Could It Be Forever? My Story (12 page)

Once the show went on the air, it became hard for me even to get into the studio in the morning. In the fall of 1970 there’d routinely be 40 or 50 fans crowding the entrance. Some of the more aggressive girls would bare their breasts, some would follow me while I drove home after working all day. There were girls who’d spend days and nights outside the studio, some even sleeping there. I’d try to smile pleasantly, but I was thinking,
Go home, do something with your lives, don’t stand here all day, every day waiting for me.

With all of the publicity exposure, it became impossible for me to go in a store or even walk down a street without being stopped by people. At first I enjoyed the sheer novelty
of having fans. Quickly I began to sense problems ahead. When you’re young, you always believe your dreams will come true even if you don’t know how. I had seen my career turning out very differently. I foresaw that my father would be proud of me and I would work in the theatre and become a good working actor. Success would simply be recognition of my talent. Being famous was not my goal. My dad was very pro paying your dues and I think part of him felt like I hadn’t paid enough dues and that I hadn’t struggled enough. My struggle lasted only two years as opposed to his 20 years of hard work. I had no idea people would react the way they did and that my career would go the way it did.

The teen magazines, which were whipping up frenzied interest in me with their articles, were also running ads telling kids to send in their money and join the official David Cassidy fan club. Or buy David Cassidy love musk. Or David Cassidy love beads. A whole group of these teen magazines was beating the drums, informing the youth of America that David Cassidy was now
it
, the new star they should idolise. Watch his show! Buy his records! Buy anything associated with his name or likeness!

Probably six months into
The Partridge Family
being on the air, I called Chuck Laufer, who was the owner and publisher of two teen magazines –
Tiger Beat
and
Rave
. He also put out
The David Cassidy Magazine
,
The Partridge Family Magazine
and ran the fan clubs and all of the rest of it.

I went into his office and said, ‘I can’t live like this any more. I want you to take me out of your magazines. Take me off your covers.’ And he looked at me and laughed, in a kind sort of way.

He said, ‘Son, you’re very naïve. I’ll tell you what, you’re a nice kid. We paid a lot of money for the rights to your name.’

I said, ‘You didn’t talk to me about it.’

And he said, ‘I didn’t have to. You’re what makes our business work. We’ve waited since The Monkees for you. You can either just strap yourself in and enjoy the ride or make it difficult for yourself and we’ll do what we want to anyway, and it will be uncomfortable for all of us. And
Screen Gems might see it as counterproductive. So you make the choice. This business is what I do and you have no control over it.’

So I went along with it begrudgingly. Again, I had no control. And it depressed the hell out of me.

My friends were brutal about me being in the teen magazines. They laughed at me and tortured me beyond belief. To them, I was a joke. They’d say, ‘Who does David dream about and why is he drooling on his pillowcase?’ Those magazines were made for little kids.

Laufer was using his magazines to build me up, to fire up further interest in me, because he’d acquired certain marketing rights from Screen Gems. All the readers who sent in money to join the David Cassidy fan club were – whether they knew it or not – putting money into his
pockets, not mine. I never saw a cent. If he could help create enough interest in me to justify publishing new magazines devoted exclusively to
The Partridge Family
– and he had acquired the rights to do just that – it would mean that much more income for him. If fans were willing to spend the little money they had on David Cassidy bubble gum or beads or anything else, that was all right by him. If kids were convinced they had to be David Cassidy fans to be ‘with it’, he would reap the rewards. Essentially what he said to me boiled down to, ‘Look, David, I’m a flesh peddler. You happen to be the flavour of the month.’ Little did he, or I, know that month would last three years.

I felt this man was a parasite, growing rich off the public interest in me. He eventually told me, ‘Since I’ve been in the business, you are the biggest single money earner for us. You’ve generated the most mail of any single person who has been in the business.’ He said that the Elvis fan club was the biggest at one time, then the Beatles, and then mine took over the top spot. Eventually, I think it was the Bee Gees that knocked me off.

Considering all the publicity I was getting, I’m sure a lot of people assumed I was making a bundle. But in the fall of 1970, as a star of a popular TV show, I was receiving only the $600 a week I’d originally negotiated, out of which, of course, my agent took ten per cent, my manager took fifteen per cent, and so on. That was it. I received no advances or royalties for making the records. The only guaranteed work I actually had at that point, despite the long-term contract I had with Screen Gems, was one half-season
– 13 episodes – of
The Partridge Family
. As public interest warranted, the show would be extended, one half-season at a time.

At the studio I certainly wasn’t given star treatment. If I complained about one thing or another, I’m sure the execs considered me ‘difficult’. Their attitude was summed up by this remark, ‘You’d better toe the line or we’ll go out and pull another David Cassidy off the rack.’ They made it perfectly clear they considered me – initially, at least – just some interchangeable cog in the grand machinery that they’d built. But I knew the public was responding to
me,
to what
I
had to offer. I wanted to be shown a certain amount of respect.

I tried to talk to them about some of the songs they wanted me to sing. When I heard
Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted
, I finally flipped out. I didn’t like the song and I didn’t like the vary-speed vocals. Again, it was, ‘We don’t want you to be
you
. We don’t want people to know
you
.’

I hated the idea that they wanted me to talk rather than sing in the middle of it. That talking-over-the-music routine was old when Elvis did it on
Are You
Lonesome
Tonight?

I said, ‘This is crass commercialism. It’s hype. It’s jive. It isn’t me.’

Wes Farrell freaked out. ‘You can’t do this!’ he shouted. I had no say in what I was to perform; I was just supposed to follow orders. I’d never been good at following orders.

I almost quit the show over the issue. They brought my manager and agent down to the studio. It turned into a
nightmare. They actually stopped the shooting of
The Partridge Family
so that my manager could talk to me.

She insisted, ‘David, you’ve got to do that spoken thing.’

I said, ‘I’m not doing it, it’s the kiss of death.’

Everybody got involved: the head of Bell Records, the head of Screen Gems, the head of Columbia Pictures Industries. It was like, suddenly, I was some big problem to them because I didn’t want to do this one thing. I was saying, ‘Look, I don’t believe in it. I don’t think it adds anything to the record.’ And they were saying how many more copies they’d be able to sell if I’d talk. That was the bottom line.

They put the pressure on me until I caved. I recorded it exactly the way they dictated. It was horrible. I was embarrassed by it. I begged them not to release it. I still can’t listen to it. And, to make matters worse, Farrell used his trick of altering the tape speed to make my voice sound higher than it really was.

But the public loved it. That record wound up on the
Billboard
charts for 12 weeks, peaking at number six, and
Cash Box
had it on the charts for 13 weeks, peaking at number one. Bell Records sold nearly two million singles. I still get requests to sing that song today.

A sitcom with music is more complicated to film than a standard sitcom. And the presence of so many young and inexperienced actors in our cast meant the show took even longer than normal to shoot. In the beginning it would take us six or seven days to complete shooting one episode, and then the cycle would start right up again. I was glad when
we seemed to find our stride and could complete an episode in five days. I imagined I’d have weekends free. Yeah, right!

If I had any free time, it soon became clear that I’d be expected to work to promote the show and the records. In the fall of 1970, I went to my first autograph signing, in a store about an hour from Los Angeles. Until I stepped through the door, I couldn’t see that there were thousands of kids waiting for me. I’ll never forget the screams they let out the moment they saw me. That was the first time I’d ever heard anything like that. I was stunned. I spent three hours signing autographs and only got to half of them.

It was like that every minute of every day. I couldn’t get into a venue, I couldn’t go anywhere without signing autographs and having photographs taken. It was overwhelming. I never thought signing autographs was fun, although I’ve always appreciated my fans. I really respected Paul Newman when he made the decision to stop, saying, ‘I’m not doing that any more. I’ve done it for 30 years.’

I’ve signed my name thousands and thousands of times over the last 35 years. I continue to do it because I know it means something to people and I care about them and appreciate what they’ve contributed to my life. At every concert, I sign probably 50 to 100 pictures backstage for the promoters, their friends, the sponsors and all the rest of it. And I won’t just sign my name. I like to personalise every autograph. For one thing, I like to connect with the person, and I don’t want to see one more thing of mine on eBay.

Ruth didn’t know anything about the record business or the teen idol business; she’d had no experience with that.
Her clients were all older, respected, established figures in the industry. When she saw those screaming fans at that first autograph signing, she began to realise just how big my career could be. None of her other clients had ever elicited screams like that from fans. Ruth felt that young fans were reacting to me in a way that was unique. The $600 a week I was receiving for the TV show was insignificant, she concluded. She began focusing on the rock concert business as a potentially greater money-maker for me.

With hits like
Proud Mary
and
Bad Moon Rising
in 1970, Credence Clearwater Revival was the hottest American rock group around. One day Ruth told me, ‘Credence Clearwater just gave a concert that was huge – they got $50,000 for one night. I’m going to get
you
$50,000 a night.’

I thought,
What, is she crazy?
I’d never sung in public. And with the TV show eating up all my time, I wouldn’t even have time to prepare an act.

The first concert booking she got me – an 8,000-seat auditorium in Seattle, in October 1970 – was for $8,000. True, that wasn’t $50,000 but it sounded astronomical to a guy who was making just $600 a week. I couldn’t help thinking,
My only previous performing experience has been limited to friends’ garages and rooms, jamming on the blues and numbers by Led Zeppelin, Cream, Hendrix – absolutely nothing like what I’ll be expected to do now. What am I going to play?

Other bookings began pouring in, unsolicited, due to the popularity of the TV show and records. In two weeks my first Partridge Family album had gone platinum, which meant it had sold one million copies. In Seattle,
I Think I Love You
was a number one hit and by that time
Doesn’t Somebody Want to Be Wanted
had sold something like a million and a half copies
.
I had two hit singles and the first Partridge Family album and my fans knew every track. Ruth said I could count on spending every weekend doing concerts – two a day.