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'80s Rocker Claims He Killed A Man While Visiting Vietnam Troops
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Rick Springfield claims he killed a man while he was in Vietnam to play for troops in the late ’60s. The Australian musician opened up about the shocking moment during an appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” this week. “You could tour Vietnam during the war zone ― it was pretty insane. We were there for about four months,” the “Jessie’s Girl” singer said on the podcast. “I thought, ‘Oh, great. We’ll make money.’ You know? And, of course, we didn’t make any money.” At one point, the tour became less about money and all about survival when the group got attacked while bunking with some soldiers. “It was like the movies. Radio came in, uh, ‘We’re seeing movement over here. Check for friendlies.’ And they said, ‘No, no friendlies there.’ So they said, ‘Hey, you want to throw some mortars down the tube?’” Springfield said. “It was John Wayne time, you know. I mean, I, as a young kid, I didn’t really understand what I was doing. I said, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s fire a gun.’” “I threw the mortars down, about five or six mortars, which I could have easily lost a hand,” Springfield said. “And they came in the next morning and said one of them had hit a VC,” a member of the Viet Cong, he added. Springfield, who was just 18 at the time, didn’t realize the weight of throwing the mortars until that moment. “The hardest thing for me was that, um, I’d thrown a mortar down and it had hit somebody,” he said. “That’s really the, kind of, the one thing I brought back with me that I couldn’t really find a place for that to land.” When host Joe Rogan asked the musician how long the moment had stayed with him, Springfield replied that “it’s still there.” “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,” he said, adding it is “pretty heavy when I think about the reality of it.” Watch the full interview below: By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
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