David Cassidy on the Web
Fallen Idol
David Cassidy may no longer be adored by millions of screaming girls but that doesn't mean he has any problem loving himself.
November 28, 2004
news.scotsman.com
Written by Catherine Deveney
Even for the limited time that things are going well with David Cassidy, there is a certain... something... I cannot put my finger on. Is it that his manner is just a little too slick, those eyes that so many schoolgirls wept over in the 1970s just a little stoney? Is it because he says he was as big as Elvis, or "any of those guys who had ever been"? Or perhaps it is right at the start that the amber light starts flashing, when I ask about the current filming of The Partridge Family, the American series that catapulted him to fame. After years of vowing no re-makes, why is he now co-producing one? Well, he says, he knew he could either get involved, or "walk away and watch them screw it up". A little confidence is a good thing; a lot is rather trickier. Cassidy says his actor father was "a very narcissistic man". And his mother? "Narcissistic." I don't think it skipped a generation.
He is having tea with another interviewer when I arrive. I hear his voice before I notice him: if a voice could stride forth, Cassidy's would. The interviewer is saying little, which is smart of her. When the interview finishes, Cassidy, a surprisingly petite figure, walks by me then suddenly turns back. "Oh, hell...ooo," he says, "I just noticed your tape recorder." This is Cassidy in charm mode. Would I mind if he just took a break before we begin? Not at all. And I really don't, as long as I get my promised time. This is his third interview today and he has taken so many breaks that everything is running late. But I suspect that David takes women waiting for him as his due. It's our privilege.
At its height, Cassidy's fan club was the biggest ever in the history of the world. Bigger than the Beatles'. Bigger than Elvis's. But biggest fan club doesn't equal greatest musician. Cassidy's fan base was teenage girls, a group rather more likely to join a club. Why was he so popular? Because he was gorgeous to look at. Thousands of fans jammed airports and screamed for him. Fainted for him. No hotel in London would accept him as a guest, and when he stayed in a boat, fans threw themselves into the Thames trying to reach him. But excuse me; his voice was hardly Presley's.
Unlike some teen idols, though, Cassidy has lasted in America. He has proved himself to be a versatile entertainer, winning an Emmy nomination for his performance in an episode of the television drama Police Story, and being a hugely successful actor, writer and producer of multi-million-pound stage musicals throughout the 1990s, particularly in Las Vegas. "When you were at the height of your fame..." I begin, and he interrupts: "I'm at the height of my fame now." His eyes fix me. "I really am. It really is true. More people know me now, more people know my work. I don't have the kind of passionate fans in the millions that I had in the 1970s, but I have more fans of my work now." Right.
In the interests of fairness, I should point out that Cassidy does self-deprecation too. Just not that well. "I don't believe my own press. I have always known I am just a guy," he says. But then he rather spoils it by saying, "Am I a special human being? Well, maybe you can look at that objectively, but I can't." Looking objectively, we surmise, would prove that he is indeed special. But modesty forbids. "I am just a man who tries to do the best I can. I know who I am," he says. And, after meeting him, I have a fair idea too.
If you are looking for what inspired Cassidy most in his early life and career, it would be, by his own admission, the troubled relationship he had with his father. Cassidy's father was the renowned New York actor Jack Cassidy, and the boy wanted to succeed because he wanted his dad's approval. "He was the most respected theatrical actor probably in New York. A brilliant man, creatively, artistically... brilliant." His mother, Evelyn Ward, was an actress too, but his parents split up when he was three. He was an only child, but his father went on to marry another actress, Shirley Jones, with whom Cassidy starred in The Partridge Family, and as a result he had three stepbrothers. All four boys had a difficult relationship with their father. "He didn't leave them until they were much older," says Cassidy. "He left me at three and a half. 'See ya!'"
Interesting that instead of saying his father left his mother, he says his father left him. "Well, children are not able to intellectually comprehend what happened, so they think there must be something wrong with me. They think, 'I must not be good enough.' Particularly with a man like him, who was so powerful as a person and so dynamic as an individual."
Cassidy didn't even know, at first, that his parents had split up. "They lied to me for the first year and a half. They never told me they were divorced. They just said, 'Dad's out on the road again; Dad's doing a show.' It's tough when you get lied to as a kid. Who can I trust?"
His mother had to work, so he was brought up largely by his grandparents. His mother, though, became proud to claim she was David Cassidy's mother. "She wore that on her sleeve. I think in a way she lived vicariously through my success and fame." She's 81 now. Does he see her? "I talk to her and see her, yeah," he says. "My son sees her more than I do. I don't see a whole lot of people. I'm on the road a lot."
He missed a father figure in his life, until his mother remarried when he was 12. He had a positive relationship with his stepfather, although the longing for his real father never abated. But Jack Cassidy was a difficult man: alcoholic and manic depressive. "I very much felt rejected by him. I felt unloved. I always wanted him to love me, and I wanted him to be proud of me."
Any pride his father felt was tempered by more negative emotions. "He had such internal conflict about it, because he was jealous. In his mind he was much bigger than I am, much more famous. Everyone loves him; everyone wants to talk to him. These were his words: 'I used to be Mr Shirley Jones. Now I am David Cassidy's father.' He was an extremely narcissistic man, narcissistic at the highest level." Cruel? "Yes, he could be very cruel. He had that fabulous Irish humour... when he wanted to turn the knife, baby, he was brutal and brilliant... and very cruel. And because he was bipolar, you never knew who you were going to get."
And is Cassidy like his father at all? "In a lot of ways. Not bipolar, not manic depressive, not alcoholic. Other than that, there's a lot that I inherited." This, I think, means he inherited his father's brilliance and not his flaws. "I am not damaged like he was," continues Cassidy. "He was a tortured man. I have never been tortured."
Did he ever find out why his father was tortured? "His father worked on the railroad and was an alcoholic. He told me he remembered his mother only once giving him a kiss. He was changing a light bulb and she gave him a peck on the cheek, and he was in shock." He must have been quite old if he was changing a light bulb. "Probably ten or 11. He left when he was 15."
Cassidy says he has always felt like a kid, but his father was very grown-up. "My father was terribly sophisticated. Darling," he says, slipping momentarily into theatrical tones, "he was the most theatrical man." His American twang resumes. "He had all of that goin' on. His idol was John Barrymore. Interestingly, Barrymore was an alcoholic and a very theatrical actor."
His father was, at once, the most loving and the most mean man in the world. He died alone in a house fire at just 49. Was there a legacy from their unfulfilled relationship? "There was. There isn't now. That's what many years of analysis will do for you." Three times a week for three years, twice a week for two years, then once a week subsequently. "You have to be able to look at someone, in this case my father, as an individual. Not being his son but looking at him and understanding his journey and his pain."
It was, he says, a difficult process. "It's kind of as if you have a wound and it's really sore. Now, it's not that the wound isn't there; it's just not sore any more. I understand so much more that it wasn't my fault. It... wasn't... my... fault," he repeats, enunciating clearly. "I forgive him, knowing he was bipolar, manic depressive, alcoholic. His behaviour - he couldn't help himself."
Cassidy says he knew John Lennon well and that Lennon had practised "this primal screaming thing". "I never quite got there," he laughs, "but there was this one exercise where I wept it all out, and it was gone forever. It was a journey, an hour, that I have never taken the likes of before or since, but it was like I was so cleansed. There was no bitterness, anger or resentment. I was sorry for him and there wasn't a longing for him. I don't need his approval. I need my own."
His ambition was never to be famous. It was to be a respected actor, like his father. And he claims he was becoming so before The Partridge Family catapulted him into records and pop stardom. "I was successful before I did The Partridge Family, and if it had not sold I would have continued to work in television and film. I was becoming a young, respected actor. I made my living at 18 and 19 as an actor. I never worked as a waiter. I worked on Broadway as my first job."
Nonetheless, music had always played a big part in his life. The whole Cassidy family was musical. His parents were singers, his grandmother played the piano and sang opera, his aunts and uncles played every combination of piano, violin and accordion. Cassidy, too, caught the music bug. "When The Beatles broke, I was 13 and I saw them on The Ed Sullivan Show. The next day I went out and bought a guitar, like two million other kids. But unlike the other two million, I kept going. I didn't give up."
And what did he make of all the adulation, the frenzy he created among his fans? "I really am just a guy. I always found it funny. I never believed." Know what? Neither do I.
He gave up pop at the height of his success. There was no sadness? Yes, there was, he admits. "I was very lost, personally. I didn't have a life. I was still emotionally 19, but I was 24. The guy in there was lost. You can either find a way to live happily or you can be Elvis. You can be Michael Jackson or you can be David Cassidy. I was as big as any of those guys that had ever been, and I was unhappy. I was a human being who wanted to live."
He married three times. If thousands of women faint at your feet, it must be hard to have a relationship with just one who wants you to do the dishes and pick up your socks. Were the marriages part of the process of trying to find normality? "Yes, definitely. The first two were definitely rehearsals. It took me a while. Listen to 'Here Comes the Sun' by George Harrison - 'I feel the ice slowly melting.' They lived a life like I did. You couldn't go anywhere. People didn't see you for what you were, but what they had read, dreamt, listened to. You weren't a real human being; you were a thing. It was pointless trying to have a conversation to say, 'Actually, I am not like that.'"
If you were, as Cassidy was, adored for your looks, it must be even more difficult to accept ageing. He's 54 now. "It's difficult because people talk to me about it all the time and ask me about it every day. 'Oh, I had your poster!' 'I loved you!' Past tense. 'Now I love your work, but then I had a crush on you. I used to kiss you goodnight. And your hair was so...' Anyone of 50 who gets compared to the way they were when they were 20, it's an unfair comparison. I don't long to be 20, but it's [hard] being constantly reminded about when you were there. I'm much better at what I do now."
Really? In preparation for the interview, I am sent the DVD of David Cassidy live at the Hammersmith Apollo, which was recorded during last year's UK tour and which he is currently promoting. He does a version of one of his most famous hits, 'I Think I Love You'. Originally it was an up-tempo number, but this is a slow version, "the version I always wanted to do for fans". He calls it "soulful", which I think means he closes his eyes to sing it. It is excruciatingly self-indulgent. I'm doing the ironing as I watch, so maybe that is why the supposed sensuality of it is passing me by. You know how it is. You find a really interesting bit of collar to iron, and you just get distracted.
During the interview, some guy who is with Cassidy sits at a table behind and eyeballs me with all the venom of a starved viper. I don't know why. In the planning stage, I turned down a half-hour interview with Cassidy, saying that it wasn't worth flying to London for half an hour. Then the schedule is re-jigged. We can have an hour. But after just over 30 minutes, a PR comes over to the hissing one at the table behind, and the two of them lurk at Cassidy's shoulder. This is his signal. I have paced it for an hour and have half my questions still to run. But Cassidy says he is tired and must go and lie down.
I am always fascinated by people with an ego big enough to think half an hour of their time is worth someone flying 600 miles. I was promised an hour, I point out, as politely as possible. Cassidy slips back into charm mode. Here's what he will do. He will phone me tomorrow and spend another 20 minutes talking to me. He won't just say he will do it. He will do it. And he'll be happy to. I have been so understanding. Sincerity drips from him like juice from a squeezed orange. I actually almost believe him. Strange, though. We are in a five-star hotel where a coffee and a pastry costs £9, yet I can't get the image of Formica tables out of my head. Wipe-clean plastic.
There is one question I really want to ask Cassidy when he phones. He is married to songwriter Sue Shifrin Cassidy, who runs an on-line umbrella organisation for children's charities, called Kidscharities.org. They have a ten-year-old son, Beau. Cassidy will do a week of concerts in Britain next June, but says he will never do another full-scale tour because of Beau and family commitments. Beau is ten. Cassidy mentions him often in interviews as the reason for not wanting to overwork. "I learned how to be a good father by doing everything my father didn't do," he tells me.
But he also has a teenage daughter from a previous marriage. I have heard him mention his son several times in interviews, but not his daughter. As he found out as a child, it's hard to have a relationship with a parent if the parent doesn't live with you. So I want to ask how he ensures he doesn't become an absent father to his daughter, the way his father was to him.
It will surprise you, I'm sure, but my phone does not ring. I call his PR. David will phone in an hour, when he comes out of a radio station. He doesn't. I phone again later. Voicemail. I phone again the day after. What happened to "I won't just say I will do it; I will do it"? His PR is very nice, and terribly sorry. David was very aware of having promised, but he just couldn't speak another word after all the interviews he had to do. What, he lost his voice? No, just his energy. The lamb.
He flew home to America after that, so only 35 minutes after all. But sometimes it doesn't really take that long to get someone's measure. I didn't get to ask all my questions, but I think we got to know rather a lot about him anyway.
David Cassidy's Greatest Hits Live is out now on DVD and VHS
