Rick Springfield

Posted in From The Fanzine Vaults, Music, We Miss The Nineties |

“What Kind of Fool Am I?” displays Rick’s obvious adoration for the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon. Even the title shows that although Rick performs the part of the romantic hero, he also plays the jester, as evidenced by the word “fool.”

I thought we’d be together
Till the world ran down
Till the curtain fell
And the lights came on

Which clearly recalls:

All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players
(Shakespeare: As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII)

The theatre analogy continues into “Still Crazy for You” in which Rick sings:

We thrived in shadows from scene to scene

His usage of the word “shadows” sets the tone for the song, which ponders the dichotomies of dark and light, blindness and sight, and most profoundly dreams and reality.

Lines like:

I fell into a parallax view
and
I didn’t see what I was doing

prove this, but the real thrust of the message occurs in the chorus:

My panorama’s dark
My sight’s been stripped away

Although Rick and his lover’s relationship was beautiful, it was a mere fantasy and now he has been left to the harsh reality of a life alone, a life bereft of vision and light, but perhaps most importantly, love.

Rick continues to wonder at the opposing forces of dark and light as well as the mystery of the goddess figure in “The American Girl”:

I wanna know if she’s talking ’bout me
Doing things her Daddy can’t see
The American Girl, out in the dark
She’s looking for love…
She’s such a mystery to me

Here the “girl” in question is clearly the daughter of Zeus (“Daddy”), Aphrodite, the goddess of love. She remains an enigma however, because she is never clearly named, she’s just “the American girl.”

The rest of this album is a rich tapestry of philosophies on many topics, particularly the themes of technological nightmare (“Kristina”—in which Rick becomes a motorcycle), the rise of the class system (“Tonight”—about the love between Patty and Jesse), the terrors of urban life (“Don’t Talk to Strangers”) and finally the mystery of the afterlife (“April 24, 1981″—where Rick addresses his dead father’s spirit.)

I could go on at length on these topics, but this is getting way too pedantic. I think I’ll go watch “Beavis and Butthead” instead.

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