Chapter 20: The Partridge
Family
Of all the television
shows that aired during the 1970s, the one that most represents
the Lost decade is The Partridge Family. Who would
have believed that a program about a mother who drives a multi-colored
bus with her rock'n'roll singing family would become a hit and
create a slew of Top 40 records and platinum albums? Many young
adults of today might remember bringing a Partridge Family lunch
box to school at the start of the seventies. MTV would revolutionize
the way records were marketed and sold to start the eighties,
but The Partridge Family proved much earlier that TV was
a powerful medium for selling millions of records and other items.
The series was not
the first to use this method, of course. Ever since the mass acceptance
of TV at about the same time as the birth of rock'n'roll, recording
artists have appeared on programs to sell their hits. Ricky Nelson
started his music career on the Ozzie and Harriet show in 1957.
He went on to have over fifty-seven charted records. Many other
actors had limited chart success while in the public eye every
week: Patty Duke, Richard Chamberlain, Bobby Sherman, and Shaun
Cassidy each had their own TV programs while appearing on best-seller
lists.
Later, in the sixties,
many TV show themes themselves became hits, like Secret Agent
Man and Hawaii 5-0. Then came The Monkees, the series that forever
changed the way television would be used to sell records. A rock'n'roll
group as the star of a half-hour TV program was the perfect vehicle
to launch a recording career that created three #1 records, three
years of hits, and even a 1980s reunion. The Monkees paved the
way for The Partridge Family, although most of the members
of the Monkees did participate in actually recording their tunes
(at least after their first album), while only two Partridges
lent their musical talents in the studio. In between both entities,
the Archies also hit it big, and they were just cartoons!
The Partridge Family
premiered in September of 1970 and remained on the air through
the summer of 1974. It created the first real teen idol of the
decade (Bobby Sherman was a bit older), David
Cassidy as Keith Partridge, and starred his real-life step-mother
Shirley Jones, as Shirley Partridge. Susan Dey, who later starred
in L.A. Law and Love and War, played Laurie Partridge; Danny Bonaduce
was Danny Partridge, the wisecracking, precocious redhead; Dave
Madden was Reuben Kincaid, the family's manager. The remaining
two youngsters were relatively forgettable: Suzanne Crough as
Tracy Partridge (who played the tambourine pretty effectively)
and Jeremy Gelbwaks (1970-1971) and later Brian Forster, both
as interchangeable Chris Partridges (the drummer). Most viewers
didn't even notice the cast change when it occurred.
Shirley Jones, of course,
had a lengthy resume of appearances on Broadway and in major movies
including Oklahoma! and The Music Man. She had appeared on Broadway
in South Pacific and had won many awards for her vocal work. David
Cassidy is the son of Jack Cassidy (who Shirley married in 1956
when David was six) and actress Evelyn Ward. Shaun Cassidy, who
had his own teen idol career starting in 1977 is David's half-brother.
Shirley and Shaun are the only mother and son to have had #1 records
in the history of the rock era.
On The Partridge
Family records, the credit was listed as The Partridge Family,
starring Shirley Jones and David Cassidy. Some of the best musicians
and singers in the country provided the back-up. No other members
of the family actually did anything on the records; they were
hired as actors. Today, Susan Dey most particularly will tell
you how much she would have enjoyed participating in the recording
studio.
We'll get to that a
bit later, but to really trace the beginnings of the series, we
have to go back to a successful sixties singing group from Rhode
Island. The Cowsills consisted of a family of five brothers, one
sister, and their mom. Barry, Bob, Bill, Paul, and John were the
brothers, Susan their little sister, and Barbara their mother.
The group's first hit was The Rain, the Park and Other Things,
better known as I Love the Flower Girl, which hit #2 in 1967.
They had four other charted hits, including Indian Lake and Hair,
before mismanagement and family turmoil in the early seventies
caused them to split.
The Cowsills were a
singing family with a "mod" mom who drove them from
concert to concert in a brightly colored bus. Sound familiar?
It should. The Cowsills were actually the impetus for The Partridge
Family. Paul Cowsill starts the story:"Screen Gems came to
us with a script all laid out and ready to go and it was going
to be called The Cowsills and Shirley Jones. Now there we got
into the problem. They wanted Shirley Jones to play our mother
in this!"
"The writers
for The Partridge Family," recalls Bob Cowsill,
"lived with us for a month or two and followed us around.
It broke down in two areas. The first area it broke down was
that we were getting older and you know 'The Partridge Family,'
you see what they were and how they pictured us. They're very
cute and everything, but by this time, John, the drummer in
our band, he was closing in on six feet! The second place it
broke down was Shirley Jones was to be in this from the beginning.
They did not want our mom to act her part out. I know my dad
didn't go for that. He wanted mom to do it or we weren't going
to do it. Ultimately, everything broke down and they moved elsewhere
and decided to do a casting call approach. They did secure the
services of our producer, Wes Farrell; and Tony Romeo, who wrote
'Indian Lake,' wrote 'I Think I Love You,' which was the Partridges'
first hit. So they had pretty much the whole package sitting
there ready to go, except we fell through it."
The resulting television
show did not exactly resemble the Cowsill family, except in a
limited way.
"They resembled
us in the fact that they were a family involved in the music
business whose mother was in the band," says Bob. "It
resembled the Cowsills at a young time in our lives, when we
weren't famous. It was cute and light entertainment and a way
to spend a half hour without thinking about much, but they differed
radically. The Cowsills' life, we had some fun, but there was
also a lot of hardness to it that not many people know about."
Indeed, the Cowsill
family did not have a Partridge Family kind of existence.
Their father was from a military background and ruled his family
at times with an iron fist. One of the non-performing brothers,
Richard, appeared on a TV tabloid show in 1993 and stated that
he and his siblings were physically and mentally abused by their
father. He had no real knowledge of financial issues and squandered
most of the money that the family had earned by the start of the
seventies. Long-standing feuds and internal arguments led to the
break-up of the band and many years went by before they got back
together at Barbara's funeral in 1985. Because of an interview
conducted on The Lost 45s radio program, the group reunited in
Boston in 1990 for the first time in twenty years. They are currently
pursuing a new recording contract and receiving rave reviews for
their live performances across the country.
Looking back, Susan
Cowsill, who was in her single digits at the start of the show,
has just one question: "There's something that I've spent
maybe twenty years trying to figure out. Which one [of the Partridges]
was supposed to be me?! Was it the little girl with the lobotomy?
Tracy? Playing the tambourine?"
"I was Susan
Dey!" exclaims keyboardest Paul Cowsill. "My breasts
are still developing!"
Despite these inconsistencies,
the remaining members of the Cowsill family do not think the show
reflected them in a bad light or hindered prospects of future
chart success. Nevertheless, they have absolutely no regrets that
they were not involved with the program.
Susan: "It wasn't
us! It was a fine show. We used to watch it."
John: "We thought
it was funny. Reuben Kincaid and that kid Danny Bonaduce were
the funniest."
Bob: "I never
saw our name more often in print than when that show came out."
Paul: "But we
thought there were more important things going on than The
Partridge Family."
Perhaps there were.
But not to any pre-adolescent, halfcrazed fan of the newest singing
phenomenon. David Cassidy and The Partridge Family were
everything to them at the start of the seventies.
With the Cowsills out
of the picture, The Partridge Family TV show had its one
star, Shirley Jones, and casting began for the rest of the actors.
David Cassidy was already working as an actor at that time. He
had been working for the L.A. Theater Company in high school and
was encouraged upon graduation to head for New York. There he
studied acting while appearing in a Broadway show (Fig Leaves
Are Falling) in 1969. His musical beginnings go back a bit earlier.
"My musical
roots," explains David Cassidy "come from being fortunate
enough to be alive and be a reckless teenager in Southern California,
hanging around the Strip in the sixties. I got to see a lot
of bands in their beginnings. I saw Buffalo Springfield at my
high school. I saw the Doors. I went to school with Jim Densmore,
John Densmore's brother [from the Doors]. I used to hang with
a lot of those guys and although they were older than us, I
got to feel a part of the L.A. music scene."
As you can probably
guess, David Cassidy was into music a bit harder than what came
out of The Partridge Family years. This would later become
a source of distress for him as he tried to break out of the bubblegum/teen
idol mold. The difference in his musical taste at the time is
still apparent today when David talks about how he got started
playing guitar:
"I got interested
in playing the blues. I used to listen to John Mayall, Eric
Clapton, Yardbirds, Jeff Beck. That became the thrust of my
musical focus at the time. In fact, now, some twenty or so years
later, I'm finally getting to explore and play some of that
kind of music that I for obvious reasons during The Partridge
Family didn't get to do. Not that some of the records that
I made weren't great or weren't what I felt like I wanted to
do at the time; but I was really walking a fine line between
'this is what they really want me to do,' 'they' being the record
company, and what I wanted to do."
David Cassidy was just
twenty years old when he auditioned for and won the role of Keith
Partridge. Nobody connected with the show knew he was also a talented
musician and singer, except maybe his step-mother. He had not
actually lived with Shirley and his father; he spent most of his
early years with his mother Evelyn. He even did the pilot for
the TV show without anyone's knowledge of his musical abilities.
He did not perform in the first episode, he lip synched. David
himself came up with the idea that would truly launch The Partridge
Family as a recording entity.
"I called up
the producer of the show," David remembers "and I
said, 'I got a real left field idea for you. I really am a singer
and I really do play guitar.' I could hear the wheels turning,
going, that's actually not a bad idea. That was it! I went over
and auditioned for Wes Farrell. I sang a couple songs for him,
brought my guitar. He said, 'Kid, I'm gonna make you a star'!"
As for the Cowsill
family's part in the creation of the show, David doesn't have
much to say about it today. "I met one or two of them in
passing. I think I met Susan a couple of years ago and she introduced
herself to me. I only knew that originally the show was based
on them and that they weren't involved."
The Partridge Family
TV series started with the five younger members of the family
singing in their garage, noticing that they needed another female
voice. That's when they asked their mother, a widow, to join the
group. Later, they recorded a homemade single, "I Think I
Love You," which went on to top the charts in the country.
Climbing aboard the family bus with the sign on back reading,
"Caution. Nervous Mother Driving," the crew traveled
from town to town promoting the record. Pretty far- fetched story
line, huh?
Not really. The first
single issued by Bell Records as The Partridge Family was
"I Think I Love You." It entered the national Top 100
in October 1970, less than one month after the program's debut
on ABC. Within weeks, it was the #1 song in the land and sold
over four million copies-- it is still one of the biggest selling
records of the rock era. The catchy tune with the plaintive lyric
contains a nifty harpsichord solo and is definitely one of the
most loved songs from the seventies. (If you have a dull weekend
sometime, check out Andy Williams' version of the song on his
Love Story album from 1971. Pretty cool.) Many a copy of this
45 was worn out on those old Close and Play phonographs. The song
also beat the Monkees' first hit, "Last Train to Clarksville,"
which took two months to reach #1 after their series premiered
in 1966.
The musicians who played
on The Partridge Family tunes were some of the best in
the business, including Hal Blaine on drums; Larry Knechtal (who
played on Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water")
on keyboards; Larry Carlton on guitar; even Jim Gordon, who later
wrote "Layla" with Eric Clapton as a member of Derek
and the Dominoes, played on some tunes.
"I got to work
with phenomenal musicians," David says proudly. "I
feel real lucky that I was able to do it. Now, of course, the
guys that I'm working with have only heard about Larry Knechtal
and the idea of working with Larry Carlton in the studio every
night is kind of a dream!"
The Partridge Family
TV series, with The Brady Bunch, which aired before it at
eight on Friday nights, was a hit especially with the younger
set. Their debut album, The Partridge Family Album, went
gold and stayed on the charts for a full year. By the end of 1971,
the "family" had four more Top 40 hits, including two
million-sellers. "Doesn't Somebody Want To Be Wanted,"
"I'll Meet You Halfway," "I Woke Up in Love This
Morning," and "It's One of Those Nights" led them
into 1972.
The family's second
and third albums, both released in 1971, were Up to Date and Sound
Magazine. Both went past gold, with the latter reaching #1 on
the album charts. By year's end, their famous Christmas album
had enough advance orders from record stores across the country
to go gold before its release.
During December 1971,
everyone was playing the Partridge version of "Jingle Bells"
around their Christmas tree. Things were really cookin' for the
group.
Susan Dey has a reputation
for avoiding discussion of her Partridge days. This is not based
on fact.
"I don't do
interviews anymore," Susan states, "because they never
print the truth. They just don't print the truth. No, I don't
mind talking about that era. I remember the first day I heard
'I Think I Love You' on the air and it makes me laugh!"
Susan even spoofed
"The Partridge Family"/"Brady Bunch" hour
on an episode of "Saturday Night Live" in 1991. She
played Laurie Partridge once again, challenging members of the
Brady family to a hilarious "battle of the bands." (The
Partridges, of course, would have won hands down. The Bradys released
three albums, but never could sing a note. Try listening to their
gruesome version of "American Pie" sometime.)
Susan had just come
from New York, where she had been doing some modeling, when she
got the part of Laurie Partridge. She was only seventeen and knew
no one in Los Angeles. Although she was just a youngster, she
felt very self sufficient, not like a child at all.
"At the time,
I thought I was the adult. I was seventeen, but I felt like,
my God, I was self-employed, I was living in L.A! It's like
looking at a freshman in college and they're really still babies
and yet they think of themselves as adults. So I was a baby,
but I never thought of it that way."
The one sore point
for Susan Dey is that she wished she could have sung or participated
in some way on The Partridge Family recordings.
"I really wanted
to. They just said no. First of all, they had it self-contained.
It's a business and David was the singer. I wanted to do it
because to me, singing is just an extension of what I did. So
no, we didn't sing. David sang and Shirley sang."
"We never really
had to say that we sang. You know what it is? It's that in those
days, that was still the era of all those teen magazines. They
alluded to the singing group. They're the ones that printed
all that bullshit about, you know, 'Susan gets home from recording,'
and so forth. I don't know what company, if Screen Gems that
did The Partridge Family owned any of them, but that
whole illusion was supported by these magazines. We were never
told that we had to say this. That I sang or that Danny played
the drums or whatever."
David and Susan became
very close on the set, since Susan did not know anyone else in
town and they were about the same age.
"We used to
hang a lot together," David recalls. "She would want
me to sing and pick my guitar and play her something real funky
and off-the-wall. Something that she hadn't heard that would
put a smile on her face. I started writing these comedy songs
like 'Eat My Shorts.' Things that I never ended up recording.
They'll probably go on the 'Basement Tape' album!
Because [Susan] had
just come from New York, she didn't have a lot of friends. I
befriended her and she and I became very close, because of our
age and our obvious attraction for one another as people. I
talk to her now and I think every time we talk, we always take
a breath and go, 'Man, can you believe we did that?' She still
says to me, 'I've been on "L.A. Law" for years and
I've done all this stuff again on television and people only
really want to talk to me about The Partridge Family!'
I say that was the impact that we had at the time. It's funny
how you look back--how silly we all were."
When asked if he dislikes
The Partridge Family songs today, David Cassidy reflects:
"I don't dislike
The Partridge Family songs. It would be really okay with
me if that was a band and I listened to those records and said,
'Yeah.' Unfortunately for me, that wasn't my taste at the time.
I think they're good and I learned a lot from the writers I
got to work with...but I saw Jimi Hendrix five times. I had every
note and lick in my head and still in my head. Those were the
kinds of acts that I would go and see. The Who. I guess more
of a progressive approach. For me, singing what people coined
'bubblegum' teenage stuff was a hard pill to swallow, because
it really wasn't the kind of image or music that I wanted to
play. But yeah, I think The Partridge Family made some
really great records. Obviously, I think 'I Think I Love You'
was a great record and a great song in its time."
When most people that
were familiar with the program listen to the music of The Partridge
Family, they picture David and Shirley singing, of course,
but also Laurie playing the keyboards, Tracy the tambourine, Danny
the guitar and Chris the drums. David sets the record straight
yet again:
"For me, when
I went in and recorded the songs and played them, those individuals
were not there. I got a tape of The Partridge Family's
Greatest Hits when it was re-released [in 1990]. I listen to
it and I reflect upon the time that I was in the studio making
those records and the times that I went out and played them
on the road, the reaction they got. For me, the whole collection
of songs creates the imagery of a specific time and place in
my life that I know I'll never walk again. It's now a wonderful
memory."
All of us have a moment
or two in our past that we look back upon with regret. With an
actor or musician, sometimes those moments are, unfortunately,
seen or heard by millions of people. David Cassidy has one such
recording moment he regrets and it involves one of The Partridge
Family's biggest hits.
"Probably the
thing that they had to twist my arm the hardest to do,"
David reveals, "was 'Doesn't Somebody Want to Be Wanted.'
If you listen to the vocal, which is one of the worst vocal
performances in the history of recording, in my opinion-- it
was with such restraint and they had me do that little talking
bit in the middle, which is the most embarrassing moment in
my entire career! I have never done that song since it was a
hit live and will never do it again! That one was a real difficult
pill for me to swallow, because I really didn't like the song.
What they did in the early days, which really used to drive
me crazy, was they thought my voice was too husky and too powerful.
They wanted me to sound younger. So what they would do is to
slow the track down and I would sing it and then they would
bring it back to normal speed, so that I would sound even younger.
They did that on that particular record and I really hated it."
This same complaint
has also been voiced by David's half brother, Shaun Cassidy. His
hits were also speeded up to make his voice sound more like a
teenager. As for "Doesn't Somebody Want to Be Wanted,"
it sold over a million copies and was played endlessly on the
air, much to David's disgust.
"In my opinion,"
David explains, "it sold so many records because 'I Think
I Love You' had sold like four and a half million and was the
record of the year and one of the largest selling singles in
America of all time. When you have a record that big, your next
single if it's even decent is going to sell a million. My argument
was that it on its own is not going to take this band or me
to another level. Let's introduce something a little different.
There was no focus on tomorrow or the future. It was like, 'Let's
cash in now.' That was the record company's approach and in
fact they never had a gold album until The Partridge Family's
first album. The first album sold like three million eight
hundred thousand copies. They were totally unprepared for it.
I was totally unprepared for it too. I just knew that there
were an awful lot of people that were salivating, looking at
me and saying: 'Now this is what we're going to do with you,
boy!' I felt quite manipulated at the time. I was naive and
I was young and I did basically what they asked me to do."
The group had more
hit singles, including a Top 40 remake of "Breaking Up Is
Hard to Do," which charted in 1972. Their Greatest Hits,
Shopping Bag (complete with an actual plastic bag), and Crossword
Puzzle albums all went gold through 1973.
Everything came to
an abrupt end in 1974, when the series was canceled. The show
could have continued, they even added a few new characters in
the last season, but David was actually the reason the show ended.
"I hate to take
credit for it now," he says, "but I had my contract
re-negotiated after the first year, so that I was leaving the
show [in 1974]. In the last season you might remember, they
kept trying to bring like the Williams twins in; they brought
Little Ricky in; tried to bring in new, young blood, I think
to try and fill the gap that I was going to leave. I really
felt the show could have gone on easily without me and without
trying to pull something that was contrived, which is what they
tried to do. It didn't work. What they did was in the last six
months of the show, they changed the night. They moved us to
what was considered the sacrificial lamb slot opposite 'All
in the Family' [and 'Emergency!' on Saturday nights]. We actually
did quite well in that time slot considering, but they basically
gave the show up. At the time, I couldn't wait to be done with
it. I was planning a world tour and then stopping and I did.
It wasn't until three or four years later I realized the ramifications
that my decision had on so many people's lives. Forget about
the public who no longer got to watch the show, I'm thinking
specifically about all the people who worked on it. You don't
think about those things and I in a way now feel a little remorseful
that I didn't stick around for at least another year, so that
they could make a lot more money. Anyway, you can't live for
other people, you have to do what's right for you. Ultimately,
I felt that was right to do at the time and I don't regret the
decision I made myself for me."
During The Partridge
Family years, David also had a string of solo singles that
reached the chart. From 1971 through 1974, he placed four songs
in the Top 40 nationally, including remakes like "Cherish"
and "How Can I Be Sure" as well as "Could It Be
Forever" and his last charted hit (until 1990) "Rock
Me Baby" in 1974. After the series ended, he continued to
release a string of singles that didn't chart in America, but
did very well in other parts of the world. He recorded an album
with Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys for RCA that yielded a couple
of Top 10 records in England, where he has remained incredibly
popular over the years. But David could not break back onto the
American charts, even though many of those solo recordings were
quite good.
"Part of the
problem I had with the middle seventies," David says, "is
that I [was] no longer going on tour and I was no longer really
working. I was doing what I always wanted to do, which was to
mess around in the studio with some serious musicians. In America,
you can't approach the record business like that. It takes everything
to break records and unless an artist is really serious about
it, I don't think radio takes them seriously. I don't think
the record company took me seriously. For that reason, those
songs became collectors' items in the States. In Europe the
structure is a lot different, so that if they are fans of yours,
they continue to play your records when they come out. So I
continued to have hits there without a whole lot of effort.
I didn't have to go over there and promote them. I didn't have
to tour. I wanted to put a little band together and write songs
and try to demistify myself, break away from the imagery of
The Partridge Family. Had I really gone out and promoted
it and done a lot of television and things like that, it probably
would have been a lot easier for me to do that. You don't know
those things. You don't think about them at the time."
One bit of trivia most
music fans don't know is that David Cassidy was the first recording
artist to have a hit with Bruce Johnston's classic "I Write
the Songs." David recorded it before the Captain and Tennille
put it on their debut album and before Barry Manilow took it to
#1 in America.
"I heard Bruce
play it when it wasn't even finished. He's playing this thing
and I said 'What is that? It's beautiful!' He didn't quite have
it done. He told me what it was and I said we've got to cut
it. The truth of the matter is, I had a #1 record in about seven
or eight countries with 'I Write the Songs' before the single
came out in America. The guys at RCA thought that 'I Write the
Songs' was not a hit record in America."
Of course, Barry Manilow's
version went to #1 in 1976. David continued to record in the mid-seventies
and early eighties, with no American success. He starred in a
short-lived TV series, "David Cassidy: Man Undercover,"
which ran on NBC from November 1978 through January 1979. David
married actress Kay Lenz in 1977, splitting in 1981. His second
marriage (in 1984) lasted less than a year.
David continued his
European success with a top 5 smash in 1985, "The Last Kiss,"
and a tour of England that resulted in a two-disc Live album that
same year. He then experienced a run of bad luck with record companies,
something that had been plaguing him throughout his career. Bell
records was bought by Arista in 1974, which ended his hits on
that label. RCA underwent major changes while he was recording
for that company.
Just as "The Last
Kiss" was becoming a huge hit, that label went under too.
In 1988, he was getting ready to record an album for release in
the U.S. on MCA, when the entire personnel of the company was
fired. David was feeling a little snakebit and decided to return
to the theater and acting in the mid-eighties. That's when things
began to change.
"I kind of abandoned
the idea of making another record," David recalls. "I
had some great songs, I thought. I played them for a few people,
in fact Asia covered one of them. I was doing a radio show in
L.A. in 1989 and played some songs for them on the show. That
morning, I got three offers from record companies to make a
deal. I decided that I wasn't going to go into this and invest
any more of my life, time, hopes, and dreams in something that
wasn't going to ultimately be what I hoped. I signed with a
company that really wanted me to do what I wanted to do, Enigma
records."
David's album on Enigma
came out in late 1989, with the single "Lyin' to Myself"
reaching the Top 40. It was his first chart appearance since 1974.
He even toured the country, playing some of the old Partridge
Family tunes.
"I thought I
would never want to do some of the old stuff again. In fact,
on hearing the tape of the old Partridge Family songs, I thought,
there's a new slant on how to do this and how to do it honestly
and have fun with it. I realized that there is a place for me
to do it and integrate it into the stuff I'm doing now. I'm
taking a new approach to the songs as well. It's a little heavier
than it used to be."
Unfortunately, right
after "Lyin' to Myself" hit, Enigma records became the
next label to go under while David was signed on. The comeback
album disappeared from the charts after selling a modest amount.
David now records for Scotti Brothers records and even wrote the
song adopted officially by the city of Los Angeles after the riots
of 1992. Cher recorded a song called "I'll Never Stop Loving
You" that David and his third wife Sue Shifrin had written
for her Love Hurts album. (They have one son, Beau, born in 1991.)
For the most part,
David Cassidy looks back fondly upon 1970, the year he was twenty
and The Partridge Family began.
"There's no
other way to look back upon it," David says. "It was
a great opportunity and when you're going through it and living
your life, you don't really know to savor all of the magic that
you do later on, when you know that it was just golden stuff.
That people respond to my work for me is the greatest compliment
and the way people reacted and responded from the very beginning
was a bit overwhelming to me. I feel blessed. I feel very lucky
that I got to do what I did."
David reacts to the
way he has been treated by music critics over the past three decades:
"I have taken
a lot of heat about the stigma; trying to live the stigma down
of being a 'teen idol' and 'heart throb' and all of those, what
are now negative cliches. But my work and the people that have
been there and have cared about what I do, have made it all
worthwhile. I started playing and writing music because I loved
it and I still do it for that reason. I'm not doing it because
I'm making a fortune, A) because I'm not making a fortune and
B) because it isn't about that. There's a part of me that every
time I pick up a guitar and stand at a microphone, remembers
the first time that I watched Elvis when I was five years old.
There's a part of me that remembers the first time I saw the
Beatles. I remember that was the moment that I decided, that
was what I had to do! For all of the things that you say about
a performer, whatever it is that you feel about why they do
it; the reason that I do it is because I really do love it!"
With the maturing and
mellowing of the original viewers of the show, there tends to
be a more positive reflection now upon The Partridge Family
than there was just a few years ago. Most of the fans who watched
the show, bought the albums, went to the concerts, and carried
the lunch box around, are now in the twenty-five to forty-four-year-old
age group. They are able to reminisce about the old days now,
without feeling as silly or foolish as they might have earlier.
"You are absolutely
right!" David exclaims. "I woke up one morning and
I went from being sort of this old guy that nobody really cared
about and I walked down the street and people came up to me
and said, 'Wow. It's so cool that you are who you are!'"
I looked at them,
sort of tilted my head and said, 'Huh? What do you mean it's
so cool?' I had taken a lot of heat about it for a lot of years.
I guess as we look back in time upon the things that are important
to us: songs, records, movies... things that have very fond
memories; I'm pleased to be a part of so many people's growing
up, development, and somewhat of their education. I'm playing
with some musicians now who have told me that the reason they
started playing guitar or the reason they had become a musician
is because of me. That is an incredible compliment for me."
David's new recording
career, along with the resulting touring and visiting radio stations
across the country, is not entirely history repeating for him.
Many things are not the same this time around:
"It's a different
experience this time for me. Because the first time around I
was in a whirlwind and I was working on a television show, so
I had very little time to go into radio stations. I had very
little time to cultivate the artistic side of it. I would just
go in and sing the songs. This time I wrote it and created the
idea of going back alone, on a business level. Having made that
commitment to do it, it's just a totally new experience and
I'm really enjoying this. Not that I didn't enjoy the other,
it's just that it happened so fast and there was so much at
once. I wasn't able to take a breath and say 'Boy, this is good!'
I was completely out of control then, being rushed constantly.
The hysteria thing made it that much more frenetic and that
much less enjoyable for me to savor the moments. When you have
people that really care about you and they are emotionally that
pitched, it's a great compliment in any way you look at it.
I feel really good that so many people liked what I did then.
I feel even better now, because it is really more reflective
of genuinely who I am now as opposed to just the character I
played on television."
David returned very
successfully to the Broadway stage in 1993, co-starring with his
half-brother Shaun and Petula Clark (of "Downtown" fame)
in Blood Brothers. The musical marked the first time the two siblings
have performed together.
Susan Dey, meanwhile,
did some television work after she left The Partridge Family.
She starred in a sitcom which aired for five weeks in the spring
of 1977. The show was called "Loves Me, Loves Me Not"
and was created by the same team that later developed "Soap,"
"The Golden Girls," and "Empty Nest." She
did a few low budget movies and another TV show, this time a prime
time soap in 1983. "Emerald Point N.A.S." also featured
Dennis Weaver, Andrew Stevens, and Robert Loggia. The show lasted
seven months on CBS, ending in March of 1984. "L.A. Law"
came two years later in 1986 and Dey's career reached a new high
point. Susan isn't sure if a program like The Partridge Family,
which depended so much on the younger audience believing that
the family actually existed and sang, could work on today's sophisticated
and knowledgeable kids:
"I'll be very
honest with you; I really don't know what happened. I'm talking
in terms of the illusion thing. They say everything comes in
cycles. Now the interesting thing is, where I watched 'Topper'
and 'Bewitched,' now they're watching, oh God, my daughter watches
it. I can't remember the name of it. It's about this girl who
was born in outer space or something. You see what I'm saying?
It's still the same, but it's more new wave."
As for a reunion of
The Partridge Family cast, don't bet on Susan Dey attending.
"I've heard
talk of a reunion from the press, from the media. But for me,
Laurie Partridge was alive. I mean, she still remains alive,
but she's still fifteen. See what I'm saying? She's in some
time capsule somewhere, along with the bell bottom jeans and
along with the fact that while we were filming that we were
also in Cambodia. We were involved in this war illegally. You
know, 'along with.' All of it is in a time capsule somewhere.
I think it's impossible is what I'm saying. How do I become
fifteen again? Why should I? A reunion of what? Not of the characters."
Susan Dey is working
on a few movie projects for television and is still interested
in acting on the big screen. Time is a problem, though, while
she continues to star in a weekly television series. She left
"L.A." Law in the spring of 1992 and then starred in
a half-hour sitcom, "Love and War." Susan still keeps
in touch with David Cassidy and she continues to be a big fan
of his music:
"He's wonderful.
I miss his music on the air. I really do! I heard the album
he had released a few years ago. It was lovely. It was really
wonderful. And Danny [Bonaduce]. I have to call him. I haven't
spoken to Danny in a long time. We could reminisce!"
Danny Bonaduce has
been the subject of many a tabloid newspaper story during the
past few years. After years of drug abuse and his arrest for reportedly
beating up a transvestite prostitute in 1990, he began to clean
up his act and went on the road as a comedian. He even toured
as David's opening act for many dates on his 1990 comeback tour.
Currently, Danny is a DJ at WLUP-FM in Chicago, where he lives
with his wife, Gretchen.
Dave Madden, who played
Reuben Kincaid, has never left TV. He's been doing voice-over
commercial work for many years. As for the two littlest members
of The Partridge Family, Tracey now operates a bookstore in Temecula,
California. As for the two actors who played Chris, Jeremy Gelbwaks
(whose father transferred out of L.A. causing his departure from
the show after one season) is married and lives in New Orleans,
working as a computer analyst. The second Chris, Brian Forster,
is a race-car driver and instructor in California. Shirley Jones
makes few television appearances today. Occasionally, she appears
in summer stock theater productions.
So, while there won't
be a reunion of The Partridge Family television series
any time soon, there is a Greatest Hits CD out on Arista which
contains most of the biggest tunes from the show. Through the
miracle of syndication, the program still airs in most markets
across the country. You can tune in tonight and see the family
travel by multi-colored bus to a new town. Once there, they will
manage to get entangled in some thirty-minute adventure, and at
the conclusion, whatever troubles have occurred will melt away
with the singing of a song. As their theme song says, "C'mon
get happy!" If that was all they left behind for the millions
who once bought their records, the lunch boxes, the trading cards,
even their series of paperback books, I do believe it was worth
the trip.
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