Redux: Rick Springfield Returns To 'GH'

ALEX COHEN, host:

This is Day to Day from NPR News. I'm Alex Cohen.

MADELEINE BRAND, host:

And I'm Madeleine Brand.

(Soundbite of song "Jessie's Girl")

Mr. RICK SPRINFIELD: (Singing) Jessie is a friend...

BRAND: Oh yeah. Most women of a certain age will remember this song and just who sang it. For the rest of you, it is Rick Springfield. He was not only a pop star in the 1980s with songs like "Jessie's Girl."

(Soundbite of song "Jessie's Girl")

Mr. RICK SPRINGFIELD: (Singing) And she's watching him with those eyes And she's loving him with that body, I just know it...

BRAND: Springfield was also a soap star. He was on "General Hospital" playing the sexy, yet sensitive, Doctor Noah Drake. But he spent only two years on the show before leaving to cash in on the success of hits like "Jessie's Girl."

(Soundbite of song "Jessie's Girl")

Mr. RICK SPRINGFIELD: (Singing) Where can I find a woman like that...

BRAND: Sadly, it didn't work out. His music career faltered, and Rick spent the next 20 years playing his hits to fans in places like Japan and Vegas. But soap opera plots never really end. So three years ago, I went to meet Rick Springfield after he returned to the set of "General Hospital."

(Soundbite of interview)

Mr. RICK SPRINGFIELD (Singer and Actor): For the longest time it really hurt my career that I'd be on the soap. It hurt my music career. It's been so bizarre than when they came to me to do "General Hospital," I thought, you know, that was a good part of my career, and I shouldn't deny that, and it could be a very interesting, you know, awareness factor.

Unidentified Man: Five, four, three, two...

BRAND: We're on the set, the famous nursing station at General Hospital where all sorts of dramas unfold. And Rick, playing Doctor Drake, is rehearsing a scene with his estrange son, Patrick.

(Soundbite of "General Hospital" set)

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake): I wasted too many years in self-pity, OK? I was hoping to move in the other direction.

Unidentified Man: By refusing to restore(ph) in the epidemic?

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: What is it?

Unidentified Man #2: Not that long ago do you want...

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake) Not - you know, not that long ago you wanted me to drink myself to death. I could still do that...

Unidentified Man: Hey don't let me stand in the way.

BRAND: The years have not been kind to Doctor Noah Drake. A young doctor from General Hospital has brought him back to help her with the tough brain operation. She found him drunk in a bar. Doctor Drake threw away his career as a hotshot neurosurgeon for the bottle after operating on his wife, who then died.

(Soundbite of TV series "General Hospital")

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake): I don't practice medicine anymore.

Unidentified Woman: (As Doctor) I think you worked with my patient's parents, Allen and Monica Quartermain. Their son Jason was in a car accident 10 years ago. He suffered frontal lobe damage.

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake) Memory loss, no emotional context.

Unidentified Woman: (As Doctor) Exactly. Now he's suffering from transient cerebral ectopy.

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake) From a hypo profuse spinal cortex.

BRAND: A far cry from the young Doctor Drake who practiced surgery by day and seduction by night wooing comely nurse Bobbie Spencer over a, yes, candlelight dinner.

(Soundbite of TV series "General Hospital")

Ms. JACQUELINE ZEMAN: (As Bobbie Spencer) Let's go dancing.

Mr. RICK SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake) The disco is closed.

Ms. ZEMAN: (As Bobbie Spencer) Oh, but there's a lot of places to dance, and besides, I've got all this energy.

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake) Yes. Well, that's from the caffeine in the coffee. I know a wonderful way to burn off energy.

Ms. ZEMAN: (As Bobbie Spencer) Noah.

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake) Come on, Bobbie.

Ms. ZEMAN: (As Bobbie Spencer) What?

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Drake) What is this game you're playing, this cat and mouse?

MS. ZEMAN: (As Bobbie Spencer) Who's the cat and who's the mouse?

(Soundbite of laughter)

BRAND: Since 1978, Jacqueline Zeman has played Bobbie Spencer.

Ms. ZEMAN: Bobbie Spencer, Brock, Meyer, Jones, Cassadine, almost Jack Spencer. And there are a few in there I didn't marry, of course.

BRAND: Really? Rick.

Ms. ZEMAN: Dr. Noah Drake didn't marry him, but it's definitely an important affair, an affair to remember. Is that what they say?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. ZEMAN: Memorable moments?

BRAND: Unlike Rick, Jackie has never left the show to pursue a career outside the soap. She has spent her entire adult life at "General Hospital." In her dressing room, she has photos of herself with her real family and her soap family, and you can't tell who's who.

Ms. ZEMAN: My grandma, you know, who watched the show, of course, every day before she passed - we were at the dinner table one time. This is by 10 years ago. And she said, Bobbie, pass the rolls.

(Laughing) And I would say, Gram. Oh, I'm sorry, Jackie, I know your name is Jackie.

(Laughing) I thought it was very cute. You know, I think of myself as like a sister to Bobbie.

BRAND: Long-time viewers feel like they know Bobbie like a sister too, along with other veteran characters. "General Hospital" is not just a TV show, it's an institution. One of the oldest soaps, it's been on the air for 43 years and has a unique history. When Rick Springfield agreed to do the show back in 1981, he had no idea that he was about to become part of a zeitgeist moment.

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: You know, I thought it was like older ladies sitting in front of the ironing board watching soaps. I didn't realize what it is about to become.

BRAND: The Luke and Laura phenomenon, their romance and adventures propelled "General Hospital" beyond the ironing board set. Suddenly, teenage girls were watching too. At its peak, some 14 million people tuned in everyday. Jill Farren-Phelps is the show's executive producer.

Ms. JILL FARREN-PHELPS (Executive Producer, "General Hospital"): Luke and Laura were very special, you know. Luke and Laura were representative of a time when the soap operas were doing things differently than they'd ever done before.

BRAND: Twenty-five years later, that audience has fallen to about three million a day. Jill Farren-Phelps is trying to recreate the old magic by bringing back various alumni, including Dr. Noah Drake.

Ms. FARREN-PHELPS: You can see how it reawakens in our viewers the excitement that they felt then. I mean, it's real. It's not just nostalgic excitement. It's real excitement that they feel and so that - young people get on that bandwagon too. You don't have to have known how great they were. You just have to watch how great they are.

(Soundbite of TV series "General Hospital")

Unidentified Woman: We all lose patients, Noah. That is the heartbreak of our job. We can't let that stop us cold.

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (As Dr. Noah Drake) Oh, spare me the arrogance of youth, will you? Always spouting advice on subjects you know nothing about. Have you ever lost a patient you're in love with?

Unidentified Woman: No, but I'm about to unless you help me.

BRAND: The fans are excited about Rick Springfield's return, says Stephanie Sloane. She's editor of Soap Opera Digest. And she's excited too. She watches "General Hospital" everyday.

Ms. STEPHANIE SLOANE (Editor, Soap Opera Digest): I think he looks great. I mean, he's not someone who when you walked on screen, you're like, who's that? I mean, he pretty much looks the same, he just looks older. But he's also playing someone who's a drunk. And so I don't know if he was supposed to look amazing when he came back because he has liver complications because of his drinking.

BRAND: Rick Springfield is no longer fodder for Teen Beat magazine. He's 56 years old. He still has lots of hair, but now, it's cut in that aging rocker look, short on top, longer in the back. In his dressing room before he has to go on set, he's wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and drinking tea. He shows off a new electric guitar he recently bought in Japan, clearly more comfortable jamming than talking.

(Soundbite of guitar playing)

(Soundbite of laughter)

BRAND: Rock and roll (laughing). So, between takes, you come back here and…

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: Yeah, I actually write back here, which is what I used to do originally. I mean, I wrote quite a few songs in the dressing room of "General Hospital" in the '80s. I mean, I remember writing "Affair of the Heart" here and parts of "Don't Talk to Strangers." For me - because having kids now too, my house is always really noisy. And to get away here, you know, is kind of a blessing to write. I have so much time for just me, you know, to write.

BRAND: Do your kids know that you were such a huge pop sensation? Do they get that?

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: Yeah, they kind of have a great healthy sense of humor about it, you know. And certainly, you know, old songs like, you know, "Jessie's Girl" that kept a kind of current thing about it, so I'm not just considered an oldie with their, you know, amongst their audience.

BRAND: I mean, they think you're cool?

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: Yeah, I think overall. They do. I mean, you know, like there's certain elements where I'm a dork, but they've always worn my clothes. And, you know, they raid my closet, but that's mainly because I try and dress like a teenager, which is pretty sick. I always said I wouldn't be the old lady with the mini skirt and the go-go boots, but I am.

BRAND: Now, that he's having his TV comeback, what about a musical comeback? Well, not so coincidentally, Rick Springfield has a new album out now. It's all covers of other people's songs that were hits in the '70s and '80s.

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: I wanted a kind of record you would put on late at night, the kind of music I listen to late at night. I don't listen to loud rock stuff late at night. I put on something with mood and mystery and just let it play through, and I wanted something like that.

(Soundbite of song "I'm Not in Love")

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (Singing) I'm not in love, so don't forget it It's just a silly phase I'm going through

BRAND: That's musician and actor Rick Springfield from a conversation I had with him three years ago.

(Soundbite of song "I'm Not in Love")

Mr. SPRINGFIELD: (Singing) I call you up Don't get me wrong, don't think you've got it made I'm not in love, no, no It's because...

BRAND: And there's more to come after this. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.