Rick Springfield Reveals He Accidentally Killed a Man While Entertaining Troops During the Vietnam War
Rick Springfield Reveals He Accidentally Killed a Man While Entertaining Troops During the Vietnam War
Ilana KaplanThu, September 10, 2026 at 3:22 PM UTC
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Rick Springfield revealed he accidentally killed a man while entertaining troops during the Vietnam War
The pop musician recalled the event during the Tuesday, Sept. 8 episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast
“It’s hard for me to face that I was responsible for the end of a life,” said Springfield
Rick Springfield says he accidentally killed a man while entertaining troops during the Vietnam War.
The Australian rock star recalled the event when his band went to Vietnam in 1968 to entertain American troops during the Tuesday, Sept. 8 episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Springfield, 77, said that U.S. soldiers “wanted to see, you know, girls that reminded them of home.”
“So as long as we had a couple of girls in the band, they would hire you, and you could tour Vietnam during the war zone,” he said. “It was pretty insane. We were there for about four months.”
Springfield saw it as an “insane” way to earn some money.
“Of course, we didn’t make any money. We spent it all at the PX, and we weren’t making much money anyway,” he said.
Rick Springfield in September 2026Credit: PowerfulJRE/Youtube
But entertaining troops took a turn when Springfield was caught in an attack, which he called “freaky.”
“We met these guys, and we really got along well, and we stayed overnight with them, and we all got in the bunkers, in the perimeter bunkers, and I stayed in the radio shack, and we got attacked, and I’m throwing mortars down the freaking tube of the radio shack,” he recalled.
The weight of the situation sank in when Springfield realized what had happened with one of the mortars.
“The hardest thing for me was that I had thrown a mortar down, and it had hit somebody, and they came in the next day and said, ‘Hey, you got one. You got one,’” said Springfield.
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He continued, “And that still has a hard place to land in me, you know? That’s really kind of the one thing I brought back with me that I couldn’t really find a place for that to land.”
Springfield then detailed what happened before he fired the mortar.
“It was like the movies,” he said, recalling hearing the radio airing a warning that there were no “friendlies” in the area.
Rick Springfield in August 2026 in NashvilleCredit: Jason Kempin/Getty
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Springfield was then asked if he wanted to “throw some mortars down the tube.”
“And it was John Wayne time, you know. I mean, as a young kid, I didn’t really understand what I was doing,” he said.
But Springfield revealed that the event is something he still grapples with even now.
“I think it’s still there, you know?” he said. “It’s hard for me to kind of face that I was responsible for the end of a life, even though it’s distant, and it’s war,” he said.
Springfield added: “And I didn’t really have anything to do with it and didn’t really know what I was doing, but you know as a kid and playing, like I said, John Wayne. But it was... pretty heavy when I think about the reality of it.”
Days after his 77th birthday, the “Jessie’s Girl” singer went viral on Aug. 31 for his youthful appearance after footage from his performance in Tennessee circulated online.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
