David Cassidy in the News
Partridge Takes Wing
Cassidy Out To Prove He`s No Fly-by-night Singer
September 30, 1990
By Tom Popson.
Chicago Tribune
Several months ago, David Cassidy, teen idol emeritus and the man who played Keith Partridge on `The Partridge Family` TV series, was listening to a radio in Los Angeles when he heard his name mentioned.
Cassidy`s radio was tuned to what he describes as an `outrageous` talk/ music show on station KLOS. It happened to be Cassidy`s birthday, and what he heard, he recalls, was the show`s two hosts` seizing the occasion to send some digs his way.
He remembers hearing the pair say something like: `I wonder what David`s doing now. You can only imagine he`s got a couple of babes on each arm, and he`s probably drinking champagne.`
During his 20-some years in music, television, theater and film, the 40-year-old Cassidy has been on the receiving end of wild adulation, his perky good looks having prompted paroxysms of squeals and sighs from young female Partridge fans in the early `70s.
He also has taken his knocks, having suffered, among other indignities, the barbs of music critics who dismissed his Partridge-era singing efforts as low-merit bubblegum pop.
Cassidy, in short, has pretty much experienced the spectrum of reaction during his career, and it would have been easy enough simply to pass over the latest remarks he had heard on the radio.
Instead, impelled, perhaps, by a trace of impishness, Cassidy placed a phone call to the radio show`s hosts.
Of course, the switchboard didn`t believe it was me, Cassidy recalls, but I finally got through to the producer and got on the show.
Adopting a scraggly, weatherbeaten voice, Cassidy told the show`s hosts:
`Hey, y`know, things ain`t been goin` too well for me, so I ain`t got any chicks on my arms. Actually, I`m livin` out of your garbage can.`
Surprised by Cassidy`s call and his willingness to be a little irreverent about himself, the hosts subsequently invited Cassidy down to their show and asked him to bring along some demo tapes of songs he had been writing. Cassidy recalls spending some four hours on the air.
`The response was incredible,` Cassidy says. `There were people out in the parking lot. Amazing. By the end of the show, I had three separate offers from record companies. Really. While I was sitting there. `Please call Enigma Records.` `Please call . . .two other record companies I won`t name.`
Thus was launched the 1990 return of David Cassidy. Cassidy indeed hooked up with Enigma Records, and a new album, `David Cassidy,` is scheduled to be in stores this week, Cassidy`s first American LP in 12 years.
Besides the album and a video for the first single, `Lyin` to Myself,` there have been other recent signs of a career revving up, including Cassidy blurbs in the pages of People and Rolling Stone magazines and Cassidy himself, who looks about three days older than he did in his Keith Partridge days, serving as a presenter (along with `Partridge Family` costar Susan Dey) at the recent MTV Video Awards.
Coming down the pike, says Cassidy, are two film roles:
In `Spirit of `76,` a satirical look at the `70s that Cassidy reports will also feature Rob Reiner and Moon Zappa, he plays a `futuristic, high-tech grease monkey` who travels via homemade time machine from 2176 to 1976.
In `Instant Karma,` Cassidy is cast, in his words, as `one of the great egocentric would-be television stars.` The comedy portrayal, Cassidy says, `took a little bit of a number of actors I had worked with and put them together to create this monster.`
For the moment, though, Cassidy`s album is the vehicle carrying him once again into the public spotlight.
A collection of mainstream rockers and power ballads, and an odd-song-out cover of Tommy Tucker`s `Hi-Heel Sneakers,` the project drew on the production talents of Phil Ramone and others and contains eight (of a total of 10) songs penned by Cassidy and songwriting partner Sue Shifrin.
Much of the album is the sort of radio-ready material that has been known to cause critics to sniff in disdain, and there is at least a possibility that Cassidy once again may find himself being pummeled in the press.
On the other hand, there also is the possibility that the listening public will do something it has done before: disregard the critical notices and purchase the record in quantity.
The Partridge Family, with Cassidy as lead singer, notched seven Top 40 hits in the early `70s, and Cassidy as a solo act had four Top 40 entries plus two Top 50 albums.
Whatever the reaction to his new album, Cassidy says, he is ready.
`My (music) career has basically been a difficult one inasmuch as I was selling an awful lot of records in the `70s but my own peers were pooh-poohing the stuff.
`I think they resented my image so much. Anybody who carries the albatross of that teen-idol thing-well, people tend to look and say: `There he is again. It`s Fabian.` It`s a very tough thing. Everybody wants to discount your talent because you have become so . . . I don`t know . . . a god, if you will.
It wasn`t until later when people became aware of my writing that I would hear begrudgingly, `You know, you really are a pretty good singer, I guess.`
Now, people can take shots at me. I don`t care. It`s always nice to have people love you, but I`d just like to be judged fairly. If people respond to the songs, whether they love you or hate you, then you`ve really done your job. You`ve evoked something.
While his music profile in the States has been a low one in the last decade or so, Cassidy points to a track, `Prayin` 4 a Miracle', on the latest Asia album that he co-wrote with Shifrin and Asia`s John Wetton and another song that he co-wrote for an upcoming Cher album.
Besides songwriting, Cassidy`s activities in the post-Partridge years have included a title-role turn in the road version of George M. Cohan`s 'Little Johnny Jones,' which played Chicago in 1981.
In 1985 he released an album, 'Romance,' in England and Europe and did some live shows there, and in 1987 he took to the stage again in London`s West End in 'Time,' a rock musical in which Cassidy played a rock star transported in midconcert to the heavens to explain to the gods why they shouldn`t destroy humanity.
Except for a recent Enigma Records showcase in Los Angeles, however, Cassidy has not performed a live pop-music concert in the States for nearly 15 years. But he says he will hit the road to support the new album, although a tour itinerary remains to be set.
I want to do a lot of the old stuff (in concert). The audience, I know, wants to hear it. Once the new album has been out for a while, they`ll hopefully want to hear the new stuff as much as the old. I think `I Think I Love You` has to be included in the show. It`s the thing that`s so synonymous with my early recording career.`
