David Cassidy on the Web
Once In A Lifetime
November 12, 2012
By Paul Taylor
www.citylife.co.uk
SWEET SIXTY SOMETHING: Former teen idol David Cassidy If you remember the Sixties, the saying goes, you weren't there. But if you remember the Seventies, you can scarcely be allowed to forget.
Contrary to its name, the Seventies pop nostalgia package show, Once In A Lifetime, keeps returning, regular as clockwork. Leo Sayer bid farewell with a cheery "See you next year".
So durable is the fame minted in the 1970s that David Cassidy – he of the feather-cut hair and beatific smile, back in the day – can still turn women of a certain age all gooey even at the grand old age of 62.
"It's better than Fifty Shades Of Grey", said one enraptured fan, though she didn't much care for the 'jeggings' that gave Cassidy's lower half an unfortunate look of music hall comedian Max Wall.
Cassidy knows he must keep kindling the fires of his Seventies fame. So he injected a long sighing hesitation into Daydreamer, still acting the lovestruck teenager. And he kept deploying those saccharine smiles which once beamed down from millions of teenage girls' bedroom walls.
But he clearly hankers to be known as more than just the teen scream of nigh-on 40 years ago. Which must be why he came on playing Hush – a song most famously covered by hard-rockers Deep Purple – and attempted some agonised lead guitar riffs. David Cassidy: axe hero? Surely not.
He recalled Belle Vue in Manchester as the place he did his first gig in England, in 1973. And he paid tribute to a local hero and friend of his, the late Davy Jones, of The Monkees, singing a rousing Daydream Believer.
Cassidy messed up the words to one of his most famous songs, How Can I Be Sure, and had to take another run at it. All was forgiven, though, as I Think I Love You sparked an eruption of dancing.
Earlier, fun-sized Sayer, aged 64, had rattled enthusiastically through the likes of The Show Must Go On, One Man Band, When I Need You and Thunder In My Heart, proving to us that if the audience is sufficiently stricken in years, that Sayer songbook is as firmly a part of their metabolism as immunity to measles.
Hot Chocolate and Smokie made up this nostalgia-fest – missing several of the members who made their hits in the Seventies, but proving that, ultimately, the songs are the stars.
