Empire Pool, Wembley, London
By Ray Fox-Cumming
Disc and Music Echo Magazine
24 March 1973
Nice one David!
"BY THE TIME we get to Wembley it'll be GREAT," David Cassidy promised reporters after his first European warm-up gig. At around nine o'clock on Friday, the moment of truth had arrived.
The show certainly did not intend to rely on extraneous effects. The stage was bare at the front, the band being kept well back, and the backdrops were plain black. The lighting was also totally devoid of all gimmicks. Everything was down to Cassidy himself.
David Hamilton, all bounce and dash in a blue denim ensemble, had the job of introducing the star. He did it well. "Give me a 'D'," he shouted, "give me an 'A', give me a 'V, give me an 'I', give me a 'D'." The response was deafening. "Give me a 'C, give me an 'A'..." all good stuff this and by the time he got to "give me the 'Y'," the excitement was well nigh of knicker-wetting proportions.
And then there he was, the little guy that all the fuss was about, bounding up to the front of the stage, encased in a black spangled skin tight outfit, set off with the obligatory motifs on the trousers — one of them strategically placed bottom right. It's a fairly ample bottom these days, by the way.
Well was the show great? Early on, no — just a lot of posturing with little magnetism, but David feeds off audience reaction and the more he got, the more he gave. Little by little he seemed to grow towards living up to everything that those girls expected. Taken as a whole it was certainly very good.
Of course, with all that screaming, this kind of concert has little to do with music; it's hard enough to know what's being sung, let alone whether or not it's being well done. One's left pretty well to review the visuals, and it is as a visual performer that Cassidy stands or falls.
People have said that his movements have been copied from all over — and Jagger's name crops up as a comparison with monotonous regularity, but I think the girl who said "he's like a male Ann-Margret" was much nearer the mark.
There's no display of male arrogance anywhere in his act; it's an all-out flirtation from start to finish — the sort of flirtation that knows it's going to succeed. Cassidy's act owes a little to Nureyev, quite a bit to Marilyn Monroe and even more toa camp waiter in a gay club. It's swishy, sinewy, whorish and faggy. He comes on like a classy call-girl or popular daily pin-up, left hand stretched out way behind him, bottom thrust backwards, chest arched forward, trousers creased tight at the crutch and spare right arm caressing his thigh.
Sometimes when the music stops as he strikes one of his most provocative poses, he comes dangerously near to outright camping it up, but never quite — after all the guy's an actor and knows the limits. He's not infallible though, by any means. At the start of 'Looking Through The Eyes Of Love' he sings "In the eyes of the world I'm a loser just wasting my time" and looks like he owns the world as he edges his way carelessly across the stage smiling all the way. It's just too incongruous, a touch of the little-boy-lost would have made more sense of the song without losing a single scream.
'How Can I Be Sure' works only slightly better. The question as David puts it is no nailbiter, it's simply a coquettish plea for a reassurance that he knows he doesn't need... but they give it to him, thousands of them, screaming their little hearts out.
He was determined to have a go at everything, playing, in turn, guitar, piano and drums. His guitar solo was pointless — he could have played the most beautiful run ever or half a dozen bum notes in a row and no-one would have noticed the difference. The piano sounded OK and he's quite a nifty drummer in a light-handed way, but I've a sneaking feeling that all this was just a sop for the critics. From the fans' point of view, he might just as well not have bothered. Upfront is where they want him.
Upfront is where he was for 'I Am A Clown', to which he brought skill as an actor, sitting on the edge of the stage, bathed in dim red light, shoulders hunched and arms jerking about like a puppet. That did make sense.
'I'm A Man' was a good one too. He has a powerful voice when he lets rip — and if he was pacing himself for his three shows the following day, there was no sign of it. The song ended with five calculated but effective leaps (back to the audience), which was a nice showbizzy touch, but perhaps the best moment of all was as he sidled across the stage singing 'Cherish', pointing in turn to different sections of the audience as he sang "I cherish YOU" while each time five hundred girls would squeal with ecstacy as they imagined that he'd singled them out specially.
After many of the songs the lights blacked out long enough to prompt the fans to break into their "we want David" chant, so after a while almost every number seemed like an encore.
After nearly an hour, the end came with 'Rock Me Baby', which sounded much more effective than on record and when he stuck his guitar out in front of him suggesting some inconceivable extension of a certain part of his anatomy, the boppers went wild. Not one for too much subtlety is David. Then there he was — gone, without so much as a "good night." The lights went up, David Hamilton said that David was not coming back, there was a loud wail and then everyone trooped out in an orderly fashion.
Outside the souvenir boys were plying their trade. "Posters ten pence. Two bob for Cassidy." No one took a blind bit of notice. Who was going to pay out for a cardboard picture when they'd just seen their man in the flesh?
