Rick Springfield has said he’s still suffering the consequences of his harrowing onstage accident 25 years ago.
In 2000, the “Jessie’s Girl” hitmaker, 75, was performing in Las Vegas when he took a serious tumble.
“I fell 25 feet, hit my head and then wood came down and hit my head, and then my head hit the stage again,” Springfield recalled in a new interview with People.
The Australian-American singer said that for the longest time, he thought he had just “broken [his] wrist” in the fall.
However, after a recent whole-body MRI scan, he learned that he still has some lasting “brain damage from the fall.”
“So I’m working on trying to repair that,” he said.
While Springfield said he understands that many people “don’t want to know what’s wrong with them,” he explained his interest in undergoing a whole-body MRI stemmed from the circumstances of his father’s death.
“My dad died from not wanting to know,” he said. “He thought he had stomach cancer for years and never got it checked out. When he finally collapsed one day at home, they found out it was an ulcer that burst, and he died from the loss of blood. It could have been fixed if he had gotten it checked out.”
Springfield continued: “That was a giant message to me: If you want to live long, you have to be prepared for some bad news now and then.
“I could find out I have terminal cancer tomorrow and be dead in a year, but I can only do all I can do.”
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The Grammy-winning artist, who in December released his latest album, Big Hits: Rick Springfield’s Greatest Hits, Volume 2, additionally spoke about cutting back his alcohol consumption.
“I was drinking quite a bit, and as you get older, it’s kind of a natural thing to drop all that s***,” he said. “I’m not [in] AA — I mean, I know a lot of people it’s worked for. I’ll have a couple of sips of vodka or something when I’m onstage, but I don’t drink any other time.”
This May, Springfield is scheduled to embark across the U.S. on his I Want My ’80s tour.