Read Could It Be Forever? My Story Online
Authors: David Cassidy
The fallout from the article was so dramatic that I can’t even describe it. I got the message from fan magazines when the editors wrote things like, ‘Well, apparently David was kidnapped and they put a gun to his head.’ I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong then and I don’t think so today. The article was 99 per cent truthful. Everybody reacted. The studio, the network and
The Partridge Family
brass hated it. Today, they’d look at me and think, Y
ou’re the coolest, most fabulous guy on the face of the earth.
They’d love the media attention. In those days, they looked at me and said, ‘What kind of an idiot are you? Why would you do that?’ People’s values and openness were very different then.
Sam Hyman:
I think he pulled the trigger on his career with the
Rolling Stone
article, which was kind of a professional suicide at that time. Subconsciously he wanted to end that part of his life. As for posing nude for the cover, somehow I would think it was Annie’s suggestion and he said, ‘Sure. I got nothin’ to
hide. Here I am. You want all of me, here’s all of me.’ To me, it was somebody crying out, ‘I’ve had enough. I can’t take it any more.’
Sandy Stert Benjamin (associate editor,
Tiger Beat
):
I remember seeing the cover and thinking to myself that it was kind of racy for David, especially the way we had been portraying him. I could see that he was making an effort to break out of the mould. I saw it as a sign that he wanted to be more daring. That signalled to me that he wanted to move on from the teen audience and start showing that he was this 20-something guy in charge of his career and moving in a different direction. He wanted to declare his independence. I remember the general vibe around the office was, ‘He’s changed things and he’s lost fans.’
Jann Wenner:
With David posing nude on the cover of
Rolling Stone
, I got the impression that was how he was planning to escape the TV show. He was really taking a huge, and perhaps fatal, chance with his television career. I think his manager, Ruth Aarons, knew that and was very upset afterwards because she saw that he had just destroyed his career. His advisors said to him, ‘If you do this naked, you’re gonna become so controversial that the sponsors are gonna complain to the network and say, “We won’t go on with this.”’
I think it also had an adverse affect on his audience. David was androgynous and that was so powerful for his teen female audience. Androgynous means someone who’s not sexually threatening. You fall in love with a boy who’s really pretty like
a girl, but the whole idea of having sex isn’t there at 10 or 11 or 12. Once you put yourself out there naked, with your pubic hair showing, it’s sexually threatening. It wasn’t what teen girls or their parents wanted.
The cover is a pretty picture of a pretty boy in a classic, extremely sexually suggestive pose. It’s a really nicely posed picture. You see tons of pictures like that now of male models, underwear ads. It’s standard operating stuff now, it’s everywhere you turn. In comparison to all this modern photography, that cover still stands out as better than most. It was special, with character and quality. The cover photo is beauty à la a great pre-Renaissance portrait of a young boy without the pornographic element or the Calvin Klein thing, which is such a cliché. It stands the test of time on that basis.
It was one of our big controversial issues at the time. Very high profile and high visibility. It did a lot for
Rolling Stone
. There we were dealing with the biggest and broadest level of American culture – television. Not our narrow world of Janis Joplin. Not our narrow world of Van Morrison. Not our small rock world. Here we’re talking about the world of 50 million people watching TV. We were covering one of the American mainstream’s most beloved people. The cover headline, ‘Naked Lunchbox’, is one of my two favourite cover lines of all time. I think it’s just brilliant.
David could have gone on exploiting that teen thing and become some trashy David Hasselhoff type. But the devotion to what he really wanted to do in his life triumphed. I respect that. There’s a residual love for him among his original audience, and for good reason.
In subsequent years, David and I met through mutual friends and got to be friends. We had some really nice nights together. He’s a good guy and a rock and roller at heart.
There are people who still carry around that issue of
Rolling Stone
and think it’s the coolest thing that’s ever been done. It was the first time I spoke as me, which didn’t happen for many, many years. It was real.
The article created tremendous controversy. I’m sure there were plenty of mothers who had never actually seen a copy of
Rolling Stone
in their lives telling each other over coffee or games of bridge or at PTA get-togethers that David Cassidy (scandal of scandals) had exposed himself, posing nude for a notorious
Rolling Stone
article, and had admitted to all kinds of debauchery.
The Partridge Family
was just about the last gasp of real innocence on TV. There were no references to social problems of any kind on the show. Thirty-eight per cent of
The Partridge Family
’s
viewers were children. Many people seemed to feel I’d violated the trust of young America by letting myself be photographed naked and associating myself with booze and pot. They thought I should be a role model for American youth.
I never asked to be a role model. But even so, I must say I was bothered by the writer’s implication that I smoked pot. I’ve admitted that I tried
everythin
g as a teenager – from heroin, cocaine and LSD to the less hard stuff – but, as I’ve said, at the time of the
Rolling Stone
article I was not using any illegal drugs. And the writer
knew
that, but chose to
take the low road. She violated my trust. The pot she’d smelled wasn’t mine and she knew that.
I would hardly have thought that the article’s suggestion that, at 22, I had a sex life would shock anybody. But, surprise, surprise, it did. The article was written in such a vague way that different readers drew different inferences about me. The writer Dennis Cooper, who I’m sure is no dummy (his book
The Tenderness of the Wolves
was nominated for a
Los Angeles Times
Book Prize) concluded that I ‘as much as came out’ as a homosexual in
Rolling Stone
. Of course I’d done nothing of the kind. But I can see how someone could have reached such a conclusion upon reading that I didn’t have a meaningful, long-term relationship with any one woman, and that my roommate was sunning himself nude while I was being interviewed.
Other readers could (and did) just as easily draw another inference – that I was living some sort of hippie lifestyle, and that if I wasn’t involved in any deep, lasting relationship with any
one
woman, I was presumably involved in casual relationships with many. After all,
Rolling Stone
even quoted one woman on my supposed sexual prowess. But heterosexual promiscuity was no more acceptable than homosexuality to the ‘family values’ crowd. The fundamental message was the same: David Cassidy is not at all who we’ve been led to believe. And the last thing a performer wants to do is lose his audience’s trust.
Coca-Cola changed its mind about a David Cassidy TV special they had been planning to sponsor. Up until the
Rolling Stone
article, they’d felt I was as wholesome as Mom’s
apple pie. Now they no longer wanted to be associated with me. They said, ‘We can’t have somebody who’s controversial like that representing our company.’
Bob Hope was committed to doing my TV special and he backed out.
General Mills threatened to stop using me.
And the new, serious rock fans I’d hoped to win by speaking frankly in the respected magazine never materialised. I wondered if I’d ever be able to get older, hard-core music fans to take me seriously.
I never regretted doing the article or the shoot. The only thing I said to anyone was, ‘Don’t fabricate stories and don’t lie.’ A gay magazine, for example, spliced someone else’s body on to the
Rolling Stone
cover photo and it looked like I was holding my tool, only it wasn’t mine. You know, don’t show me as some gay porn star. If you’re going to show me, then show
me
. They even sold posters of it. I was very weirded out by the whole thing.
Ruth cautioned me that I had to be very careful in the future. I couldn’t afford any more blunders like the
Rolling Stone
story and photos. I felt totally spun out.
Shaun Cassidy:
I ended up hiring the writer of the article, Robin Green, on my
American Gothic
TV series. She had a very successful career as a television writer. I remember re-reading the article and, this is coming from the adult perspective of a guy who’d gone through a similar experience, the whole thing felt like a cry for help to me. It was kind of, ‘Get me out of this and leave me alone,’ but also, ‘Listen to me, hear me.’ The
reason why some actresses pose in
Playboy
magazine is that they think it will change their image. It always feels like a stunt and I don’t think it’s ever delivered on the promise for a lot of these people. And I would put David at the time in that category. It got a lot of attention, but I don’t necessarily think it was the kind of attention he wanted.
Ruth, as always, had a solution for my problems. God, how I depended on that woman. She was, I thought, a lifesaver.
She introduced me to a special doctor. She assured me he could work miracles. His clientele included a lot of stars. He exuded confidence. Anxiety could be removed instantly, he said. He had pills for everything. He decided that, in my case, the drug of choice was Valium, which he prescribed like a vitamin. I remember him telling me, as I prepared for my 1973 overseas tour, ‘Before you leave for Europe, make sure you have enough Valium. They’re a necessity.’ And he gave me plenty of it.
During the last year of
The Partridge Family
he had me taking first 20 and later 24 milligrams of Valium a day. It would help my acne, he said. I’d wake up in the morning, go to work and take a Valium. Then another after lunch. And perhaps another ‘as needed’. I felt all right doing this, because the medication was being prescribed for me. And Ruth assured me he was a great doctor. So I didn’t worry about it initially. After all, he was doing this sort of thing for a lot of big celebrities. It wasn’t like I was addicted or anything, I told myself.
There I was, so proud that I was steering clear of all illegal drugs, yet I was seeing this doctor-to-the-stars who was the pill-pusher of all time. He wasn’t doing anything illegal. But there seemed to be something wrong about the whole thing. He insisted we get our prescriptions filled by one particular pharmacist. We all did what we were told. My dad and Shirley, too.
I remember him giving me 100 Quaaludes, saying, ‘Here, these will help you sleep.’ Yeah, with 100 Quaaludes you could get a lot of sleep.
O
n my 1973 European tour I had my own 99-passenger Caravelle jet. There’s something satisfying about knowing you’ve achieved that level of success and power. For my guys, making the trip was like one big party. For me, the concerts were all the same. Everyone but me recognised that my workload was unsustainable.
Variet
y reported that, although my records were selling quite well throughout Europe, my planned concert appearances near Frankfurt had to be cancelled because of poor ticket sales. They pointed out that that was one region in which
The Partridge Family
was not televised, raising the question of how viable an attraction I’d be if I didn’t have the TV show buoying me. Not that I worried much about
that, with the screams ringing in my ears every night and my roadies having no trouble pulling chicks for me.
The British press made a big fuss over the fact that the Queen had invited me to lunch. I’d much rather have met Eric Clapton. I figured it would have been the dullest and most strained lunch imaginable and I had no time for that. So I cancelled the Queen. No offense was intended, although the press could not understand that.
I have to tell you, I have no regrets about having stood the Queen up. Why? Because that was the day I met Sue Shifrin for lunch. She was a singer/songwriter on the same record label I was on. She was invited by David Bridger of Bell Records to one of my Wembley concerts and to hang out with me. The day I was supposed to be meeting the Queen, I was starting a little affair with Sue. At the time, neither of us had any idea about the significance of our getting together. Soon I would be back in America, while Sue would remain in England. Although she’s an American, she lived in England for nine years. Eventually we both went on to other relationships and married other people, but we had a special connection from the start. And 13 years after our first meeting, Sue would become a very important part of my life.
Sue Shifrin Cassidy:
David didn’t come on my radar as a pop star. I was living in England in my own little isolated world as a new songwriter and was very preoccupied with myself, learning a craft and living in a different country. When he came into town I suddenly saw the fuss that was being made over this
person. I was invited to go to Wembley Stadium in 1973 to see him perform because I recorded for the same label.
It was insane. I was brought in by the record company in one of their cars and there were thousands of people outside, lots of young girls. They started to attack the car I was in; it was really frightening. The noise in the stadium was deafening. The place was packed and it was vibrating! I was way back in the balcony and I was standing next to the actor Sal Mineo, who was a really good friend of David. I had seen him in
Exodus
, which was one of my favourites of all time as a kid. Sal was a sweet man and was genuinely thrilled to be there and see all this fuss going on for David. I was standing up there and I saw this guy run out on the stage and he was almost like a dot he was so little. I was so far away. He was wearing a white jumpsuit and he jumped in the air and did a split. He was electrifying, and I said, ‘Oh my God.’ With all the noise, you could hardly hear anything. He started to sing and work the audience and then he sat down at the piano and sang
I Am a Clown
, which is still my favourite song of his. I just love that song. And I just thought,
Wow, this guy’s really talented. I get it.
Afterwards, I was invited to the label party in the penthouse at the Wembley Hotel, right next to the stadium. It was absolutely jammed with people; you couldn’t move. I was wearing this little jean jacket that my mother had embroidered for me, which had a jungle scene with giraffes on the back. I was introduced to a lot of people who worked for the record company. David walked towards me and I was introduced to him. I just thought he was beautiful. He had these thick, mink eyelashes and there was a very sweet quality about him. He was just a sweet young man
in the middle of a hurricane, a monsoon, a typhoon and an earthquake all rolled into one.
I shook his hand and said, ‘Thank you for a wonderful show,’ and he walked away and I went to look for the bathroom. I came out about three minutes later and everybody was gone. Everyone had disappeared. Except for him. I said, ‘Where did everybody go?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I told them all to leave.’ I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ He said, ‘I thought we should get to know each other.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not that kind of girl,’ because I really was a good Jewish girl from Miami.
We actually talked all night long. There was a piano in the suite and I played him a couple of songs that I had written. I remember being nervous, but it was OK. And he said, ‘Gee, those are good.’
Then something happened. And he said to me, ‘Please don’t ever tell anybody that we’ve been together.’ And I swore to him I would never tell anyone, and the only person I did tell was my mother. He and I had a total connection. It was as if we had known each other forever.
To make a long story short, I was seeing somebody else at the time, whom I later married, but whenever David would come to London, he would call me. One time he called me and I told him, ‘I’m living with somebody now. We can’t do this any more, but I want to come and say goodbye to you.’ So I snuck out and went to Brown’s Hotel, where he was staying, and told him that I could never see him again. And I didn’t for a very long time.