Springfield divides time between music and fans

By Matthew Dietrich

The last time Rick Springfield played Springfield - 17 years ago at the Prairie Capital Convention Center - 5,800 screaming fans filled the house.

It appeared that the same people and then some showed up for his show Thursday night at the Sangamon County Fair.

Playing to one of the largest crowds at a county fair concert in recent memory, Springfield shared his hit songs from the 1980s and, especially, his celebrity with an audience packed with those who became his fans in the early '80s and never lost interest.

An enthusiastic showman and gracious host throughout his entire 90-minute set, Springfield spent as much time greeting, performing onstage with, accepting flowers from and signing autographs for his adoring fans as he did playing music.

By this writer's count, Springfield played eight songs in the first hour of his show, splitting his time almost evenly between music and meeting the demands for his attention from the ardent fans at the front of the stage.

That's no complaint. All this made the show into a fine spectacle for those who were there merely to relive their high school glory days.

Unlike some stars who enjoyed a long string of pop-chart glory before fading into the background, Springfield harbors no grudge against the fickle industry that has twice (first in the early '70s and then in the late '80s) put him on the roller-coaster of fame. Nor does he force his audience to listen to loads of unfamiliar new material that, though important to him, lacks the commercial impact of songs from his heyday.

Springfield in concert readily embraces and has fun with his former teen-idol status, joking about his serious pose on a poster a fan asked him to sign and laughing as he flipped through a 1972 copy of Tiger Beat magazine that featured him during his first period of fame. Anyone who looks as good at 50 as Springfield does (he could easily pass for 30) should have no problem poking fun at his past.

But, of course, there is the music.

In his heyday from 1981 to 1988, Springfield put out a steady flow of bouncy, polished pop-rock that, for those in high school then, became a soundtrack to grow up to. Combine those fun tunes with Springfield's knack for showmanship (he was better known as an actor on "Genera Hospital" before his music career's rebirth in '81) and you get a fun show appropriate for a county fair.

Springfield's stage awareness was evident in his tight packaging of his songs. Though he often stopped the music for extended activity with fans, when he did play, he fired off hits in rapid fashion, with no dead time between.

The opening medley of "Love Is Alright Tonite" and "I've Done Everything for You" is a good example. The pounding "Human Touch" turned into a seven-minute warm-up to his biggest hit, "Jessie's Girl," which closed the regular set.

Among those who joined Springfield onstage were a toddler who participated (none too happily) in "Don't Talk to Strangers" and a baby Springfield held aloft just before his show-ending cover of the Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night."

Unless those youngsters were wearing earplugs, they may have heard their last Rick Springfield tunes on Thursday.