I’ve been traveling the past couple of weeks, which has included time in planes, trains and automobiles.
During my journey, I’ve thought about the people who travel regularly for their jobs, such as musicians. Specifically, Rick Springfield. With about 100 shows all around the country each year (and sometimes internationally), the life of our favorite rock star must include lots of security lines, seat-belt and oxygen-mask demonstrations and waiting at the baggage claim carousel.
Sometimes people will snap a picture of him in the airplane or standing at baggage claim. Other times, reporters accost him as he heads into the airport. On one flight, a group of girls sang “Jessie’s Girl” on the plane after recognizing him. None of these things have ever happened to me during my travels, fortunately.
RS has often said that he gets paid for traveling rather than for playing music because he enjoys playing music so much, he’d do it for free. Lucky for him, he gets paid for both traveling and playing music. What a great gig.
Dicks on a plane @rickspringfield pic.twitter.com/BDP4TBu1yH
— Richard Marx (@richardmarx) October 8, 2017
Whenever I’m at the airport, especially at LAX, I can’t help but keep an eye out for RS, just in case. I’m not really sure what I would actually do if I saw him, but I look anyway. I recently flew into the Burbank, California airport and during the short walk through the terminal from the gate to the outside baggage claim, “Jessie’s Girl” played over the loudspeakers. Out of all the songs in the whole world that could have played in those few minutes, I thought it was pretty funny that it would be an RS song. Of course, I interpreted that as my personal welcome to Southern California from RS. (If you’ve read any of this blog, you may have learned that my thinking process is about age 13 when it comes to RS, so you shouldn’t be too surprised.)
I’m happy to report that I did recently spot RS at the Los Angeles International Airport, although it was in a different scenario than I had hoped. I had some time before I needed to get to the gate to board my flight so I wandered into a bookstore in the terminal. As I scanned the books on the shelves, I saw RS right there on a bottom shelf staring out at me.
I’ll be at LAX later this week so MAYBE I’ll run into him if he heads to Las Vegas early for his show there this weekend. I’ll look out for him just in case.
My Rick Springfield crush 