Rick Springfield Says He Killed a Man in Vietnam While Performing for Troops as a Teen: ‘It’s Hard for Me to Face’

Rick Springfield, the 77-year-old Australian singer-songwriter, recently recounted a harrowing experience from his teenage years that has remained with him for nearly six decades. During a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, he revisited his time performing for U.S. troops in Vietnam at just 17 years old. In 1968, Springfield was stationed at a Navy encampment near Da Nang and, while serving on a defensive position, fired mortars to defend the base from attack.

Later, he was informed that one of his mortars had killed a Viet Cong fighter. At the time, Springfield admitted he was too young to fully comprehend the gravity of the situation. Decades later, the memory of his involvement in the death of another person continues to weigh heavily on him. "It's still there," he told Rogan, expressing the difficulty he faces in acknowledging his responsibility for ending a life.

Springfield also recalled the soldiers he met as being deeply conflicted about the war, with many questioning the purpose of their presence in Vietnam. This experience, detailed in his 2010 memoir Late, Late at Night, still sends a shiver down his spine, despite the passage of time. The Vietnam trip occurred more than a decade before Springfield achieved his breakthrough as a solo artist, when his 1981 album Working Class Dog produced his signature hit "Jessie's Girl," which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in September 1981.