Shocking Revelation: Music Icon Rick Springfield Confesses to Killing in Vietnam
Rick Springfield recently shared a harrowing Vietnam War experience from his youth on The Joe Rogan Experience, where he helped fire mortars during an attack and later learned one killed a Viet Cong fighter. This traumatic memory continues to haunt the singer-songwriter, who was just 17 at the time. The event predated his rise to fame with "Jessie's Girl" and his acting career.
Australian singer-songwriter Rick Springfield, now 77, recently recounted a profound and haunting experience from his teenage years during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. At just 17 years old in 1968, Springfield traveled to Vietnam to perform for U.S. troops. While stationed at a Navy encampment near Da Nang, the base came under attack. Springfield vividly recalled helping to fire mortars from a defensive position during the assault.
The following day, he was informed that one of the mortars he had fired had killed a Viet Cong fighter. At the time, he was too young to fully grasp the gravity of the situation. Decades later, however, the memory continues to deeply affect him. Springfield shared with Rogan his ongoing struggle to process the knowledge that he was responsible for another person's death, despite the circumstances of wartime and his youth at the time. He admitted, "It’s hard for me to face that I was responsible for the end of a life."
Springfield also reflected on the soldiers he encountered in Vietnam, noting their deep-seated conflicts and questions about their presence and purpose in the war. This formative, traumatic experience was also detailed in his 2010 memoir, "Late, Late at Night," where he confessed that the memory still "sends a shiver" down his spine, even with the passage of time.
This impactful trip to Vietnam occurred more than a decade before Rick Springfield achieved widespread fame. In 1981, he released his fourth studio album, "Working Class Dog," which featured his iconic hit "Jessie’s Girl." The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in September 1981, marking his sole No. 1 on the chart. That same year, Springfield began his acting career, taking on the role of Dr. Noah Drake on the long-running soap opera General Hospital, a role he reprised through 2014.