Rick Springfield Says He Killed a Man in Vietnam at 17: "It's Hard for Me to Face"

Rick Springfield has spent more than four decades as one of pop’s most recognizable voices, but a new interview is shining a light on a chapter of his life that predates“Jessie’s Girl”by more than a decade. On a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the 77-year-old singer and actor said he traveled to Vietnam in 1968 at age 17 to perform for U.S. troops stationed near Da Nang. While he was at a Navy encampment, the base came under attack, and he says he helped fire mortars from a defensive position.

The next day, Springfield says he was told that one of the mortars he fired had killed a Viet Cong fighter. The memory, he told Rogan, is one he still struggles with.“It’s hard for me to face that I was responsible for the end of a life,”he said, adding,“I think it’s still there.”Springfield also wrote about the experience in his 2010 memoir, Late, Late at Night, so the story isn’t a new revelation for longtime fans, but hearing him say it out loud brings a different kind of weight.

For anyone who knows Springfield mainly from his 1981 hit or his run as Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital, the interview offers a striking reminder that the entertainers we grew up with carry histories we rarely see. It’s also a window into how wartime experiences, even brief ones, can follow someone for a lifetime. Have you ever learned something about a celebrity that completely changed how you saw them?