Rick Springfield’s Video Rock Woos & Wows
Music City Fans

Rockin’ Rick Springfield gave his Nashville fans their money’s worth and more last night with a song-packed concert that made effective use of state-of-the-art, video-inspired technology.

On what is billed as the “Cathode Ray” tour, the Australian-born pop-rocker’s show leaned heavily on a stage set that could be described as Pop Art Lite.

Two giant television sets towered over either side of the performing area, which was punctuated with comic-book starbursts and arrows. A huge aerial at the back of the stage and bare towers on either side completed the TV imagery.

In the midst of all of these trappings, Springfield last night gave Music City a full helping of his enormous onstage energy and radio-familiar hits. Also apparent was his equally enormous appeal to young girls, whose screams filled Municipal Auditorium from the moment his dark good looks appeared on the video monitors.

After airings on the massive sets of brief selections from some of the former soap star’s music videos, a live video camera picked Springfield up backstage and showed his progress to the stage. Bedlam.

The rocker and his tight five-piece backup band started the show with Celebrate Youth from his Tao, his latest LP. It was an appropriate beginning, as a mostly youthful crowd responded immediately to their favorite’s every move, accentuated in the colorful setting by his stark black-and-white clothes.

Trained in theater and television, a camera-wise Springfield knows how to use the onstage video monitors to convey his every smile and lip-curl to the audience. To those out front who were looking at the flesh-and-blood Springfield instead of his cathode counterpoint, his acrobatic leaps and almost continual motion provided plenty of visual stimulation.

The singer’s black half-gloves accentuated his prizefighter moves, every one of which evoked screams from the fans.

Using a miniaturized microphone on a headset, Springfield was able to roam to nearly every segment of the stage to emphasize the moods of different songs. And the show was kept moving partly by a succession of gimmicks, including a huge man-sized flashlight, which the singer shone at the Municipal crowd once early and once late in the show.

“Let’s have a look at you,” Springfield called as the comically large flashlight’s beam revealed seas of waving arms. The fans certainly got an eyeful of Springfield, whose performances of his hits like Jessie’s Girl, Bop ‘Til You Drop, Living in Oz and Don’t Talk to Strangers were greeted wildly.

Dance This World Away, another recent number, began dramatically with plumes of smoke parting onstage to reveal a stories-tall inflated rocket inscribed “Nix Missiles.” The huge cylinder was tossed back and forth by members of the crowd as Springfield sang the vaguely apocalyptic song, but disappeared almost magically under the stage as the tune ended.

At almost every turn, the technology employed in the show enhanced Springfield’s presentation. At one point he sat alone on the set’s arrow-shaped proscenium and accompanied himself on a lap-sized keyboard instrument.

“If we can put a man on the moon, I can make this thing sound like a grand piano,” he said, and did. The solo number was Springfield’s touching My Father’s Chair, described as “my small monument to him.”

With the exception of the one keyboard foray and another on the harmonica, Springfield sang without an instrument or playing one of the sucession of guitars, including a pink Stratocaster and an orange Gretsch. The latter guitar nearly perished when an onstage toss from a roadie threatened to miss its mark.

Holding down the lead guitar slot in Springfield’s band was the searing guitarist Tim Pierce, who appeared on Tao and co-authored several of its songs. The ballady Stage of the Heart, Walking on the Edge, and the pulsing Walk Like a Man were other album cuts heard last night.

The concert continued almost without break until the old-rock encore number of Stand Up concluded the night’s music. But true to the show’s TV-ridden theme, credits from the tour rolled on the two mammoth screens as the crowd filed out….