Rick Springfield to play the Ritz in Tiffin

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Musician, actor, teen heartthrob, and New York Times best-selling author, Rick Springfield takes the stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the historic Ritz Theatre, 30 S. Washington St. in Tiffin.

The 62-year-old is best known for a string of hits in the 1980s, including "Jessie's Girl," "Affair of the Heart," "I've Done Everything for You," "Love Somebody," and "Don't Talk to Strangers," as well as his long-running role as Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital.

In a recent phone interview with The Blade, Springfield talked about recording with the Foo Fighters and his ongoing battle with lifelong depression.

Q: You recently recorded a song with the Foo Fighters. How did that come about?

Dave [Grohl] bought the Studio A board from Sound City, where a lot of people recorded some great stuff and I recorded "Jesse's Girl" and a lot of the hits I had. Fleetwood Mac recorded "Rumors," Tom Petty did "Damn the Torpedoes," ... and actually, Nirvana did "Nevermind" at Sound City too, so he's got a big link to that studio. So he bought the board when the studio folded and decided to do a documentary on all that great music that's come through that board and was recorded at Sound City. ... And then he came up with the idea of everyone pairing off and recording a new song and the getting together and playing it. We got together and wrote a track, and then me and Matt -- Matt Bissonette, my bass player, we write together now -- we wrote vocals over it and lyrics and went and recorded it with the Foo Fighters. They're a great band, they're really a very tight band and it all went pretty fast.

Q: Some would consider a pairing between you and the Foo Fighters an odd combination.

Our song we did came out really, really great. I'm really excited about it. It's a really hard-rocking song.

There's some wild combinations ... I think Neil Young and Trent Reznor are going to do a song together ... [and] Barry Manilow and Weezer. It's going to be pretty adventurous.

Q: You also participated in the documentary An Affair of the Heart, about you and your relationship with your fans.

It's been doing the film festival round [and] just got accepted into the Toronto Film Festival. The director's incredible, Sylvia Caminer, she won awards for her last documentary on Tanzania [Tanzania: A Friendship Journey] and she's a bona fide, full-on, guerilla-tactics film documentary director, and what she did with this just blew my mind. I thought they were just going to film us playing and do some shows and then interview some fans, saying, "Oh, yes, I remember him when I was 16." But she went deep. It shocked the hell out of me where she went with it. And, like my book, it comes off with a few warts.

Q: You're very candid about your imperfections in last-year's autobiography, Late, Late at Night.

I've been an avid reader since I was 12 years old and in autobiographies you can read when someone is jerking your chain and polishing their image, and I didn't want that. I wanted it to come across as honest. I just put it out there without judging it and hoped that others would maybe get something from it positive.

Q: But you have more good days than bad, right?

No, I would say I have more bad days. My depression dogs the [expletive] out of me. The other main character in the book is called Mr. D and is my third person ... [and] the personification of my depression that's followed me since I hit puberty and realized there's more to life than cowboys and Indians.

Q: How do you cope with it?

I meditate, which really helps me. I focus on being thankful rather than looking at this stuff that my depression directs me towards. I work out and I eat well and I write. Writing and meditating are the best things for me because I'm not depressed when I'm writing or when I meditate. There's just no room for it. I guess that's why I never stop working, because if I do I'll probably shoot my freakin' self.

Tickets to the Springfield Saturday concert are $45, $55, and $65 and available online at ritztheatre.org, by calling 1-419-448-8544, or at the box office 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekdays, and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, and one hour before the show.

Contact Kirk Baird at kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.