"My Father's Chair" - Love, Loss and a Rick Springfield Concert
- MaryAnn Janosik
- Jul 8, 2024
- 11 min read
Updated: May 4
NOTE: I'm deviating from my usual movies posts, partly because there are so few interesting films playing in local theaters at the moment, but mostly because a few things have occurred in the past month that merit some recounting and reflection. Feel welcome to ignore... or read on.
Let's begin with music:
"April 24, 1981"
The last track on rock star Rick Springfield's Success Hasn't Spoiled Me Yet album (1982), is a short, ethereal ode to his father who died the previous year. Simply titled with the date of his father's death, "April 24, 1981" provides a powerful glimpse into Springfield's spiritual journey: sometimes dark, always probing, at times bleak and desperate. It's the kind of musical melancholy that draws me in to consider personal experiences beyond those in the song lyrics. A year after its release, when my own dad died, I listened to this 90-second requiem often as it provided an eerie calm and peaceful solace in the weeks and months after my dad's passing.
Many of my friends know that I've been a fan of pop-rock star Rick Springfield for decades. My recurring Facebook posts chronicle Meet & Greets, concerts and new music releases I've experienced over the years, illustrating an unwavering respect and love for his music as well as an enduring teenage crush on the man who literally took my breath away over forty years ago.
The first time I saw Rick in person, at an album signing at Halle's Department Store at the Westgate Mall in the summer of 1981, a few months after the release of his now classic Working Class Dog album, I thought he was the handsomest man I'd ever seen. No kidding. I had to stop what I'm sure was an audible gasp as he walked in, surveying a store filled with pre-teen girls, wearing a crisp white shirt, navy velvet blazer and jeans. For someone who'd survived Osmondmania, the Jackson Five and the Partridge Family tidal waves with nary a hyperventilation, I surprised myself having such a visceral reaction to a pop star came as a surprise.
I was in my 20s and found it mildly amusing that the singer who rejected being marketed as a teen idol almost ten years earlier was now the center of prepubescent lust. When the throng rushed toward him, he quickly bolted to a nearby fitting room and never re-emerged. So much for teen fandom.
Though I had been standing at a distance, Rick and I did made eye contact for a moment, and I felt a connection that touched something deep in my soul. There was an honesty and vulnerability in his gaze, I would later tell a therapist, something that made me feel seen. I knew I was one of thousands experiencing a fleeting moment with a celebrity and yet, every time I've seen him or talked with him since - as recently as June 7 of this year when our eyes locked yet again during a concert here in Chicago - I always go back to that Saturday afternoon in Cleveland and remember the profound intensity of his gaze. He doesn't just look at you, he seems to want to make a more meaningful bond, no matter how brief the encounter.
But I've gotten ahead of my story.
Before "Jessie's Girl" became a first Number One hit (1981), before Rick appeared as heartthrob Dr. Noah Drake on TV's uber-soap General Hospital, before he became a best-selling author, I was a loyal supporter. His music, upbeat on the surface but filled with an underlying darkness I'd later learn came from his lifelong struggle with what he calls "Mr. D" (depression), spoke to me and my own adolescent alienation and loneliness.
An only child and late-in-life kid, I grew up in a very loving working class family, but also in a neighborhood that didn't always champion female empowerment or a woman's intelligence. I never really felt comfortable with my peers and regularly escaped into books, movies and music.
I first discovered Australian-born Richard Lewis Springthorpe in 1972 while perusing a Tiger Beat magazine as my mom shopped at a local grocery store. Rick was more appealing to me than Donny Osmond, David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman combined: he was strikingly tall and his gentle brown eyes and shaggy dark hair were coiffed perfectly, cultivating an androgynous look that made him simultaneously enticing and non-threatening. When I saw him almost a decade later at Halle's, those youthful good looks had matured into a kind of devastating sexiness, and the sparkle in his eye suggested the kind of bad boy mischievousness that I found immensely attractive.
Rick's first single to chart in the US was a bouncy little ditty called "Speak to the Sky" featured on his inaugural solo album, Beginnings. The song peaked at #14 on the US pop charts in 1972, and also reached #6 and #8 on Australian and Canadian Adult Contemporary charts, respectively. Check it out.
Despite his more mature-themed music, teen magazines were eager to exploit his boyish good looks and turn the then 23-year-old Springfield into the next teen idol. He resisted and that, along with some unfortunately bad management advice led him down a path that almost ended his music career. To pay the rent, he took acting lessons and learned how to craft stained glass tchotchkes, the latter experience serving as the basis for the unrequited love story that became "Jessie's Girl."
By 1976, Springfield had a new record label and a new album, Wait for Night (I still think it's one of his best), and a single called "Take A Hand" that charted at #50 on the US Billboard, but it wasn't until RCA records took a chance on his collection of new work that he secured a lasting return to the entertainment industry with the release of the iconic Working Class Dog in 1981. The album came out just two months before the death of his father, so the sometimes distant relationship Rick has described between the two, especially not having his father witness the pop cultural tsunami that followed the success of WCD, including a Grammy award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Jessie's Girl," seemed to linger in subsequent lyrics.
The first time I attended a Rick Springfield concert was December 1981 at The Front Row Theater in Cleveland, OH, a small, 3000-seat venue that featured a "theater-in-the-round" setting. Rick appeared with another guitarist and drummer, wore his signature mismatched Converse high-tops (one pink, one purple), and performed earnestly for about an hour. Less than a year later, I saw Springfield again, this time at Cleveland's Richfield Coliseum, where everything about the concert was bigger: the band, the venue, the screaming, the magnitude of the show. Springfield's rise to stardom may have seemed overnight to some, but it was a decade-plus tale of persistence and resilience to those more familiar with his career.
In 1984, at the height of his 1980's stardom, Springfield expanded the "April 24, 1981" homage into a longer, more detailed, and more emotionally rich remembrance of the loss of his father called "My Father's Chair." Like its predecessor, "My Father's Chair" quickly became a favorite of mine, not because the father-child relationship described in the song paralleled mine own, but because there was something bigger, deeper about death and the ones we leave behind that seemed especially meaningful.
I didn't see Springfield in concert again until 2005, but I kept up with his music which, like his appearance, became grittier, tougher, and darker over time. When our eyes locked once again at a Labor Day concert at Cleveland's outdoor Nautica amphitheatre, that same penetrating gaze was there, but this time it reflected songs like "My Depression," "Jesus Saves (White Trash)" and "Rock of Life." Still, I was re-vitalized by his presence, his newfound fan connection seemed to have been re-energized over time. His career had weathered various ups and downs, as had his personal life, and he seemed to emerge stronger, if more vulnerable than before, now more comfortable in his own skin.
A year later, I took my soon-to-be-husband Paul to a Rick concert at the Ohio State Fair and had what was probably my most memorable concert experience. Rick came out into the audience, guitar in hand, and climbed over chairs while playing a medley of hits. He stopped in our row and stood on my chair to sing "Human Touch." When someone handed him a bouquet of roses (a ritual at his concerts), he strummed the guitar with the flowers, showering me with the petals (I still have three saved in a tiny porcelain box). As the rosebuds scattered about, he suddenly grabbed my hand and held it for the duration of the song, never taking his eyes off me.
And, for a few brief moments, I was a teenage again. Unfortunately, my fiance found himself maneuvering carefully around the neck of Rick's guitar which had gotten dangerously close to his nose. We both survived, although with very different recollections of Rick or the song.
Since that teen dream concert, I've been back to many Rick Springfield concerts, sometimes taking advantage of the "Meet & Greets" offered to fans, and always astonished that his music never fails to reinvigorate my spirit. He is as self-deprecating in person, as soulful as his lyrics, and as human an artist as I've met (and I've met a few - remember, I did work at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). His hugs are genuine, as intense as his gaze, and I never fail to encounter a sense memory of all the times his music has been a part of my life.
Time and experiences have shaped my sometimes pensive nature, but I have always found Rick's introspective compositions a source of consolation and hope. In 2018, his collection of blues songs titled, The Snake King, included melodies with bleak political themes ("In the Land of Blind"), sexual obsession ("Voodoo House"), and eternal damnation ("Orpheus in the Underworld"). No longer the musings of a teen idol (not that his lyrics ever were), but a keen expression of Springfield's unique perspectives and personal journey.
I probably know the track listing of every Rick Springfield album, along with most of the lyrics, and I still find listening to them a kind of sanctuary, especially Living in Oz (1983), which I consider his breakthrough album in terms of solidifying his arrival as a mature artist willing to take on less conventional, often disturbing themes about life, loss, sex and death. "My Father's Chair," in particular, is a song I've returned to often because it reminds me of the fragility of life and the impact of loss on the survivors.
Reminds me, too, of an episode from the TV series MASH ("Death Takes a Holiday," Season 9) when Nurse Margaret Houlihan remarks on the tragic death of a wounded soldier, who dies just before midnight on Christmas: "Never fails to astonish me. You're alive. You're dead. No drums. No flashing lights. No fanfare. You're just dead."
Springfield grapples with the banality of death in "My Father's Chair," as he recalls returning home with his mother and brother to an empty house: "Back in the house/Alone for the first time/We told each other we care/We avoided my father's chair." That scene makes me think of personal losses: my dad, my aunt Helen, my mom - and the feeling of emptiness, the finality of loss that washed over me when they died. No fanfare. No heavenly light. They were gone, and there was no consolation in their passing. Not even the Catholic church, in which I was raised, offered refuge, only words and prayers that felt like meaningless platitudes. I needed to figure out what faith meant to me, how to grieve in ways that resonated within my mind and heart.
And yet, as difficult and devastating as it is to listen to the song, to absorb the reality of confronting our own mortality, I still find an odd sort of comfort knowing that my questions about death - is my soul everlasting? - are not terribly unique, but part of a larger dialogue about humanity and existence, about how small and personal our lives really are, and how intimate if one other person understands and shares the things that matter most.
Last November, in anticipation of "My Father's Chair's" 40th anniversary, I - as a longtime Rick Springfield Fan Club member - received an invitation to send a photo of my dad to be considered for a new video honoring the song. So off I sent one of the few photos I have of my dad and me, figuring it would be lost in the great unknown flood of submissions. l had lots of other things going on and pretty much forgot about the whole thing until a week ago when I was surfing You Tube.
I had about ten minutes of time to fill until the local news, and You Tube, in its AI wisdom, sent me a list of "you might like these" videos. Top of the column was "My Father's Chair 2024." Hmm, I thought. It showed a running time of just of five minutes. Perfect. Click.
As soon as Rick began introducing the video, I remembered the call for photos. Very few could be used as there were so many submissions it would have been impossible to include them all. But I was curious and let the video play out. Imagine my surprise when the last picture rolled out and there were my dad and me c1961 - when a pre-school MaryAnn was watching her dad get ready for the big parade to open Admiral King High School in Lorain, OH.
I ran to get my husband so he could see the video. We watched it together and he commented that he thought my dad would have liked the result. We wound up talking well into the night about our fathers and our relationships with them. Paul said he didn't ever remember a time his father hugged him or told him that he loved him. Not me. Every day when my dad came home from work, he always had a kiss for my mom and a hug for me. In many ways, the photo in the video captures the way I will always think of my dad.
I remember the day the photo was taken so well. I was especially frightened by flash bulbs, and I remember him wrapping his arms around me and making me laugh so that I wouldn't be startled by the flash. My dad served in the Naval Reserves for 20 years after World War II, something for which he was very proud. He'd led an unconventional life, in many ways: once a semi-professional football player and big band singer, then a sailor, an B&O engineer and a GM laborer, he never seemed troubled by setbacks. He met my mom later in life and seemed to settle into a more domestic routine after WWII.
My dad was in his mid-50s when I was born; my mom in her mid-30s. I grew up around adults and older cousins. I was shy, like my mom. My dad was very outgoing: always a smile, a handshake, a twinkle in his clear blue eyes. I still remember how he called me "Cookie," a nickname few knew and no on else ever used but him.
Lately, I think about how much I am like him, something that never occurred to me when I was younger. I was the dutiful daughter: a straight A student, polite, always neat and organized. I didn't realize until later, after experiencing life and loss, divorce and re-marriage, love and heartbreak, success and failure, cancer, that I was like him: resilient, capable, undaunted, and a bit of a risk-taker. Not sure if those are all admirable qualities but they are certainly part of who I am.
Maybe that's the thing that ties this blog post together. The people you meet, however fleetingly, the connections you make, even for a moment, the love and hugs that sustain you are what get you through the tough times. We should all have those little things: the brief, shining or dark and desolate moments, the insignificant trinkets and mental souvenirs that define who we are and how we navigate the time we're here.
Because, in the end, what happens happens. And then we're gone.
So thanks, Rick, for including my photo in your loving tribute. The past few days have been filled with powerful memories, and I am grateful for every one of them, no matter how long ago or how small they might seem to others. Now, because of your music, I have one more admittedly super cool connection, a lasting memento with my dad.
For those still reading this post, here's the link to "My Father's Chair 2024:"
And thanks, Dad, you know, for all that you were and are to me.
MJ@theMovies will be back with more summer movies reviews soon.
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