‘Showboat’ rock star tones it down on screen
As any music fan will tell you, Aussie singer/guitarist and actor Rick Springfield not only plays a rocker on the screen, he’s one in real life, too.
The “Jessie’s Girl” star pairs with Meryl Streep in Jonathan Demme’s new movie Ricki and the Flash, opening Friday. He plays guitarist and bandleader Greg, with whom Streep’s Ricki shares both a stage and bed.
Springfield, a youthful 65, has had multiple TV and movie roles, another current one being the weirdly creepy Dr. Irving Pitlor on True Detective, which he’d have to kill us if he revealed any plot details.
But no notes are muted when it comes to Ricki and the Flash, have an oh-my-God-it’s-Meryl-Streep moment, but she’s very gracious and a consummate actor. She and I both knew that (star tripping) had to go out the window because that’s not what the character was about. How did you reinvent yourself as an actor playing a rock star when you know that life so well? Was there anything you had to unlearn?
Obviously, I’m at home playing the guitar. But I had to do different things so I didn’t look like Rick Springfield playing the guitar! I hiked the guitar up a bit, put it in a better playing position as a real guitar player would who isn’t out there showboating. You’d consider yourself a showboat? Where does Greg diverge from your life?
Yeah, I’m a showboat. I’m a ham! I love to play guitar but my main thing at a live show is to bring the audience in. My attention is on the audience. It’s not so much where my fingers are on the guitar, whereas Greg is all about the licks — it’s all about the soulfulness of playing. He’s not an entertainer, he’s a guitar player.
Ricki and the Flash seem like rock ’n’ roll lifers. They’re not going anywhere beyond where they are in their career, but they’re still committed to doing it.
These guys are exactly what you said. They feel like they didn’t get what they had dreams of being as kids, but they love playing music and they’re still playing music. Jonathan Demme wanted a family feel to the band.
Most of Meryl’s songs in the film are by male rock stars, such as Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. Was that deliberate?
I don’t think so. I just think that the era that we picked from and where this band came from, there weren’t as many female singers as there are now. Rock ’n’ roll was mostly a guys’ medium. Ricki grew up in that era, so she loved those artists. It didn’t matter to her that they were male or female. She loved the songs, and that’s what a musician does.
As for myself, I never cared if (the tunes) were black, white, whatever. It just mattered that they were awesome and I love the song.