Could It Be Forever? My Story (21 page)

I had an interesting relationship with John. I related to him because of his abandonment issues and his creativity. He was kind enough to give me insight into what I was
about to go through. He’d been there and done that and was in the process of demystifying himself.

Once, while we were having lunch together, he invited me to come to A&M Studios where he was recording the
Rock ’n’ Roll
album. He asked me if I wanted to play with the other musicians. I did go but it was so crowded and almost every great guitar player you can think of was there. Harry Nilsson, Cher and lots of other people were there, too. At the time I didn’t want to be part of the circus. I only stayed for around 15 minutes, although in hindsight I probably should have played.

John told me all the stories about his studio days. It was around this time that Phil Spector, who produced some of the album, came in dressed like a Nazi, calling himself Hitler, flailing a gun and even shooting it off. He was out of his mind.

John had a fabulous sense of humour. He was more dedicated to the things he believed in than anyone that I can think of. He wasn’t seduced by greed. We only spoke briefly about Paul and his comments at the time were, ‘Yeah, well, you know, that’s just Paul.’ I think John was deeply hurt by their differences and the fact that their partnership wasn’t a partnership. He felt the competition with Paul, who would come in with 15 songs and want to record them all. John told me, ‘I don’t want to be in, you know, “Paul & the Beatles”. I don’t want to be a sideman for Paul. It’s not what I want to do any more.’

John Lennon had a very strong influence on me by giving me advice on how to start trying to live a normal life again.
How do I find a way to walk down the street or go to a restaurant and not be paranoid? We talked a lot about that. There were certain things that I could say to him and he could say to me that no other people on the earth could understand except perhaps the other Beatles and Elvis.

I was in England doing promotion for my
The Higher They Climb, the Harder They Fall
album in 1975 when I met Paul McCartney. He invited me and Steve Ross, who was playing guitar for me at the time, to Paris to watch the last rehearsal for the Wings over America tour. They did the whole show on that huge stage with all the special effects just for Steve and me. Two nights later we went to the actual concert and were invited up on stage and played with Paul and Wings.

Jimmy McCullough, the lead guitarist in Wings, came over to the hotel one night during that time and got incredibly drunk. He smashed the television set and broke his hand and I had to call Paul and tell him that Jimmy was with me and that he had been taken to the hospital. They had to postpone their tour for six weeks or so and I think Paul somehow blamed me. Jimmy was just out of control and, because of his alcoholism, he went nuts. He ended up killing himself.

Back in L.A I saw Paul a few other times, at a party I was at with Ronnie Wood (‘Woody’) just after he joined the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. I was also invited to the Hollywood studio where Paul was finishing up an album in Hollywood. I think it was probably 1977 or 1978 and I had just finished working down the street. He played me a song they had just recorded. I think it was
Venus and
Mars
.
Listening to him finalising a track was really great, because he is arguably one of the great talents of all time.

I also had a chance to hang out quite a bit with the Beach Boys. I went to Brother Studios in Santa Monica once or twice and played with Carl Wilson. I hung out with Brian Wilson and worked with him at his house, at Gerry Beckley’s house (Gerry was in the group America) and at my home. We messed around playing. Brian was not recording any more. Ricky Fataar, who was in the Beach Boys for a long time before he left, was working with me. Ricky is one of the most talented human beings, and one of the greatest drummers. He’s been Bonnie Raitt’s drummer for maybe 20 years now.

In 1991, I played some stadium dates with the Beach Boys. One night Carl and Bruce said, ‘Come and hang out and sing with us,’ and I did. Ricky came and sat in and played drums. Playing those songs with those guys was cool. Along with the Beatles, those were the guys who created the soundtrack to my youth.

A
lot of women I met struck me as opportunists. They were using me to advance hoped-for acting careers, or perhaps they were interested in me for my money. That ain’t the real stuff. I was looking for something more.

Of all the actresses I dated, there was only one I fell for, or thought I had. Only one I wanted to have a lasting relationship with. Meredith Baxter. She was a few years older than I was when she made a guest appearance on
The Partridge Family
and we began dating. If you can call it that. She’d just got divorced from her first husband and was living in a little house in Burbank with her two young children, trying to make it on her own as an actress. I really carried a serious torch for her. I never told anybody about it except
Susan Dey, Shirley and a couple of other close friends. Meredith was a beautiful woman – warm, intelligent, independent, kind of a hippie at heart, like I was. She liked music and would sit around and play guitar. She was also much more mature than I was. I may have been 21, but emotionally I was still a teenager.

We were very secretive about our relationship because I didn’t want to tip off the tabloids. We usually went to Meredith’s house or mine. I was going through one of the worst periods of my life. I had so little free time that days and weeks would often go by without my seeing Meredith at all. I was just a working machine.

When I was able to be with her, we had a great time. I thought I might be in love with her. I’m sure she didn’t realise how much I cared about her because I was away so much of the time and that was frustrating for me. But I was on such a roll in the rest of my life that I just went with the flow. I figured that eventually my life would grow less hectic and then we could really get to spend some time together. Wrong again. Instead, my life grew more hectic.

After Meredith and I had been dating for about a month, I got home from work one Friday night – I was supposed to go on the road early the next morning – and got a call from Ruth.

She said, ‘I want you to pack up. You’re leaving your house.’

I said, ‘What are you talking about?’

‘In about fifteen minutes there’s going to be someone from the FBI at your gate. Go with him. This isn’t a joke. There’s a legitimate kidnapping threat.’

Perfect.

The Los Angeles Police Department had been tipped off by a very reliable source that two guys planned to kidnap me and hoped to collect a multi-million-dollar ransom from my family and Screen Gems. I immediately thought of the worst-case scenario:
they’re going to kill me.
I moved out of my house and into the Holiday Inn on Highland Avenue. Initially there were FBI agents in the room on one side of mine and the LAPD in the room on the other. For extra security, I hired a bodyguard who lived in my room.

We didn’t want to let anybody know what was going on. I simply had to bring this guy with me everywhere I went, as if he were some good ol’ friend. Problem was, I didn’t know him. He never said much; he just stuck to me like glue. If I got up to go anywhere, even to the john, he’d walk along with me. He’d stand outside, casually keeping an eye out. He was a muscular fellow, the bodybuilder type, in his early 30s. And I was this rather slight, androgynous-looking, long-haired 21-year-old (my stand-in on
The Partridge Family,
if you can believe it, was a girl). Everyone at work was convinced we were lovers. ‘David’s gone around the bend!’

I restricted my activities. To minimise my vulnerability, I went almost nowhere except to work. I took things one day at a time. The days turned into weeks. I was in agony.

The only public function I went to in that period was the annual Golden Apple awards presentation. They told me beforehand that I had won a Golden Apple. The ceremony took place at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and all of Hollywood was there. The police and FBI were especially fearful that
an attempt to kidnap me would be made there, where maintaining security was difficult. This would be the day they’d make the snatch.

At the hotel, there were waiters and doormen who were really FBI agents or LAPD. I was so scared that I was going to be kidnapped that when I got up to accept my award, I was shaking. I was looking at everyone in the room like,
Maybe these are the guys who are out to get me.

Accepting my award, I said just two words, ‘Thank you.’ That was it. And I’m usually a pretty verbal guy. But I just walked off. And I had dressed in a jean jacket, jeans and a T-shirt, everyone else was dressed up. The audience must have thought, ‘That’s it? “Thank you?” What a stiff!’

At one point during the awards, I had to get up to go to the bathroom. There were 27 people who got up simultaneously and followed me there. I didn’t know who was trying to protect me, who might be trying to get to me or who was just trying to take a leak.

I fantasised about the day when this mess would be over with and I could pick up with Meredith where we’d left off. I was so weighed down with my own problems I really wasn’t thinking what she might be going through.

I’d never lived in the real adult world. I’d gone straight from fooling around as a teenager, living with my parents, to the highly artificial world of TV stardom. Here I was, having to live with this bodyguard instead of with someone who mattered to me, like most people my age.

My life as a pop star was like being in a hurricane most of the time. As if someone had completely ripped up my
sense of reality and said, ‘Here, try this on for a while.’
No one could really get near me any more. I’d become this guy, living in fear in a Holiday Inn, accompanied everywhere by this nondescript, tall, silent, muscular guy.

And what did I think would happen once this whole kidnapping thing was behind me? I guess I thought that I could resume touring, doing TV and making records and somehow maintain a successful relationship with Meredith Baxter. Yeah, right.

I wasn’t mature enough to see that the kidnapping threat wasn’t the real problem. I could confide in Meredith and longed for a real relationship, but I was not emotionally equipped and, frankly, I was too young for her, both emotionally and intellectually.

There wasn’t enough free time in my schedule to have a relationship with myself, let alone with another human being. But I just couldn’t grasp that. I was totally lost.

Finally, after about a month had passed since I’d first been told there was a pending threat, everyone assumed the would-be kidnappers had given up. I had seen no signs of danger. Maybe it had been a false alarm all along, or maybe they’d been scared off. It took me a while to believe that the threat was over and I was safe, but finally I let the bodyguard go and tried to get things started up again with Meredith.

Her life had moved ahead without me. While I’d been worried about possible kidnappers, she’d fallen in love with someone else. The producers of
The Partridge Family
had hired Meredith and David Birney to co-star in a new series
called
Bridget Loves Bernie
,
and I learned she’d started having a relationship with her co-star.

Meredith and I spent one final weekend together after they became involved, which I’m sure David Birney never knew about. Then Meredith broke off the relationship with me for good. It was hard for me to accept. Even though there were millions of people who loved me and worshipped me and wanted me, I needed something more.

Meredith and David filmed their TV series in the studio right next to mine. I’d see them together every day. It broke my heart. Eventually, of course, they got married (and some years later divorced) and after a while I got over her.

I continued to fantasise about having a real relationship, about going out in public on a date without having people going stupid over me. Maybe I hadn’t been college material, but I began to envy my old high-school classmates who’d gone on to college. I even envied people with ‘normal’ jobs. Either of those paths seemed preferable to the one I’d taken. I started longing to have any other career but my own. It may sound absurd now, but it’s true. There I was, rich and famous, a star, wishing at times I could be some thoroughly ordinary, anonymous guy instead. I’d dream about what it would be like to work at a real man’s job.

W
henever I stepped out on to the concert stage, I liked to think my sole purpose was to entertain people. I was serious about my show. I wanted to be the best entertainer I could.

TV Guide,
for one, perceived my role in the business differently. They said that in my public appearances I served in effect as a shill, not just for
The
Partridge Family
TV show, but also for a seemingly endless supply of products bearing its name or mine. I hate to admit that was true – certainly it had never been my intention to become anything like that – but in a way that is how it was.

The industry found me highly marketable and exploited
my appeal to the maximum. My face was used to sell pictures, posters, magazines and even special stamps for fan mail. It appeared on cereal boxes – General Foods paid a great deal to Screen Gems for that right. I had no say in how my name, voice or likeness was used, or what products I appeared to be endorsing. That was all handled by Screen Gems. They wanted to get everything they could out of the craze for David Cassidy and
The Partridge Family.

There were
Partridge Family
colouring books, comic books and David Cassidy music books. By mid 1972, Popular Library had published a dozen
Partridge Family
paperback novels, the bestselling of which reportedly sold a million copies. I never saw a dime. Popular Library paid five per cent of the cover price of each item to Screen Gems. There were
Partridge Family
paper dolls, regular dolls, diaries and astrological charts. School children could carry David Cassidy lunchboxes. Their older sisters could spend their summers lying atop beach towels bearing full-length portraits of me – those were a popular premium offered by Hi-C fruit beverages.