Rick Springfield: “Surviving the 80s”
Part One: “Working Class Dog”
In terms of music, the 1980s were as unique as the previous period with its impassioned outbreak of energy and creativity (the 70s), and the subsequent reinterpretation of the established canons and search for new forms (the 90s). The imaginative solos and licks of hard rock guitars lost ground to the laser beams of dazzling synths. The fancy smattering of drums was replaced with the steady pace of ticktack beat. The melodies became simpler, and songs shorter, more accessible and blatantly aimed at wider audiences. Many performing musicians that previously soared hit the wall of artistic decline. In hindsight the reasons were various, but usually they were rooted in the fact that it is practically impossible to maintain the highly set bar (only few managed that) since a lot has been poured and imprinted in the annals, but the call of a new musical age with its peculiarities needed to be answered. And probably the main challenge was a desire to keep floating on the ever-changing and treacherous waters of trends and, above all, technical forms of expression. This resulted in typicality, repeatability and simplification accompanied with deficiency of fresh ideas, leading to a retrospectively valid tendency to bottle the period up in a narrow vessel marked the “80s sound”. Many couldn’t survive the new age, many survived but lost weight significantly, but some managed to ride atop of the wicked time period (often thanks to deliberate resistance to the trends).
Here we present a trip to these controversial and ambiguous times, when the external attributes (flamboyance, showiness, accessibility, polish and electronics) suddenly overshadowed richness of ideas and innovation. The main character of this mini-chronicle will be the not exactly unknown Rick Springfield, who released a commercially successful studio album
Working Class Dog at the dawn of the decade.
Considering that the LP is his fifth (if we include the Mission Magic! show soundtrack and the LP of the same name from 1974) and he already proved himself somewhat in the 70s, no surprise that the latest record contains a residual charge of the past. The rock thrust and generally solid guitar support are present on the first side of the album, but it does bear a toll of the period. Produced with a clear and palpable professional approach, proving the rise of Springfield as a musician, the LP aims at the mainstream with its gimmicks and decisions, which would become the cliché of the period. It is not surprising that the main hit, which turned out to be the calling card of the artist that stuck to him as the only reference (
Jessie’s Girl), takes more from earlier experiences than tries to pander to the spirit of the present. It is a good song obviously, notably for its simple melody and inherited sense of hit, but it isn’t the best one in the wide arsenal of Rick Springfield and undeservingly clouds his other music accomplishments (especially from the 21st century).
As for the other cuts, despite the noticeable attempt to vary the material (the very out of context near-jazz
Red Hot & Blue Love and probably the best track on here in ambient and fragile
Inside Silvia) and a desire to create the Top 40 songs outweighs any artistic efforts. The disc is filled with hit songs (mainly of arena rock format) that have a specific date tied to them, 1981 to be precise. But a due should be given to Rick, the tracks are good enough as they are performed and ordered in such a way that nothing sticks out, letting the songs to introduce themselves to the audience: “Hi, I’m No. 1 hit” or “My name is Lovely Ballad”. The LP flies by in its brief 32 minutes, leaving the same pleasant and fleeting impression as a nice company sitting next to you on a short flight.
As a result
Working Class Dog doesn’t bind you to anything nor claims to be anything more than a decent chart performer and a preferably platinum seller. This is such a middle-of-the-road album, that it is difficult to determine whether it’s good or bad. It’s just fine. Moreover, by that it can be referred to as part of majority, which strives to be not somewhere interesting, but where everybody is. At the ascent of his career, Rick Springfield managed to pull off a grade A effort in this regard, sales and those damned associations are proof to that. As for purely artistic accomplishments, let’s try looking for it in other LPs of the time. Maybe we’ll get lucky.
