A heartthrob twice over, Rick Springfield is a singer, songwriter and guitarist who scored a massive pop-rock hit with "Jessie’s Girl" in 1981 – the same year he found fame as a television soap-opera star.
Born in a suburb of Sydney to an Army officer father, Springfield established himself in the Australian music scene before chasing bigger dreams to Los Angeles, where he released several albums in the style of other mid-’70s teen pop stars such as Donny Osmond and David Cassidy. When Osmond-level record sales didn’t materialize, the singer turned to acting, appearing in small parts on TV shows such as "The Rockford Files" and "Battlestar Galactica."
Springfield’s career exploded, though, with the release of his album "Working Class Dog," which spawned the Grammy-winning "Jessie’s Girl"; simultaneously, he was portraying Dr. Noah Drake on "General Hospital." Additional hit singles followed, as did a wide variety of other acting gigs, including the title role in ABC’s comics-inspired "Human Target" and a stint in the Broadway cast of "Smokey Joe’s Cafe."
More recently, Springfield has continued to tour and make albums; The Times called 2008’s "Venus in Overdrive" "taut and tuneful." In 2009 he played an exaggerated version of himself on "Californication," and the next year he wrote a well-regarded memoir, "Late, Late at Night."
Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters enlisted Springfield to take part in his 2013 "Sound City" documentary, which examined the grungy Van Nuys studio where Springfield and Nirvana each recorded some of their early work; Springfield wrote an original song with Foo Fighters for the soundtrack. In early 2014 the singer released his debut novel, a science-fiction farce called "Magnificent Vibration."
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