by Tom Lounges

Though he is 54-years-old, David Cassidy, still has the charisma and boyish charm to drive women as wild as when he starred as Keith Partridge in the hugely popular weekly television series, “The Partridge Family.”

That weekly program about the adventures of a single mother and her musical brood, helped a shaggy-haired, baby-faced Cassidy become the world’s top teen idol. At age 21, Cassidy was proclaimed in the entertainment trade publications as “the world’s highest paid performer.” By 1972, Cassidy’s fan club boasted more members than even those of The Beatles or Elvis Presley.

Though life had not been a bowl of cherries for the performer during the time he was setting attendance records worldwide and gracing the glossy magazine covers (detailed in his 1994 biography: “C’mon Get Happy...Fear And Loathing on The Partridge Family Bus”), Cassidy enjoyed the turbulent ride through pop stardom enough to reprise that period of his life in recent years.

In fact, Cassidy is currently in cahoots with VHI to spearhead a “Partridge Family” revival of sorts for a new generation. More on that later.

“When you have a lot of success in a specific area, you can’t help but want to revisit it from time to time,” he said of revisiting his rock ‘n’ roll past. “I’ve been very fortunate in my life to have had success in different genres and different arenas of the entertainment business, but when the opportunity arose to go rock ‘n’ roll a bit [in 2001], I was ready to do something different.”

Cassidy had just spent six years in Las Vegas and had performed over 2700 shows there. “I was pretty burnt out doing eight to ten shows a week,” he explained. “I was ready to move on. The opportunity was presented to tour to places I’d never been to and return to places like the U.K. and Australia, where I’d not performed in nearly thirty years. I thought, ‘Why not give it a shot and see what happens?’ It’s turned out to be an amazing experience.”

Between his rock ‘n’ roll periods, Cassidy had successfully parlayed his teen idol status into television and film roles, even earning him an Emmy nomination as “Best Dramatic Actor” for the telefilm, “A Chance To Live.”

His biggest career accolades came in live theatre. Many while starring in the original Broadway production of “Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat” ; performing opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in London’s West End production of “Time” ; in his original Las Vegas production “The Rat Pack Is Back!”; and in the touring company of “Blood Brothers,” opposite his younger brother and fellow former teen idol, Shaun Cassidy.

“It’s a celebration for me,” he said of his resurrected rock career. “In my show, I do what I like to do. I play a lot of the songs that influenced me as a teenager. I didn’t start making records until the 1970s and I always wanted to go back to some of those songs that meant so much to me. When I was 13, the Beatles broke in America and the day after I saw them on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’, I went out and bought an electric guitar. Unlike most people who did the same thing, I kept playing.”

One of the biggest thrills of his career came when Cassidy was living in Los Angeles. He answered a knock upon his door, only to find John Lennon on the other side. “It was 1975 and apparently John was a big fan of the show,” he recalled. “We had a mutual friend. We hung out at the house and played early Beatles songs like ‘No Reply’ and ‘Things We Said Today,’ and even ‘Blackbird,’ which Paul [McCartney] had written.”

The two artists remained close friends for the remainder of Lennon’s life. Cassidy has many memories connected to Lennon. One being – “John asked me to come and play on his ‘Rock & Roll’ album, so I went down to the studio and Phil Spector was there dressed up in a [Nazi] S.S. uniform and shot a gun off. I quickly disappeared and never did get to play on the album.”

Cassidy’s current concert songlist includes “Blackbird” and other pop classics, he recorded for his most recent albums, Then And Now and Touch Of Blue. He also includes tunes like “Lyin’ To Myself” “Rock Me Baby” and “How Can I Be Sure,” which he charted as a post-Partridge solo artist.

Naturally, fever pitch pandemonium comes nightly when Cassidy revisits his Partridge Family days with songs like “I Think I Love You,” “I Woke Up In Love This Morning,” “I’ll Meet You Halfway,” and “Looking Through The Eyes Of Love.”

One Partridge chestnut Cassidy refuses to sing is ‘Doesn’t Somebody Want To Be Wanted’, a Top 5 hit in 1971. “Sorry, I NEVER liked that song and I won’t sing it,” he stressed.

Cassidy is having such a good time revisiting his Partridge past, that he is co-executive producing a reality program this September with VH1 called, “In Search Of The Partridge Family.”

Original Partridge mom Shirley Jones, little Partridge brother Danny Bonaduce, and Cassidy will travel across America together as cameras follow them to several auditions, while they seek out the cast for a new “Partridge Family” series pilot, which Cassidy will also co-executive produce with VH1 and Sony Television.

“I’m really excited about this new Partridge project,” he concluded. “‘The ‘Partridge Family’ has proven to be multi-generational, as I can see nightly at my concerts, where audiences from 10 to 60 know and sing all the words of the songs from that show. It’s a cult classic and if done correctly with a cast that has the same kind of special chemistry that we had, there is no reason it could not be a hit all over again today. Shirley, Danny and myself are going to make sure that same kind of chemistry is there.”

See DAVID CASSIDY live in concert at Chicago’s

HOUSE OF BLUES on Thursday, August 5

Back To Top

Web Design By:
Hungry Mind Design