David Cassidy in the News
David They Yelled and Parents Quietly Paid
March 13, 1972
By Angela Taylor
New York Times
They came tripping over their long, peasant skirts worn under bunny-rabbit coats. Their little-girl legs were goosebumpy from the cold, exposed by their hot pants. Blue jeans ended in platform soles—a sign that you were over twelve and shopped for, your own shoes. Even the guards at Madison Square Garden shook their heads and said they'd never seen the like.
Then the lights went out and flashing strobes turned the braces on their teeth to jewels as they joined in a 20,000voice, screech of “David, David!” that shook the rafters of Madison Square Garden on Saturday afternoon with a, din that was a distillation of all Excedrin headaches.
Since most of the fans were too young to ride the subways alone, they were accompanied by long-suffering grownups who had been pestered into shelling out $5.50 to $7.50 for tickets, plus souvenir programs and posters at $2 each and banners reading “I Love You David” at $1 more:
Also a Television Star
Parents covered their ears as screech followed squeal and wondered over the phenomenon that is singer David Cassidy, star of “The Partridge Family” television program. The son of Jack Cassidy, the actor, and stepson of Shirley Jones (she plays his television mother), will be 22 next month, double the age of his average fan.
Sure, the mothers had swooned over Frank Sinatra in the forties and their elder offspring had mobbed Elvis and, later, the Beatles. However, they'd been 14 or more. But a second-grader yelling “I don't care if he's old, He's beautiful. Give hint to me!” is startling even in this age of precocious, television-watching children.
“She has posters of hint all over her room and kisses them every night,” said Mrs. Donald Koenigsberg of her 7-year-old Karen, who blushed to the roots of her blond hair and flashed a gap-toothed grin. Mr. and Mrs. Koenigsberg had also brought Jeffrey, 11; and had spent $30 for tickets, plus $8 more for programs and posters. Their 13-year-old daughter had refused’ to go—“She Says she's too old for such childish nonsense.'!
David Cassidy's press agents protest that the slightly-built, shaggy-haired and green-eyed singer, whose appeal is frequently described, as androgynous, is. not just a teeny-bopper idol. (“The presex crowd,” an older girl describes his fans.) And indeed there, was a goodly scattering of older youngsters among the kid sisters in the crowd. They brought their Instamatics and popped flashbulbs as the star. gyrated in his white suit, laced down the front to show his hairless chest.
But many of the girls who have attained true teen-agedom play it cool. and insist he's strictly for the kids. Possibly the ladies protest too much.
‘For Those Younger Kids’
“just about everybody in my class thinks he's gross. He's for those younger kids who read dopey fan magazines,” said one 13-year-old who attends the. Fleming School here. Nevertheless, she turned up in the $7.50 seats along with 10 of her classmates. “We came just because it was something to do on Saturday.”
“When you're 13 and have had a real date, you don't go in for crushes anymore,” said another girl.
“It's the thing to say you can't stand him,” confided Susanah Barton, a few weeks short of her 13th birthday. “People say that and then you go to their house and they have his picture and his records all over the place.”
A 17-year-old summed up the conflict. Penny Bergman, a student at the:.W.C. Mephain High School in Bellmore, LI., was one of the handful of fans who turned up at Kennedy Airport on Thursday when David Cassidy arrived from Los Angeles. (Because of bomb scares, Authorities canceled the planned, screaming reception, accorded to rock idols.)
A 19-Year-Old on Line
Penny stood on a bench, camera poised. “I ought to have a sign saying ‘Jerk” pinned on me. If the kids at school hear about this! Honestly, I wouldn't tell them I was, corning. He's known as a teen-age idol. I'm too old.”
“I don't care what anybody thinks,” said Jane McDonald, 19, a nursing student. “I stood on line and bought a ticket the firSt day they went on sale.” Miss McDonald kept a reasonable hold on her emotions, but Diane Good and Marci White, both 14 and junior high schoolers in Ozone Park, declared they might faint. They.blushed, wept and squeezed each other's hands at the idea that they might get an autograph.
“Oh, he's not sexy,” Susannah Barton wrapped up David Cassidy. “His allure is too obvious. It looks put on.”
Obvious or not, David Cassidy is not worried about his allure. Dropping his lashes over emerald eyes, he sighs about “these airport scenes,” but admits he likes his fans’ adulation.
“It's fun, if it's done tastefully,” he explained in the limousine riding back from the airport. (The car-borne television set, oddly enough, was tuned to an old Sinatra movie, but the sound was off.) “But it's no fun when they rip your clothes and take rooms next door in hotels and keep pounding on the door and slipping notes under it.” (Although he is usually registered under a fake name, enterprising fans often find him out.)
And what about those teeny-boppers? “Oh, they're cute. They get flustered and I get flustered, and it's all kind of fun.”
And belting out “Everybody, I Love You,” as his young admirers yelled and waved presents of plastic flowers and pillows embroidered with his name, David Cassidy seemed to enjoy flustering them. The concert, sold out three days after tickets went on sale on February 17, was expected to gross $130,000. And there are all those wildly, selling records, coloring books and preteen “David Cassidy” tresses.
The pint-sized nymphets might be scorned by sexier heartthrobs such as Mick Jagger, but their shrill little voiced drive their parents into spending a Id of money. Since mothers see no harm in the lily-white wholesomeness of “The Partridge Family”—in which David Cas sidy plays a 17-year-old—they're willing to indulge their young.
“My mother paid $20 each for our tickets,” said a long-skirted 11-year-olds “She likes him, too.”
