David Cassidy on the Web
A call from Keith
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Former teen idol David Cassidy plays this week in Halifax. Now, as then, his fans are true-blue.
By Lois Legge
Features Writer
http://thechronicleherald.ca
DAVID CASSIDY is on the phone. And I think I love him.
I mean, I used to, along with millions of other girls of a certain era. Not the ones who tore off his clothes or screamed at his concerts or tipped over his limos. Just the poster-plastering crowd - the Keith Partridge-loving, Partridge Family-pretending types who fought with other girls to play Cassidy's TV sister Laurie (Susan Dey), but always ended up as Danny (Danny Bonaduce) or Keith.
"Sorry about the Danny part," says Cassidy in commiseration when he hears the story, variations of which he's heard countless times before.
No problem. Revenge is sweet.
Did I mention David Cassidy's on the phone?
Older, hair a little shorter and voice a little deeper these days, the once iconic pop singer and actor doesn't spark the level of hysteria he once did.
But his fans are true-blue, keeping him steadily working in everything from concerts to (2,000) Vegas shows to Broadway, where he's starred in two hits - Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Blood Brothers (with his half brother Shaun Cassidy, whose mother, Shirley Jones, played Cassidy's TV mother, Shirley Partridge).
And he'll bring what he calls "a musical journey of my entire life" to Halifax on Friday and Saturday when he appears at Casino Nova Scotia's Schooner Showroom.
Cassidy's never been to Halifax.
But it seems like he's been just about everywhere else, starting back in the early 1970s, when The Partridge Family television show (about a family of performers who travelled to gigs on a colourful bus) and his own recordings propelled him to fame.
He calls that time of sold-out world tours and worship "magic and madness."
Girls tried to tear his clothes off.
He was the highest-paid solo performer on the planet.
And he set the record for the largest fan club in history (beating even Elvis) thanks to the TV show and hits like I Think I Love You, I Woke Up In Love This Morning, and Cherish.
Not to mention the kind of boyish good looks that kept girls from 10 to their 20s swooning.
"It's very difficult to try and categorize it as anything else other than chaos," he said during a recent interview from New York state, where he lives when he isn't at his Florida home.
"Yet people loving you to a point where they want to have a piece of you for their wall and they can love you so much they want to tear your clothes off or tear you apart and . . . consequently, I lived inside a really small bubble, and security was extremely tight, and I had to have it all the time and for years.
"So, it's not like I didn't appreciate it. I always did and I always felt very grateful for it, but at the same time, it compromised my own ability to just be a normal human being and . . . unless you've lived that experience, you have no idea what that's like."
Cassidy lived that kind of life for five straight years, working 18 hour days filming the show and recording at night, when he wasn't on the road facing the kind of hysteria he doesn't think happens today.
That was a more innocent time, he says, when people weren't exposed to the 24-hour-news cycle or the Internet, when they played at being a loving musical family like the Partridges, when they weren't as sophisticated about the whole fame game.
So seeing their teen idol became an out-of-body experience. And, for the object of their hysteria, that meant an overwhelming and isolating lifestyle.
So Cassidy did something else few can put in their biographies.
He walked away - quit touring entirely and tried to have a personal life.
"It was the last year when I was in television (that) I decided that I couldn't carry on at that pace and I thought that it was the appropriate time for me to try and have a personal life and also that it was enough, you know?
"Had you been there for even an hour or two, you would have understood it and looked at me and gone well, 'I don't know how you're dealing with this madness,' " he adds with a laugh. "So it just . . . seemed like the right time, and for me, I just knew that it was necessary for my own survival."
He's survived quite well, he says, not only with the aforementioned Broadway shows and concerts, but with everything from writing to raising thoroughbred horses to directing and starring in his own Vegas show (The Rat Pack Is Back).
And while the married (sorry, ladies) performer says he's been "very fortunate to have had a lot of success" since the '70s, he knows those Partridge Family and teen idol days are part of the draw. And he embraces it.
"Everybody asks me about it. I understand people's curiosity about it . . . I don't mind talking about it because I'm very proud of the work that I did and the impact that I've had on two generations.
"I'm really comfortable in my own skin and I love the fact that I get to go out and celebrate the music and do it with people . . . it had an impact on and (who) really care about it."
Cassidy still sees some of his co-stars from that era as well - Jones, of course, since she's the mother of his half-brother, and occasionally, Dave Madden (the Partridge Family's manager, Reuben Kincaid).
Less so Bonaduce, whose struggles with drugs and alcohol have been well-documented over the years, including on his recent reality TV show Breaking Bonaduce.
Sadness seems to creep into Cassidy's voice when he's asked how they get along. "I've reached out and tried to help him . . . over the years and you know, I don't really communicate much with him because I don't know that there is any real purpose in doing so . . . I love and care for him. I just can't - you can't help someone who isn't willing to help themselves."
He never saw the reality show, he adds. "I heard it was very upsetting and I don't ever want to think about him in that regard."
And for fans who just want to think of their happy Cassidy days, his casino show should deliver. He says it will feature lots his Partridge Family and solo songs, both of which have been recently updated in his new party mix CD.
Judging from Cassidy's other recent shows, the audience should be a mix of his '70s fans and their children, often well-informed about their parents' teenage idol, who's flattered they still care.
Those parents, he says with a laugh are still "extremely enthusiastic."
"There's still a lot of screaming except their voices have dropped an octave."
'It's very difficult to try and categorize it as anything else other than chaos . . . yet people loving you to a point where they want to have a piece of you for their wall and they can love you so much they want to tear your clothes off or tear you apart . . .'
DAVID CASSIDY
