![\"Rick](\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/images\/rick-springfield_book.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nMy man Rick has actually had a pretty colorful — and sometimes difficult — life: He became a teen idol at the improbably advanced age of 32 (when “Jessie’s Girl” hit number one) after years of struggling to find an American audience, and he’s struggled ever since to find respect as a genuine musician instead of a one-bubblegum-hit wonder; he lived for several years with Linda Blair of Exorcist<\/i> fame — she was all of 15 when they moved in together, and he was a decade older (I imagine that raised a few eyebrows, even in the anything-goes 1970s); he collapsed into a deep depression in the late ’80s, when it seemed his moment had come and gone in such a brief span of time, and he actually contemplated suicide; and now at the age of 60, he’s rebuilt both his musical and acting career, and consistently puts on one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen, even if it’s only his hardcore fans who ever actually see it.<\/p>\n
Assuming that he can write prose at all (or has found himself a good ghost writer), I expect all this ought to make for a hell of a read…<\/p>\n
At least, that’s my hope. I still remember all too well my excitement at the news that Jimmy Buffett was writing a memoir, and the crushing disappointment when I finally got around to reading it. All those wild experiences and people that surely inspired his songs about swashbucklers and vagabonds, the rumors that he’d made ends meet for a while by smuggling weed from Cuba to Key West, the beer-drinking-and-hell-raising early days of his career… that’s<\/i> what I expected from A Pirate Looks at Fifty<\/i>. Instead, I got a fairly boring travelogue written by a middle-aged capitalist who thinks he’s more clever with a turn of phrase than he often is. Rick, old buddy, don’t let me down the way Jimmy did…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think this speaks for itself (click on the image if you can’t read the fine print and need to enlarge it): My man Rick has actually had a pretty colorful — and sometimes difficult — life: He became a teen idol at the improbably advanced age of 32 (when “Jessie’s Girl” hit number one) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-and-pop-culture","category-the-bookshelf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}