ROCK'S RICK ROLLS

Scalpel-sleek Rick Springfield checks out of General Hospital long enough to give his recording career a sexy shot in the arm. "Success," he brags, "hasn't spoiled me yet."

Seven years ago, the proper image for a Rick Springfield album cover was a battered car heading for a junkyard. His music career was flatter than a blow-out tire, and he was nearly ready to throw himself onto a show-biz scrap heap. Today he's riding high atop the music charts and is adored by General Hospital addicts.

The cover of Rick Springfield's new album, Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet, attests to his refueled career. It features his dog, Ron (first immortalized in shirt and tie on the cover of Springfield's last album, Working Class Dog), looking coolly rich as he sits in a limo flanked by two dolled-up poodles. ("They're not Ron's real girlfriends," Rick says. "He likes to keep his private life private.") Springfield himself is shown serving them champagne through the car door.

Through his double-barreled triumph - platinum Working Class Dog and a starring role as Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital - has made champagne, limos and dolls an everyday feasibility, Springfield says that the title of his new album is accurate.

"Success hasn't spoiled me yet," he says. "I'm still driving the same car, living in the same house, seeing the same friends." He grins. "Actually, I'm looking to buy some new friends."

He did splurge on a red and white Stratocaster guitar he's always wanted, but when the transmission on his Ford Fiesta broke down, he got it fixed rather than walk away from it and into the nearest Mercedes showroom.

If he's currently seeking to move from his three-bedroom Glendale, Calif., house, it's not to trade up to a fancier locale but because the location makes him easy prey. Day and night fans knock at the door and peer through windows. "That's the one pain in the ass about all this. I don't mind being accosted in the street - I understand that - but someone's house! I've got to have a place where I can let go - put the zit cream on, the curlers in my hair..."

Springfield can afford to joke about his looks. Ten years ago, when he arrived here from Australia, a newspaper forecast, "If anyone can reverse the 'ugly' trend in rock music, it's Rick Springfield. He's got an unusually beautiful face."

But contrary to predictions, his face was not to be his fortune. The albums Beginnings for Capitol Records and Comic Book Heroes for Columbia, bombed, and Springfield found himself without a label or income. A legal dispute with his managers left a $100,000 debt hanging over him. "I've spent most of my years in the country under huge debt," he says. "It's a horrible feeling, especially when you're scraping together 20 bucks for a piano payment for the next month."

He earned a little money by making clay figures, sticking them on mirrors and selling them at the Pasadena Swap Meet. For a while his mom, Eileen, and his dad, Norman, sent him money from Australia. Friends were very supportive - a girlfriend brought him home to her family regularly to eat and do his laundry.

"But I got pretty low," Springfield recalls. "I felt close to suicide a couple of times, but obviously I wasn't. It might have been a safety valve: Well, I can always kill myself. I thought I'd had my shot and blown it. One night I was at my friend's house [actor Doug Davidson from The Young and the Restless] and I just started crying. I had been sitting there thinking, God, I won't make it. I'm really not going to do what I came over here to. But those nights were rare, thankfully. Most of the time I felt it wasn't over yet."

Following what he calls "a drifting period," he enrolled in acting classes. "I had to do something to keep creative and to feel like I was at least heading in a direction."

When the settlement was worked out with his managers, he was signed by Chelsea, and in 1976, Springfield recorded Wait For Night. It barely saw the light of day, because Chelsea's days were numbered.

The experience shocked him into action. He and a friend got together and, just like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in those old movies, they put on a play. They rented a theater, built sets, printed programs and sent out invitations to every agent and casting director in town. One of them actually showed up, and Springfield was signed to a two-year contract with Universal. He did a few episodics, but nothing proved epic-making.

His contract with RCA Records produced more tangible results. Recording Working Class Dog had him working like a dog seven days a week for six months, juggling touring and taping TV shows. An appearance on one of those shows caught the eye of an talent scout, who thought Springfield was just right for the Noah Drake role.

When he began appearing regularly on General Hospital, his already tight schedule was knotted even tighter.

"Last New Year's Eve we were booked for Seattle and then planned to fly up to perform in Vancouver the next night. But in between they flip-flopped two shows at General Hospital."

He had to fly back to L.A. at 5 a.m. after the Seattle gig, tape the show, then fly back up to Vancouver that night. "That's abnormal," he says. "I shouldn't expect my body to put up with things like that. And I'm not going to anymore."

His contract with the soap has been under negotiation recently, with his departure from G.H. this month a possibility if looser terms cannot be arrived at, "I like doing the show very much," he says, "but my music is the most important thing to me - and I want more time for it. I also want more time for myself, to have a life of my own."

He insists that it's lack of time, rather than fear of blowing his idol status, that prevents him from dating anyone on a regular basis. "Any fan who's unrealistic enough to dream that I'm not seeing anybody because I'm saving myself for her is crazy. Everybody needs relationships."

Though he's open to a relationship, Springfield remains close-mouthed about the women in his life. Like his dog, Ron, he likes to keep his private life private.

"I went with Linda Blair for a while, and we got crucified [by the press]," he recalls. "Maybe that's what scares me off. I don't know. But I do know that I have to maintain a part of myself for me, to keep my center. Because of what's happening to me now - people turning around to gape at me in the street - isn't real. It didn't happen to me last year and it can go just like that. There's a time limit on all of this.

"I'll always remember a scene in Patton where George C. Scott as Patton is talking about Roman conquerors returning from victory. While everyone would be cheering and throwing flowers in their path, they would customarily have a slave whispering in their ear that glory is fleeting. And it is. You've got to have your own life and a sense of who you are."

He does talk of a girl he left behind in Australia to pursue his career - and also because her martial status made the situation hopeless. But anyone interested in exploring his romantic life should check out his songs. "I expose my inner feelings all the time in songs. It's a safe way to let people look in my window."

"Inside Sylvia" for instance, came out of his relationship with a real girl named Sylvia. "Jessie's Girl" has remained unidentified, but Springfield jokes he's getting extra mileage by letting several girls think it applies to them.

More seriously, he refers to the song "April 24, 1981" (on Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet), a tribute to his father, who died on that day. "When he passed away, I felt disconnected. I couldn't put it together until I had written something about it. I wanted to tell everybody: You just missed a great person."

Springfield's mother is in the U.S. for a five-month visit. Maybe success isn't spoiling him but Mom clearly is - breakfasts of hot oatmeal when he returns from early-morning jogs, dinners warming in the oven whenever he comes home at night. "It's just like when I was 16, 17 in Australia. No matter what time I'd come home from 'practice' - which is what we called band rehearsals - she's have a great dinner in the oven with foil over it."

He's 32 now and a lot has happened in the 15 years since he stopped "practicing." Springfield vividly evokes those memories by leafing through his diaries. "They sound so sad, so tormented. It was very painful, the things I was going through, the things I was putting myself through mores of the time."

He stopped keeping the diaries a year ago. Springfield's last entry: "Well, the album [Working Class Dog] is done. Nothing more I can do. Now I just have to wait and see."