The first response people have when learning Rick Springfield is turning 70 this year is “WHAT?!”
Not only is it because he looks about 20 years younger, especially when performing – running around the audience, jumping unbelievably high on stage, etc. – but also because if he’s 70, then his fans who were in their early teens when they started being fans are now either approaching 50 or in their 50s. WHAT?!
Yes, it’s true.
I don’t know how common it is for fans to run birthday campaigns for their favorite rock star, but Rick Springfield fans have run incredible campaigns in honor of RS since 2007 and have so far raised over $122,000 for different charities.
Today is the kick-off of this year’s fan-based campaign, “Orchestrating a Dog’s Life” and all funds raised will go to Linda Blair’s Worldheart Foundation, which helps dogs. As you may know, Rick Springfield loves dogs.
(See the Facebook post when he recently stopped at an animal shelter in Minnesota to visit the dogs while he was in town for a concert and he and some fans donated money to the shelter, too.)
So far on the first day, more than $700 in donations have come in and the campaign runs through Sept. 27 with a goal of raising $20,000 for the dogs. (Last year’s campaign raised more than $15,000.) In case this information hasn’t been imprinted on your brain for the past three decades or so, his actual birthday is Aug. 23.
For more history about the campaign, click here.
In addition to raising money for charities, the campaign also has a fun prize component, where people fans donate Rick Springfield movies, CDs, merchandise, as well as gift cards and other items and every $5 donation gets a entry ticket and then there’s a big prize drawing at the end. (One year the grand prize was having dinner with RS himself!) Thank you to all the fans who work on this campaign each year and those who donate the prizes!
Learn all about the campaign at happybirthdayrick.com.
My Rick Springfield crush 