Rick Springfield was not a member of the pop music species known as “one hit wonders.” Not officially, anyway. You had your decently charting radio hits, “Don’t Talk to Strangers,” “Human Touch,” and “Affair of the Heart,” to name a few. But utter his name and try to keep your earworm-trained brain from calling up the phrase “where can I find a woman like that?”
“Jessie’s Girl,” Springfield’s secular variation on the dangers of violating the Tenth Commandment (“thou shalt not cover thy neighbor’s wife”), spent a few weeks at the top of the pop charts in 1981. It now has reached the pop nirvana state of one of the most stubbornly infectious mega-hits in pop history, an exalted state meaning that Springfield can get work for the rest of his early days.
And judging from the fitness level he demonstrated at the Chumash Casino last Friday night, in terms of vocal and guitar work, stage maneuvering, and personable crowd connection, the 76-year-old Australian-born singer could be set for a goodly long run.
Springfield has always straddled the line between serious rocker and light-headed pop artist with a detached sense of music as a profession rather than a burning passion. Fittingly, the show opened with a montage of clips from back in the day, both of his fleeting life as an actor/heart throb (on the soap General Hospital and a few forgettable film gigs) and references to him on SNL and other TV-film spots — often referring to “Jessie’s Girl,” natch.
The real Rick burst onto the stage and into the riff-and-hook fest of his set, with a gymnastic command of the stage and some decent rock guitar chops up his sleeve. He may not be a tough guy rocker, but he plays one onstage, striking the right poses and licks, but then also adding strums with flower stalks, sending petals flying. A personality dichotomy is woven into the fabric of the entity known as Rick Springfield.
A potent and slick band fueled the machine, powering through deep cuts in his large songbook (he’s one artist who continued to make records long after the hubbub was over) and such crowd-pleasing hits as “Affair of the Heart” and “Human Touch.” During that hit, he ventured down into the crowd, right into the thick of it, sans security escort. For covers, he called up ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man,” attempting a few bad boy slide guitar riffs, and the Kinks’ “You Really Got Me Going.”
Apart from the parade of love-life anthems and laments, bolstered by his hard-hitting-but-friendly, riff-based style, Springfield occasionally touched on more sensitive, confessional themes in his set. Speaking about his 42-year marriage, he pointed to the inevitable ups and downs of a long-term relationship in “Our Ship’s Sinking.” Deeper still in confessional turf, he spoke about his long battles with depression, going back to adolescence (he attempted suicide as recently as 2017), in the Springsteen-ish “World Start Turning.”
To perk up the air in the Samala Ballroom, he then leaped into “Don’t Talk to Strangers,” with its winking video full of dancing aliens — the outer space kind, not our neighbors who ICE is fixated on.
It surprised no one that the finale slot was saved for The Hit. “Jessie’s Girl” first appeared on screen, with the vintage video leading into the return of the live singer, now shirtless and showing off his fit torso, launching into the song and milking it for extra worth. The cool bridge — the “middle eight” — lands in a teasing modulation before heading to the home key quickly (fooled us) and sets up the signature guitar solo, played here note-for-note.
An extended version scratched the itch of a crowd, mostly listeners old enough to have heard it on the radio in its time. Springfield belted out his immortal and unanswered musical question, “Where can I find a woman like that!” as if his life (and livelihood) depended on it.
In retrospect, it turns out that it has.
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