Rick Springfield opened up about his troubling experience in 1968 during a gig entertaining U.S. troops stationed in Da Nang and said he believes he killed a man during the Vietnam War. Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, Springfield recalled the harrowing details of how his band ended up performing in a war zone and the deadly night that has haunted him ever since.
“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. It was pretty insane. We were there for about four months. It was insane. I thought, ‘Oh, great. We’ll make money, you know.’ And, of course, we didn’t make any money. We spent it all at the PX, and we weren’t making much money anyway.”
“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. It was freaky. This is before – you couldn’t do any of this now.”
“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.’ 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.”
“It was like the movies. They said, ‘Hey, you want 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.”
“I think it’s still there, you know? 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. 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.”
Springfield’s account adds a darker layer to a period that shaped his early career and later public image. The Vietnam episode came before his breakthrough as a solo artist and remains one of the most startling stories he has shared about his time as a young musician.
Springfield performed in several local bands as a teenager before joining Rock House, the group that later played for U.S. troops in Vietnam.
Springfield joined Rockhouse in 1968, and the band was later renamed MPD Ltd. The group subsequently traveled to South Vietnam to entertain troops during the conflict.
Springfield was about 18 when he made the journey. He returned from Vietnam in 1969 before pursuing music more seriously, eventually joining the Australian band Zoot and launching his solo career.
The tour also reflected the risks faced by performers who entertained troops in Vietnam. Entertainers received transportation, accommodation and security arrangements, but the possibility of violent attacks remained a major concern.
Major entertainment tours could also become targets. Bob Hope’s Vietnam appearances were among his most dangerous tours, underscoring the precarious conditions faced by performers traveling through an active war zone.
