Amid Scenes of Chaos, David Cassidy Departs
People Magazine
June 17, 1974
Parents of pre-teens, peace: you don't have to lock up your daughters any more. David Cassidy has promised that his just-ended global tour is the last goodbye. The Partridge has flown the coop. The bubblegum has burst. As a crusty 24-year-old, David is just a heartbreak away from the teenage wax museum filled with such previously superannuated idols as Fabian Forte and David Jones of the Monkees. It is time for David Cassidy to rethink his image.
His final round-the-world swing started gratifyingly in New Zealand, and he moved on to Australia, where he was the biggest draw since the Beatles. But then came the trauma. In the state of Victoria, 350 teenagers were treated for minor injuries or hysteria, and Cassidy was declared a "health hazard." He was mobbed in Japan and Hong Kong, and in England, the final stop, there was tragedy. At London's White City Stadium 800 fans had to be carried off, and one 14-year-old, Bernadette Whelan, later died of a heart attack and resulting brain damage after she had been caught in a crush during the concert. Said her forgiving father: "We don't blame David. Bernadette would not have liked us to blame him."
Long before the tour, Cassidy had confronted the fleeting half-life of the sub-teen superstar. He had outgrown his ABC series, The Partridge Family. "It was four years of the same set, same faces, same words," he says. "My God, it was stagnating." The public felt the same way. Consigned to a euthanasia time slot opposite All in the Family, the show finished at last count 64th among the 64 series on the air and has been cancelled. All those David Cassidy lunch boxes, coloring books and frilly dresses are at long last obsolete.
The only child of actor Jack Cassidy and actress Evelyn Ward, David had a typical youth until things began to fall apart after he moved from New Jersey to Hollywood at the age of 10. "I started experimenting with drugs," David recalls. "I didn't know who I was, and I did a lot of screwing around with grass and speed and psychedelics. I had some bad trips in the worst paranoid ways." Eventually he wound up with his own psychiatrist.
Fresh out of high school, David turned actor, winning bit parts on Broadway and on TV series like Marcus Welby, M.D. and Ironside. The glitter and squealing came after he joined The Partridge Family, where he played the lead singer in a family rock band mothered by Shirley Jones, who is David's real-life stepmother. Life imitated art, and a year-and-a-half later David was soloing in the flesh in Madison Square Garden.
"I'm as famous as I want to be," says David-and who wouldn't feel the same with a $1 million yearly income, a portfolio of municipal bonds, six race horses, property in Hawaii and a hacienda-style house in the San Fernando Valley? David even talks about becoming just folks. "Touring has retarded my growth as a human being," he philosophizes. "I'd like to settle down and live with someone."
David is certain about what he does not want. No more concerts until he changes his key from soda-pop ballads to hard rock. TV? "I have absolutely no interest in ever doing a TV series again." Movies? Maybe, but "I don't want to be a Walt Disney character."
What is less certain is whether David can escape the androgynous, elfin image carried in the hearts of countless schoolgirls. "It's ridiculous to compare me today to Keith Partridge," David maintains. "There's a lot more to me than the public has seen and I'm going to make sure they see it. Now I'm free. It's as if a tremendous weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I feel I've finished on top."
