Could It Be Forever? My Story (28 page)

I was on the front page of the papers every single day during this tour because I took a whole press corps with me on my
plane. One journalist felt things had really gotten out of hand when even
The
Times
considered it newsworthy that I’d caught a cold.

There were reports that I’d broken out in a ‘rash’, which was the recurring stress-related acne problem that Valium was supposed to alleviate. And that I balked at requests that I sing certain songs, saying I’d recorded them months before and didn’t know the words any more.

Some reporters noted that both Sam and I visibly tensed when we saw groups of young fans approaching. One reporter quoted Sam as saying, ‘People think we are strange when they see us get scared of little girls, but in a crowd, they get ferocious, particularly the young ones . . . I don’t know what the answer is, but I
have
managed to find a way of dealing with them at concerts. I just run!’

I was paranoid. You don’t go through that experience and come out of it the same way. There were stalkers living in my air-conditioning units and following me all over the world. Some fans were doing ridiculous things like building shrines to me in their living rooms. It was madness.

The fans’ intensity could get frightening, and some of my security people were really learning their business as we went along. My head of security had never been involved with
anything of this magnitude before (he went on to handle tours for some of the biggest names in the business, but he was cutting his first teeth with me). Up to that point, none of the high-spirited young fans who filled our big concerts on this tour had been seriously injured, but at least one commentator felt that was due to luck more than anything else and raised a cautionary note for the future.

Tony Palmer, pop music critic of the
Observer
, declared (25 March 1973), ‘The disorder caused by the rampaging fanlets was often due indirectly to administrative bungling on the part of the tour’s management. Both the road manager and Cassidy’s personal assistant were California law students with little or no qualifications for organising such a quasi-military operation as a pop tour. The singer’s manager, Miss Ruth Aarons, is an ex-ping-pong world champion. Her 22-year-old girl assistant was, until recently, a psychiatrist’s assistant.
The head of Cassidy’s record company once worked in production control for a motor car firm until he decided that pop music was his true vocation . . . The English promoter who had spent six months setting up the tour did not receive a signed contract from Miss Aarons until half an hour before the first show at Wembley – already halfway through the English tour. Little wonder, therefore, that the whole fandango got out of hand.’

Perhaps we should have taken note of Palmer’s concern. But by the time his words saw print, we were winging our way back to the States.

It became apparent in the fall of 1973 that in the U.S. (but not abroad) the David Cassidy/
Partridge Family
craze was over. The show’s ratings, along with record sales for both David Cassidy and The Partridge Family, fell off precipitously as we went into our show’s fourth and final season.

What happened? We were still a national favourite throughout our third season (1972–3). We were tied with
The Waltons
as the nineteenth most popular show on the air that season. But throughout the 1973–4 season, we were way down in the ratings. In January 1974 the esteemed television critic who went by the pseudonym of ‘Cyclops’ noted in the
New York Times
that there were only a couple of shows
less
popular than
The Partridge Family
and it was inevitable that the show would be cancelled, a fact, he added, that caused him genuine sorrow, since
The Partridge Family
was one of the few shows that a whole family, from children to parents to grandparents, could enjoy together. As our
demise became inevitable, a number of critics confessed they’d found much to enjoy in our show.

We faced significantly tougher competition in our last season. ABC changed our time slot from 8.30 p.m. on Fridays to 8 p.m on Saturdays, putting us in direct competition with the most popular show on the air at the time,
All in the Family
. The network had pretty much given up on our show.

We did some episodes on location. On the show our manager Reuben got us a TV commercial for some chicken company. So we were on a cruise in Mexico in 120 degree heat and we had to wear chicken suits. The line that I will never forget was, ‘Perfect. Here we are, six lunks in chicken suits.’ That’s when I knew it was time to leave
The Partridge Family
. I said, ‘That’s it. I don’t want to do this any more. This is my sayonara.’ It became kind of a mantra for me.
Here we are, six lunks in chicken suits.

At 23, my face caked in three layers of make-up, I made a less convincing teenager than ever. The fan magazines made much less fuss over my twenty-third birthday in April 1973 than they had over my last two, but the space dedicated to me in the magazines was just a bit less than before and the headline one of them ran, ‘Naturally You’ve Changed,’ tacitly acknowledged that I was approaching the upper age limit for inclusion in magazines designed to fulfil the fantasies of young girls.

Many of those pre-pubescent girls who’d had crushes on me had outgrown me by our fourth year; they were now old enough to be going on dates themselves, rather than sitting at home on a Friday or Saturday night watching TV.

And I was burned out. The pills, I eventually came to realise, weren’t helping me either. The doctor said they would help me sleep and would relieve my nerves, and they did help in those areas, but I became strung out on Valium. I was becoming lethargic. Without saying anything to anyone, I decided to stop taking the pills. I got into meditation for a while – the influence of Steve Ross – attempting to heal my worn-out nerves in a more natural way. Sam, Steve and I would also fast one day a week, which we felt was healthy for the mind and body. We’d listen to Indian music and try to glean wisdom from Eastern philosophies.

But kicking the Valium, I found, didn’t make all that big a difference in my life. I’d simply had enough of everything – the show, the hysteria, the road, everything. The producers knew I had no interest any more. I just couldn’t wait for the last year of the show to be over. I considered the whole manufactured Keith Partridge/David Cassidy image to be one enormous pain.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all bad. There are a couple of episodes of
The Partridge Family
that I’ve always liked. For me, the best episode we ever did was the Christmas show where I played Sheriff Swell with a lollypop stuck to my head. I love that episode.

I also like an episode that Louis Gossett, Jr and Richard Pryor guest starred in. I liked them both and got to know Richard pretty well. Richard was fantastic. I thought he was a wonderful actor and a really good human being and we got on great. That was just before his career took off.

The Godfather
was having such an impact at the time that the producers of our show decided that they would spoof it. (It’s still one of the greatest motion pictures ever made, in my opinion. It’s a masterpiece.) It gave them an opportunity to use me as the young Guido. The reactions, including my own, were pretty interesting to me and everyone else. The cast and crew had never seen me look like that. That’s one of the episodes I like, because it’s different.

But as an actor, I certainly no longer had the respect of my peers. Hell, I didn’t even have the respect of my own father! In an interview he gave George Maksian of New York’s
Daily News
(10 February 1974), headlined ‘Cassidy Calls Son Bubble Gum Star,’ Maksian asked my father if he’d object if any of his other sons followed in my footsteps. My father answered, ‘Sure, some of the boys could follow David, the bubble gum star. But he can be used up and sucked up very fast in the business . . . The world is full of
Xeroxes. But if they really have need for it, I wouldn’t stop them. My main concern is that they’re really decent people. I care about what they are, and how they deal with other people.’

I wasn’t happy with my career myself. I knew it had really messed me up, changed me. You can’t go through those things and come out the other side without being different. I hated the pressure of being an idol, of feeling I was expected to be a superstar on stage and a superhuman offstage. After four years of ‘stardom’, I just couldn’t talk to people any more.
The Partridge Family
/teen idol trip had distorted people’s perception of me and my perception of myself so much that I didn’t like what I had become. I was a serious actor when I started, but I don’t think anyone has ever taken me seriously as an actor in the years since
The Partridge Family
. I can’t shake that albatross around my neck.

As we filmed the final season I’d sometimes deeply regret the direction I had chosen. I’d think,
I’ve got to get off this friggin’ bus
!

The only way out that I could see was to simply quit show business entirely. Ruth certainly didn’t want to hear such talk, not just for my sake, I’m sure. After all, I had become her major breadwinner. If I retired, she stood to lose a considerable amount of income. From her point of view, it was foolish of me to think of retirement. Demand for me on the concert circuit was strong and would likely remain strong for quite some time. Maybe years. Record companies and producers still had confidence in me. It was silly to talk of quitting.

The Partridge Family’s first five albums, released within less than two years, had all gone gold. The first three had made it to the Top Ten on the
Billboard
charts. But the sixth album,
The Partridge Family Notebook
, showed signs of declining sales. I begged the record company to change the sound. And the seventh album,
Crossword Puzzle
, which made the charts for just five weeks in the summer of 1973, was only a mild success. It was the last Partridge Family album to make the charts at all, and none of the singles were hits. Throughout the 1973–4 television season
The Partridge Family
, for the first time in its history, was without a hit record. The producers just refused to change with the times. I lost a lot of sleep over it.

Deciding to quit was not a difficult decision for me. I told Ruth I’d fulfil my obligations – to finish the fourth season, make the records I was required to, do one last huge world tour and then quit while I could still say I was on top.

Finally, in the fourth year, I convinced the powers that be that Keith had to move out and get his own apartment. I said, ‘What is this? How many years can I be in high school?’

Knowing that I was leaving the show, the studio brought in a young kid named Ricky Segall, who was very cute, to play Ricky Stevens. We all liked Ricky, but he wasn’t a member of the Partridge family so the addition of this new character made no sense. They also brought in Andy Williams’s twin nephews and that didn’t work, either. And Danny Bonaduce as a teenager simply wasn’t as cute as he’d been as a wise-cracking little kid. Things he said or did that
seemed amusingly impish when he was 10 were irritating when he was 13 or 14.

I guess they assumed the show couldn’t go on without me and I don’t think that was correct. I think it could have gone on. The people they tried to introduce into the show just did not work. They weren’t very talented. It was almost like nobody really cared any more.

As American newspapers reported that the David Cassidy/
Partridge Family
mania was receding into history, manufacturers quietly stopped renewing licensing agreements. They figured they’d marketed about as many units of
Partridge Family
bubble gum and David Cassidy beach towels as they were going to. Chuck Laufer changed the publication schedule of
The Partridge Family Magazine
from monthly to bimonthly to quarterly, then killed it.

When the last year wrapped, the editor and producer put together a blooper reel. My dad came in to help put it together. They used a shot of me and looped my father’s voice over mine, which was really amazing. I thought it was fantastic. I wasn’t prepared for it. I was looking at myself and there was my father’s voice coming out of my mouth. Boy, was that weird. In addition to all the good reasons I had for quitting, I imagined that it might also bring my father and me closer together. He could be the undisputed star of the family.

I felt better once I’d made up my mind to get out. And it looked to me like the timing was just right. No one would outdraw my last concert tour. I would go out on top. My records were actually selling better than ever in England.
I’d started later in England than the U.S. It was only logical, I suppose, that I would last later there. The British fans really took to me in a way that was gratifying.