Rick Springfield is driving to his local Starbucks with his favorite coffee-break companion: his dog Gomer.

“Everyone there knows him,” Springfield says with a chuckle. “He does his rounds and lets everybody pet him. He thinks that’s his job. He’s been caught by paparazzi, he’s so popular.”

Springfield, 58, named his independent label after Gomer, and devotes a page of his official website to an elaborate photo gallery featuring the mixed-breed rescue dog. And Gomer isn’t the first pet Springfield has made a star—that would be Ronnie, the bull terrier who graced the cover of Working Class Dog. That 1981 album, reissued in a special edition two years ago, gave Australia native Springfield his American breakthrough after more than a decade of struggle. By then, he had become best known as an actor on the soap opera General Hospital—leading to sniffy dismissal from a media cognoscenti unaware of his status as a veteran singer, songwriter and guitarist.

Expertly crafted, deceptively confessional pop-rock hits like “Jessie’s Girl,” “Don’t Talk to Strangers,” “Affair of the Heart,” “Love Somebody” and “Celebrate Youth” followed for the remainder of the decade. But becoming a father for the first time in 1985 led Springfield to begin withdrawing from the demands of recording and touring, and he spent most of the ’90s concentrating on family. “I just said, ‘Oh, I’ll take a little time off,’ and it got away from me,” recalls Springfield, who now has two adult sons with his wife of 24 years, Barbara.

In the past decade Springfield has fully embraced both his music and acting careers again. Since 1999 he has made three studio albums—including the new Venus in Overdrive—as well as a Christmas effort and a set of covers. Since 2005 he has intermittently returned to his long-ago role as Dr. Noah Drake on General Hospital. He’s become so comfortable with his renewed career, in fact, that in November he and a boatload of his most devoted fans will set sail from Miami on the first-ever Rick Springfield and Friends cruise. As Gomer made his appointed rounds at Starbucks, his proud owner talked frankly about music, maturity and the death of rock ’n’ roll.

Looking back, are all your records a pretty accurate reflection of what was on your mind at the time?
Yeah, I always like to write about what’s really going on. Working Class Dog was basically about wanting to get laid (laughs). I don’t feel that anymore. I mean, I feel it, but in a different way. Like “Venus in Overdrive” is about my wife, how loving she is and what a great person she is. Songwriting is my diary. I used to keep a diary when I was a kid, and when I started writing songs I stopped.

Have you learned things about yourself from your own songs?
I’ve been surprised, looking back at songs and thinking, “I knew that then? I didn’t know I knew that” (laughs). I did an album called Tao in ’85 that was about searching for spirituality. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time, but I looked at it later and said, “That’s what I was doing.” It’s a great process.

For more, get the latest Issue of Performing Songwriter, ISSUE No. 111