Springfield should feel effects of LV return

Spencer Patterson

Friday, Aug. 27, 2004 | 3:49 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

August 28 - 29, 2004

Who: Rick Springfield.

When: 9 p.m. Friday.

Where: Mandalay Bay Beach.

Tickets: $38.50.

Information: 632-7580.

Rick Springfield has never been to the Mandalay Bay Beach, but he shouldn't have any trouble finding his way to the south end of the Strip Friday night.

From 2000 to 2002 the veteran pop-rocker spent five nights a week playing the lead role in now-defunct production show "EFX Alive" at the MGM Grand.

In other words, Springfield knows his way around town.

"I lived in Spanish Trail and commuted back and forth to L.A.," Springfield, 55, said in a phone interview from his Los Angeles home. "I left every Saturday night, ran out of the building and ran to the airport to catch the last plane home. And then I caught the plane back every Tuesday afternoon."

Springfield has not performed in Southern Nevada since the curtain closed on "EFX Alive" on Dec. 31, 2002. He has been back to visit several times, however, after forming several friendships during his stay here.

"I got to know quite a few people up there, and I'm still in contact with some of them," he said.

The younger of Springfield's sons, 13-year-old Josh, also remains close friends with Las Vegan Kris Saly, who played the part of Young King Arthur for the final four years of "EFX Alive."

At 9 p.m. Friday, the Australian-born singer returns to the stage in his briefly adopted home. Springfield said he looks forward to getting back in front of a Vegas crowd, but wonders about the logistics awaiting him at the Beach.

"I love to get into the audience at certain points in the show," he said. "There's got to be a way to get down there without getting myself electrocuted. I think I'm going to put shorts on or something and wade in."

Springfield's Las Vegas experience inspired his latest batch of songs, collected on February release "Shock/Denial/Anger/Acceptance."

Being away from his wife and two kids most of the week, Springfield wrote the personal, soul-searching anthems during "EFX Alive's" downtime in his home's music room.

"I was going through a lot of emotional issues while I was (in Las Vegas)," Springfield said. "All my life, I really have only ever written if there's been a trouble inside and I needed to address it. Even 'Jessie's Girl' is about something that I didn't get."

Springfield said the new disc's unusual title refers to "the four stages that a person goes through when they're healing."

"An event happens and the first thing is you can't believe it happened," he said. "The second one is denial that you really got hurt that bad, and the third one is anger that it happened. Then eventually you reach acceptance. I've found that true in my whole life."

Springfield works the new material into his show, but his sets remain full of the trademark power-pop hits that made him a regular on the charts in the early-to-mid 1980s.

That means concert-goers can expect to hear "Don't Talk to Strangers," "Affair of the Heart," "Human Touch" and "Love Somebody." And of course, Springfield wouldn't think about skipping over his signature song, 1981 No. 1 single "Jessie's Girl."

"It's more like a family member by this time than a song," he said.

Springfield said that, as with his new material, that tune was based on real-life events.

"There very much was a real (Jessie) ... though I changed the name to protect the innocent," Springfield said. "All my friends thought it was them, but it wasn't. It was someone that I no longer saw by the time I'd written the song."

"Jessie's Girl" has experienced a resurgence in recent years, not only with the advent of the all-'80s radio format, but also in films such as 1997's "Boogie Nights" and this year's "13 Going on 30."

"I was talking to a guy on the radio the other day and he said he was standing in line at a movie theater and there was this 9- or 10-year-old girl in front of him dancing around singing 'Jessie's Girl'," Springfield said. "He asked her, 'How do you know that song?' And she said, 'Oh, it's a new song I just heard in a movie.' "

Springsteen said he's spotting plenty of kids in his crowds these days, along with his core of longtime fans.

He also said he's starting to notice a shift in the gender makeup of his typical audience.

"It's always been heavily female," the one-time "General Hospital" star said. "But with this album we're getting a lot more guys in and a lot more couples. I've heard from fans that their husbands have stolen the record from them.

"And I meet a lot of guys who have said they were introduced to my music through their older sister's bedroom wall."