David Cassidy on the Web
Cassidy's 'Copa'
September 17, 2000
www.suntimes.com
By Miriam Nunzio
LAS VEGAS David Cassidy once boasted the largest fan club in the world. No small feat, considering his contemporaries included Elvis Presley and the Beatles.
Cassidy, unlike those other musical legends, had one huge advantage: He came into our living rooms every week on the hit TV series "The Partridge Family," where he starred as Keith Partridge, teen idol.
But his real love was music, and not just any music. Though he sold more than 25 million records and earned several Grammy Award nominations for his pop hits, Cassidy says he lives to sing the standards. And his new Las Vegas musical revue, "At the Copa," which opened in February, affords him the chance to do just that six nights a week at the Rio All-Suite Casino Resort.
The production, which co-stars former pop queen Sheena Easton, tells the tale of a waiter in a 1940s nightclub who gets his big chance at stardom while falling in love with the club's torchy songstress. All of it is set to wonderful standards such as "That Old Black Magic," "Try a Little Tenderness" and Cassidy's personal favorite, "Mack the Knife."
"I was a huge Bobby Darin fan," Cassidy says enthusiastically. "I used to do `Lazy River' in my concerts, because it was one of my favorite Darin arrangements. He was an unsung genius."
Not exactly the musicspeak one might expect to hear from the pop singer who charted megahits such as "I Think I Love You," "I Woke Up in Love This Morning" and "Cherish." Or from the actor who found fame in musical theater while starring in productions of "Blood Brothers" (which co-starred real-life brother, Shaun) and "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."
"With `Copa,' I wanted to do a hybrid between a Broadway musical and a concert performance of David Cassidy, " the 51-year-old entertainer explains. "But I wanted it to be a throwback to the nightclub era, and the one club that everyone always thinks of is the Copa. It's one of those places that's almost a myth now, a magical place and time that doesn't exist anymore. I wanted to pay homage to that great music, all the great stuff I grew up with."
Cassidy says the music he loved growing up was never reflected in his work on "The Partridge Family."
"I wanted to be a little more me, a little more soulful, a little more edgy and ambitious," he begins. "The stuff that really moved me were things that were organic and pretty raw. I saw (Jimi) Hendrix five times. I saw Marvin Gaye three times. I was a huge fan of R&B, B. B. King, (Eric) Clapton, Cream. All that stuff that my friends and I used to go and see in clubs on the Strip.
"You could turn on the radio back then and hear-on one station- Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, the Beatles, Elvis, the Yardbirds, the Temptations. And that's the music that drove me.
"But on the TV show, they wanted me to sound more, shall I say, straight-arrow? They would slow the track down before I would get in, so that I would sing it slightly down, and then they'd speed it up to its regular speed, which made me sound a little higher vocally, and a little younger. I really had a bigger voice than they ever really expected. It worked for the songs we were doing, but then the songs we did never really had much vocal range in terms of style."
Cassidy says "At the Copa" expresses the musical style that reflects his lifestyle these days, a life alonsgide his wife Sue Shifrin-Cassidy and their two sons. In addition to "At the Copa," Cassidy also co-wrote and produced "The Rat Pack Is Back," a tribute to Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., performed nightly across town at the Sahara.
"I live in that skinny tie and lapel kind of world," Cassidy says with a chuckle, "and that whole scene is suddenly cool again. I wanted to pay homage to people who were fabulous entertainers amid all this fabulous music and hysterical comedy."
Cassidy is no stranger to the Strip, having performed here for 2 1/ 2 years in "EFX" at the MGM Grand, a show that earned him "The All Around Performer" and "Entertainer of the Year" honors from local newspapers. He has a keen sense of what the Las Vegas entertainment landscape embraces.
"When they come to town, people want to see things they can't see anyplace else," Cassidy says. "It becomes part of the whole experience for them, in addition to any gambling they may do. It's all here in the same four-mile radius-the most high-end shopping in the world, the most fabulous restaurants and the most exciting entertainment."
Specifically
"At the Copa," at the Rio All-Suite Casino Resort. Tickets: $58; 8 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday; 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Tuesday and Saturday. Call (888) 746-7784.
