Rabbitt Puts Tragedy Behind Him and Gets Back to Work

“I’ve got a No. 1 single this week with ‘I Wanna Dance With You,’ ” Eddie Rabbitt reported on the phone from Nashville. “I consider this a real achievement. . . . You get these apprehensions when you’ve been out of the public eye.”

Rabbitt, who comes to the Crazy Horse in Santa Ana on Monday and Tuesday, has been out of the public eye for nearly three years.

He went into seclusion when his 2-year-old son, Timmy, died after a liver transplant.

“I decided that it was more important for me to be at home with my wife, who was terribly upset, and my (4-year-old) daughter, who was so confused about where her little brother was,” Rabbitt said.

“And during that time, my wife got pregnant again. She had a healthy little boy who’s 17 months old now and named Tommy.”

With his personal life turned back around, Rabbitt decided to get back to work. He began writing with renewed enthusiasm, turning out eight of the nine songs on the new “I Wanna Dance With You” album.

Rabbitt’s music is worlds away from the Nashville neo-traditionalism that critics and listeners are taking to heart these days. Still, there are plenty of folks out there who like his slick, country-politan stylings. And Rabbitt doesn’t apologize for his sound.

“I write all different types of music,” he said, “which can be a blessing and a curse. I think it’s helped me weather the changes in style (that country music has been going through). But it’s also opened me up for a lot of criticism. But, basically, I just do what I do.”

In the process, since 1981, Rabbitt and co-writer/producer Even Stevens have racked up six “millionaire song” credits, awarded by music publishers to records that have been played more than 1 million times on the radio (They are: “I Love a Rainy Night,” “Suspicious,” “Step by Step,” “Drivin’ My Life Away,” “Someone Could Lose a Heart Tonight” and “You Can’t Run From Love”).

Who would expect that kind of chart domination from a kid who grew up Irish-American in Newark, N.J.? Even Rabbitt thinks it’s a little bit surprising. He noted, though, that country was the first kind of music he ever learned to play.

“When I was 12 years old, I was in the Boy Scouts,” he recalled. “The scoutmaster of our troop was in a band that played country music in some of the local clubs on the weekends.

“We went away for an overnight, and I heard him playing the guitar and just flipped. I asked him if he’d teach me how to play.

“He told me if I got my own guitar--I hadn’t noticed he was left-handed, which is a different kind of guitar--he’d be happy to show me some chords. So when I got back, I got myself a guitar, and then I’d be walking to his house--which was a couple of blocks away--every few days to have my lessons.

“Because all he played was country, that’s what I learned. But I also really learned to love the music. I listened to all kinds of music: rock, pop, R & B. But country was always my first love.”

So, in 1968 at age 17, Rabbitt saved $1,000 from working in clubs--where he’d told the owners he was 21--and headed to Nashville.

He lived in a run-down apartment with Kris Kristofferson and ran around with him, Billy Swan (“I Can Help”) and Chris Gantry (who wrote “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife”) as each waited for his respective break.

Eddie Rabbitt will sing at the Crazy Horse Steak House, 1580 Brookhollow Drive, Santa Ana, on Monday and Tuesday at 7 and 10 p.m. Tickets: $26. Information: (714) 549-1512.