker Eddie Money was scheduled to join Springfield and Tommy Tutone, the band behind the ’80s hit “867-5309/Jenny,” for a pair of shows but was hospitalized with a heart issue. Three months later, Money died.
“He was a wonderful guy,” Springfield said, “had a great sense of humor. He didn’t really give a s—-. He was kind of the Dean Martin of ’80s rock.”
Springfield is teaming with a passel of rock veterans — Sammy Hagar, George Thorogood, John Waite and Mickey Thomas of Starship are among those announced so far — for a show honoring Money in Beverly Hills in a few weeks. He is also teaming with Hagar, who wrote Springfield’s hit, “I’ve Done Everything for You,” on a relaunch of the former Van Halen frontman’s Beach Bar Rum.
At 70 years old and with more than 50 years in show business, Springfield has no intention to slow down.
He said he’s not worried his drive to keep busy will put him under. If anything, it’s what keeps him alive.
Springfield has spoken openly in recent years about his battles with depression, and says he considered suicide as recently as 2015. Work is one of the ways he deals with that.
“I love to work,” he said. “It’s really hard to be depressed when I’m working, and that’s, I guess, part of my healing. I try to turn the depression into a song or an act or whatever, trying to make it not defeat me but benefit me if I can.”
RICK SPRINGFIELD
>> Where: Hawaii Theatre
>> When: 8 p.m. Saturday
>> Tickets: $90-$105
>> Info: 528-0506, hawaiitheatre.com
