Rockin’ with Rick

There are two things to be impressed with here. First, I asked my Facebook friends if they had any questions for Rick Springfield and a guy wanted me to find out if Springfield ever had sex with the guy's ex-wife when she worked with him long ago.

Second, Springfield actually answered the question. I mentioned the woman's name. He sounded puzzled, then laughed.

"Nah," Springfield said, although he added, "but if he'd like me to say 'yes' because it'd be exciting, I can say yes."

Think about that. Rick Springfield, Grammy-winning pop star of the 1980s and "General Hospital" stud, is 59, and women still tell me they want to "do" him, while men still wonder if he "banged" their women. That's some life.

He claims most fans are old enough now to not swarm him, and they respect his 25-year marriage.

"I go into the audience when I play now in our live shows. I couldn't have done that in the '80s. I would have gotten a leg torn off. Now everybody understands if I go down, the show's over."

"There's safety in cougars," I said.

"Yes, there is," Springfield said.

Springfield hosted a Rick Springfield cruise last year (he's doing another official cruise in November), and he said female fans were respectful on the small confines of a ship, too.

"Occasionally, you get someone kind of grabbing a bit too much, but most of them are pretty hard-core fans and understand" not to go overboard, he said.

What happens on a Rick Springfield cruise? He performed sets that included album cuts he'd never performed live before. There were request nights.

"I even wandered into the piano bar at 2 o'clock in the morning and did a little impromptu show. I wanted it to be a unique experience for a fan," he said. "It was way more fun than I thought it would be. I love ship travel, anyway.

"Wading in 90 degree water off a beach of Cozumel is pretty easy to get used to," Springfield said.

Since we've been talking about the male-female fan factor, Springfield swears he has more male fans than he used to.

"I've actually heard from a lot of guys who said they grew up and got to like my music listening through their sister's bedroom wall," he said.

Ah, the Rick Springfield Trojan Horse effect.

But many guys lately became fans after listening to his latest harder-edged albums and concerts.

"People are always surprised at how hard it (a concert) rocks. So we've been getting a lot of people bringing their kids, and a lot of guys, and a lot of old fans from the '80s," he said.

Then again, Springfield's new album is a lullaby disk called "My Precious Little One." It's not a hard-charger, but it's not as simple and repetitive as most lullabies.

"That was the thing that bugged me about the lullabies we were playing when my kids were little -- was the repetitiveness that drove me insane.

"So I approached them the way I write pop songs, with a verse and a hook. I just used different imagery and made them soft-sounding and gentle -- something to play that wouldn't be 'I love you, and you love me' over and over."

By the way, if you didn't live in Vegas from 2000 through 2002, you may be unaware that Springfield then headlined an MGM show called "EFX Alive!" in which he wore black leather pants and a Merlin magician robe.

He lived in a hotel during his first three months here. It was an upscale, two-story hotel suite featuring an elevator and a butler.

"It was pretty freaky," Springfield said.

"But after about two weeks, I went outside and I realized I hadn't felt the air on my face in two weeks and said, 'I gotta get out of here.' "

So he rented a place on a golf course at Spanish Trails. I never saw Springfield at red carpets or clubbing back then.

"I just stayed at home and wrote, and went into the show, and came home and wrote some more," he said. "I'm a bit of a loner. It really suited me just to stay at home with my dog. I missed my family a lot.

"I flew home three days every weekend," Springfield said, but, "it was a bit of a strain on our marriage, me being away so much."

Even so, he loved his time here.

"I miss Vegas a lot," he said. "I love the energy level. Everybody on the street is there to have a good time. The people who work there go in through the back way, like I did. So everybody you encounter is there for the party. It's a great environment to be in.

"Give my love to Vegas."

Who and what did you just do, see, smell, taste, touch or overhear in Vegas? Tell me for publication at delfman @reviewjournal.com or reviewjournal.com/elfman.