David Cassidy in the News
Along that golden beach
By Mark Wyckoff
April 10, 2003
Inside Ventura County
David Cassidy turned his back on Vegas last year and settled on the sandy shores of South Florida. Friday night his world tour brings him back to the Left Coast for a gig at The Canyon in Agoura Hills.
Las Vegas has it all, right? Pyramids, castles, beaches, the New York City skyline, Venetian canals ... even the Eiffel Tower.
But what happens when the thrill of living in such a garish desert mirage starts to wear thin? What happens when Sin City's world-beyond-reality mystique suddenly seems hollow and you begin craving a soul-settling dose of reality?
If you're entertainer David Cassidy, you put your $4 million European-style mansion on the market, talk your wife and sixth-grade son into making another big move and follow your heart to the balmy shores of South Florida. Fort Lauderdale, to be exact. And when you get there, it all feels right. It all feels real -- especially that beach right outside your door. It's not Vegas real, baby, it's Atlantic Ocean real.
"It's paradise," said Cassidy, who turns 53 the day after his gig Friday at The Canyon in Agoura Hills. "My wife and I were just talking about it this morning when we were walking on the beach. She said, 'You know, I don't think I want to leave this place.' "
Who could blame her? In the past decade, Cassidy and his wife, songwriter Sue Shifrin, have bought, remodeled and then sold almost 10 homes, zig-zagging coast-to-coast as Cassidy's career caught fire again after an '80s lull that left him broke and wondering if he'd ever break out of the shadow of "The Partridge Family," the 1970-74 ABC-TV sitcom that transformed him into an international singing superstar.
His travel odyssey, and the accompanying career renaissance that ultimately landed him in Vegas, began in 1993 when British theater impresario Bill Kenwright handpicked him to star in the Broadway company of "Blood Brothers." Suddenly, it was so long Sherman Oaks, hello Manhattan.
In the ensuing years, the couple settled back in the San Fernando Valley briefly, moved to Ridgefield, Conn., then pulled up stakes again when Cassidy was tapped to headline the high-tech Vegas production show "EFX" at the MGM Grand hotel in Vegas.
In the five years he worked in Vegas, he not only starred in "EFX" but created and produced the musicals "The Rat Pack is Back!" and "At the Copa," executive-produced the short-lived Fox sitcom "Ask Harriet" and released the album "Old Trick, New Dog," which featured the Top 25 Billboard hit "No Bridge I Wouldn't Cross." In December 2000, Las Vegas Life magazine declared him "The New Mr. Vegas." Cassidy was back with a vengeance, as VH1, Bravo, the BBC, E! and A&E all chronicled in separate TV documentaries.
But the torrid pace -- welcome though it was after so many years fighting to get quality work -- finally drained him.
"It's funny how your life flourishes," he said. "But I was working seven days a week, all day and all night. There was no life; it was all about work."
He finally decided to scale things back, closing "Copa" after a year in early 2001 and refocusing his energies on touring and recording. By the end of the year, he had recorded and released "Then and Now" in England.
The CD, which featured Cassidy faithfully revisiting such past hits as "C'mon Get Happy" and "Rock Me Baby," as well as putting his own soulful spin on a handful of classic covers, shot to No. 5 on the British album charts and stayed in the Top 75 for 15 weeks and went platinum. Seven months later, the CD charted in America, extending Cassidy's span of Billboard chart hits to 32 years.
Cassidy has been touring behind the record ever since, which is what brings him to The Canyon on Friday.
The show will be the singer's first in the Ventura County area since a 1991 gig at the Ventura Theatre. Over the years, he's spent a lot of time in the area, twice making his home in Santa Barbara (with first wife Kay Lenz in 1977, then with second wife Meryl Tanz in a rambling, one-story Kentucky-style farmhouse in 1985).
"It's one of the great sights when you drop into the valley, coming over the San Marcos Pass," he said in '85. "It's definitely a magical place."
Cassidy live
Cassidy's current live set fuses his love for classic R&B (think Bill Withers), British Invasion rock (think Beatles) and his own brand of buoyant '70s pop (yes, he'll do the 1970 No. 1 hit "I Think I Love You"). Mixed in are Cassidy's most recent chart hits, including "Lyin' to Myself" (No. 27 in 1990) and "No Bridge," plus '70s-era solo hits like "Cherish," "Could It Be Forever" and "How Can I Be Sure." As an encore, he's been doing Bob Seger's "Hollywood Nights," a tune the New York-born Cassidy says perfectly captures the essence of the years he spent growing up as a teenager in sunny SoCal. "I relate to every picture in that story," he said.
Junked heart blues
He may record "Hollywood Nights" for his next Universal studio album, which goes into pre-production next week, but he's unsure if the rock tune will fit in with the midnight mood he has in mind for the CD.
"We're going to work with strings and a full orchestra on some of it," said Cassidy, who plans to record the disc in New York, Los Angeles and Florida. "I haven't got all of it mapped out yet, but I want it to be smoky, bluesy. Kind of soulful, R&B pop. But organic. I'm recording it all live. I'm going to cut a couple of great songs I've always wanted to record. One of them is Lenny Welch's 'Since I Fell For You' (a No. 4 hit in 1963). Love that song."
He's also hoping to finally cut a mid-'90s tune he wrote in Ridgefield called "New York City Life."
"Sue thinks it's the best song I've written in the last ... I don't know ... maybe ever," he said almost cautiously. "I hate to make statements like, 'It's the best,' but it's one of the better things I've written. It's about my life and my past and my present and, ummm, my potential future."
He's also hoping to include a slow, achingly beautiful version of "I Think I Love You" that he recorded with legendary studio guitarist Louie Shelton and pianist/arranger Mike Melvoin for the 2000 NBC-TV bio-pic "The David Cassidy Story" (Andrew Kavovit played Cassidy, and Ojai actor Malcolm McDowell played Cassidy's dad, Jack Cassidy).
"We were just sitting around -- these were the guys that played on the original Partridge Family records -- and I just said, 'Hey Louie, let's try this.' Three minutes later we were done and Mike added a little special stuff. It's really amazing. But I don't want to add anything to it. I want it to be me, Louie and Mike. It sounds like a demo, it's so raw."
Cassidy is a little wary how Universal execs will react to his desire to create such a moody album.
"I don't know if my record company is of the same mind," he said. "So therein lies the rub. If you want to make records today, you have to follow a specific directive. There is a specific audience they feel they want to reach and they feel in doing market research they want X. And I'm I'm happy to do X as long as I can do some Y and some Z, you know?"
He'll spend the rest of the year recording and touring, plus assisting General Mills with its $40 million ad campaign for its new Berry Burst Cheerios brand (the cereal giant is using Cassidy's new "Then and Now" version of "I Think I Love You" in its TV commercials). He'll also direct "Rat Pack" when it plays Connecticut's Mohegan Sun casino in June and December.
On April 26, he guest stars on "The Agency," the CIA drama his half-brother Shaun Cassidy executive produces for CBS. In the episode, titled "War, Inc.," he plays Everett Price, an investment banking CEO who is bankrolling the murder of Saudi royal family members.
'Luv' in Bloom
If Deborah Warner has her way, Cassidy's "Agency" gig won't be his only appearance in front of the cameras this year. The 42-year-old African-American screenwriter wants him to star in "I'll Luv U 4-Ever," a film she's penned that's based on a fan letter she sent Cassidy in 1974.
"This fan letter was sort of a contract," said Warner, whose first film, a vampire thriller called "Demon Under Glass," is awaiting distribution. "I promised him that if he ever needed me, I would take care of him. I saw one of those retrospectives on him that VH1 did and I got to thinking, 'God, what if he had taken me up on that offer now?' I just ran with it from there."
In the film, Cassidy would play Billy Swain, a '70s-era British superstar musician who gets booted out of his mansion by the IRS. All he has left is his car and a bag of fan mail.
"He finds the letter, then he finds the girl, who's now converting her mother's house into a den," Warner said. "She's a 40-something divorcee whose daughter is about to run away from Juilliard with a musician. Swain, of course, expects her to live up to the contract. So the movie's about how his problems impact the lives of this broken family."
Several backers are interested in funding the indie movie, which would be filmed in Asbury Park, N.J. Cassidy, who's watched one too many promising projects fall apart at the eleventh hour, is cautiously optimistic. "The answer is yes, I would love to do it," he said. "I was very flattered they called me and asked me. And I may also assist them with some of the music in the film. But, you know, I'm a little bit superstitious talking about this. We'll see."
One true love
Cassidy's passion outside of show business is horses. From the age of 3 on, he remembers having pictures of horses on the wall of his bedroom in West Orange, N.J. He built horse models, read horse books ("Black Beauty" was his favorite) and watched horse movies. "The Home Stretch," a 1947 film with Cornel Wilde and Maureen O'Hara, hooked him hard.
"It was a corny, boring film, but I fell in love with it," he has said. "When I was 5 or 6, we used to drive about a half hour out of New York so I could ride a pony. Since then, I've always had that passion."
A crew member on "The Partridge Family" introduced him to the world of horse breeding in the early '70s and Cassidy hasn't looked back.
"It's such a feeling to know that you've pulled it out of his mother's stomach," Cassidy said in 1985. "You've seen them through sickness and coughs as a baby and then all the scratches, cuts and illness of them being a youngster. It's like bringing up a child."
Cassidy currently owns about 30 horses, most of them based in New York with trainer Gary Contessa. They race the entire New York circuit, including Aqueduct, Belmont and Saratoga. He also has horses training in Florida and Canada.
"He's a real horseman," Contessa said of Cassidy. "He's not like your average owner who doesn't know anything and totally relies on his trainer. David can pick a crossbreed. He can pick the right sire for the right mare. He can go to a 2-year-old sale and pick a good-looking 2-year-old that I agree with. David is a very, very astute horseman when it comes to race horses."
The first horse Cassidy entrusted to Contessa, Stunning Success, was anything but.
"He never made it to the races," Contessa said of the horse. "He fractured his ankle early on. And, of course, this is my first experience with training a horse for David Cassidy and I'm like, 'Oh my God, the horse gets hurt.' But that's the game. It happens. And instead of David saying, 'Get rid of Gary Contessa, he broke my horse down,' he said, 'Hey, that happens. Here's another one, let's go get it done.' I think that's what stamps him as a consummate owner."
Cassidy, though, brings a little more star power to the track than most owners. And that has proved a little unnerving for Contessa.
"When you train for David, you never know what to expect," Contessa said. "One day, David calls me up and says, 'Hey Gary, I'm coming down to the barn at a quarter to 9. I'll see you there.' And I'm like, 'OK, great.' So at a quarter to 9 I'm mucking the stalls and kneeling in horse poop and David shows up and he's got eight cameras and an ESPN team and they're going to do a spotlight on him and I'm supposed to be in it. I was like, 'God, couldn't you tell me there's movie people coming? I would have taken a change of clothes.' "
Contessa said Cassidy's passion for horses is shared by his son, Beau.
"When Beau comes to the barn, I make him rake up, clean horse poop ... I make him do the nastiest of jobs. Beau never says no. He's an incredible kid. You talk about David being a horseman? Beau is a horseman in training. When he comes to the barn, you have to drag him away from there."
Cassidy's most promising horse at the moment is Unswept, which he bought for $117,000 at the 2001 Fasig-Tipton Preferred Yearlings Sale in Saratoga.
"David really found this one on his own," Contessa said. "I was shocked as anyone when David bought him. I knew he was interested in him, but I didn't think he was interested in him $117,000 worth. That said, he is by far David's best horse right now. He's a young colt, only 3 years old. He's already stakes-placed and he's one of the fastest 3-year-olds in the country. He won his first time out at Saratoga, then he won his third start and his fourth. This horse has a bright future."
Labor of love
Cassidy would agree that his own future looks just as bright.
"I don't think I've ever been in this position, where I could pretty much pick and choose what I do and what I don't want to do," he said. "I really enjoy the work. I enjoy the process of developing ideas, creating shows. I'm kind of a throwback, I think, to the days of 'The Entertainer.' I am a producer-writer-songwriter-director-music publisher-actor-writer-horse breeder-horse lover-parent-husband."
Mr. Vegas, it seems, has transformed himself into Mr. Hyphenate.
C'mon get happy, indeed.
The Downunder David Cassidy Fansite thanks Mark Wyckoff for the privilege of putting up this article.
