Rick Springfield muses about God, balance in first novel 'Magnificent Vibrations'

Rick Springfield had a memoir out a couple of years ago called ‘Late, Late at Night’ that was a huge bestseller. Now the 64-year-old rocker has penned another book, but this time it’s fiction. “Magnificent Vibrations: A Novel,” is an alternately poignant, hilarious and deeply heartfelt book that is already receiving rave reviews.

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FOX411: What has been the reaction so far to the book?

Rick Springfield: We’ve had some great pre-reviews from the literary press that like to make fun of guys like me who say, “I think I’ll write a novel,” so it’s very exciting. No one has slammed it yet.

FOX411: How did it come about?

Springfield: I wrote my autobiography myself without a ghost writer and that got a lot of attention. My publisher liked my voice and my style and said, ‘You know you should be writing fiction.’ I actually started out as a kid in Australia writing fiction, that’s what I thought I would be because that’s the only good grades I got, and then music took over.

I always had it in the back of my mind that I’d get back to it. I was home in Australia with Mum visiting over Christmas and I had this idea that God talks to me and started writing these conversations between this guy and God. I started out with this guy having a phone conversation with God and God turned out to be quite different than the punishing Old Testament figure or the benevolent Father and it just had a humorous tone to it. Basically it just went from there.

FOX411: How would you describe God in your book?

Springfield: A lot like me. A pretty dark sense of humor. It’s a very extreme novel and it kind of goes all over the place but eventually ties in. The God in this book is very in control but doesn’t manipulate our day-to-day lives and is actually quite amazed that we think he does and has a very warped sense of humor.

FOX411: Do you think about God and spirituality a lot?

Springfield: Very much so. I’ve always been spiritually searching. The book has a lot of my interests in it. It has the Loch Ness monster, which I loved as a kid, and my belief that we’re bad stewards of the earth. As the reigning species we’ve done terrible things to the planet and to each other. That’s thrown in too with a humorous approach, but it’s still got a real point to it though.

FOX411: What were you raised?

Springfield: I was raised Church of England which is like Roman Catholicism with a little less guilt, and it never sat well with me. For me it didn’t fit so I started looking other places and went to Eastern religions and other paths. It’s a continual search, I’m always reading. I have had some staggering signs that there’s a greater force out there. I do have a firm belief that there’s more than just this.

FOX411: What have been the signs?

Springfield: I’ve been very connected to my dogs and when they’ve died, hawks have shown up in pretty unusual ways. When I was pretty lost spiritually my main dog Ronnie died. He was the one on the cover of “Working Class Dog” and I wasn’t connected spiritually at that point. I’d been reading a lot about it and always believed that birds are spiritual beings. Indians used to believe it because they’re the closest to heaven. This hawk showed up in this unbelievable way and kind of took me back to a spiritual path and it kind of kept happening too. It was really instrumental in taking me back to a spiritual path. I do have a spiritual path but it’s got to have a sense of humor because we’re all fu**ed up.

FOX411: You wrote in your memoir about suffering from depression. How do you handle it?

Springfield: I talk a lot about yin and yang in this novel, it’s about the balance of the universe and the balance of depression is that it’s where a lot of writing and creativity comes from because when you get down you become introspective. It’s really made me that kind of guy. I always look in. I’ve always taken moments to try and figure out what’s going on, so that’s the upside of depression. It makes you look inward and that’s where writing comes from. Most of my songs comes from dark places even though they may have snappy melodies.

FOX411: When did you first suffer from depression?

Springfield: Once I hit puberty I was never in a fabulous place. There’s been great moments but I would never describe myself as a happy guy. When I was in a band in Australia called Zoot they always used to call me the moody one. I just accepted that, ‘Yeah I guess I’m just a moody guy.’ It was really because I was going in and out of depression.

FOX411: Do you still get recognized?

Springfield: Yeah I meet a lot of people who say, ‘I’ve been a fan since I was three.’ That blows my mind and I’m impressed that they’re still interested. It’s great, my goal is to keep them interested.