David Cassidy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Guineveretoo (talk | contribs) at 23:42, 9 January 2008 (He is certainly not "naturally brown headed", and he is not even "naturally brown haired" anymore!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

David Cassidy
File:David Cassidy at Epcot Oct 2007.jpg
Eat to the Beat, Epcot Food & Wine Festival, Orlando, October 2007
Born
David Bruce Cassidy
Years active1968 - present
Height5 ft 7 in (1.70 m)
SpouseSue Shifrin
ChildrenKatie Cassidy and Beau Devin Cassidy
Websitehttp://www.davidcassidy.com
This article is about David Cassidy the actor. For David Cassidy the footballer, see David Cassidy (footballer).

David Bruce Cassidy (born April 12, 1950) is an American actor, singer and guitarist.

Cassidy is perhaps best known for his role as Shirley Jones's oldest son, Keith Partridge, on the popular 1970s musical/situation comedy, The Partridge Family from 1970 to 1974. He subsequently went on to a successful pop career in the mid to late 70s, and still performs on stage on a regular basis.

Biography

Early life

Cassidy was born at Flower and Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York, New York, the son of Irish American actor Jack Cassidy and actress Evelyn Ward.

Career

In his early career Cassidy was featured on Bonanza, Adam-12 and Ironside. In 1970 he took on the part of Keith Partridge, son of Shirley Partridge, who was played by Cassidy's real-life stepmother Shirley Jones. When he was first hired to play Keith on The Partridge Family, he was not slated to actually sing on the recordings. Shortly after production began however, he convinced music producer Wes Farrell that he had a good voice and was promoted to lead singer for the Partridge Family recordings. Once "I Think I Love You" became a hit song, Cassidy began working on his solo albums as well. Within the first year of the show he had produced his own hit single "Cherish" and began concert tours that would feature Partridge tunes and his own hits. He quickly became a teen idol.

Ten albums by The Partridge Family and several solo albums were produced during the run of the show. At his peak, Cassidy was one of the world's highest paid live entertainers. It would be easy to completely underestimate Cassidy's worldwide popularity at the time. His record sales, while declining somewhat in the USA by 1972, were phenomenal everywhere else. His recordings regularly topped the charts around the world with number 1 singles and albums in the UK, Europe, South Africa, Japan and Australia. His concerts were record setting sellouts playing to capacity crowds of thousands of hysterical teenagers in stadiums around the world including Wembley Stadium (6 sold out shows in one weekend), the Houston Astrodome (where he holds the seating record) and the MCG in Australia.

Yet, out of the approximate USD $500 million that The Partridge Family and Cassidy merchandising made internationally, he was allegedly paid only $15,000. It was later claimed that Cassidy's fan club set the all-time record for the most paid-up members of any fan club at any one time. Cassidy's autobiography C'mon Get Happy: Fear And Loathing On The Partridge Family Bus (1994) provides a concise and honest account of most aspects of his pop fame, including contracts, money and his devoted female following.

Rebelling against squeaky-clean Keith, Cassidy shocked his young fans by posing nude in the May 11 1972 edition of Rolling Stone magazine, for Annie Leibovitz.

A turning point in his live rock concerts (while still filming the Partridge Family show) was an incident where a gate stampede resulted in the death of a teenage female fan. At a show in London's White City Stadium on 26 May 1974, 650 fans were injured in a crush at the front of the stage. Thirty were taken to hospital, and one fan, 14 year-old Bernadette Whelan, died on May 30 from her injuries.[1] The ill-fated show was the penultimate date on a world tour. A shaken Cassidy later faced the press. After the incident, the most popular teen idol (of the time) no longer wanted to continue his hectic week-end concert jaunts.

By this point, Cassidy had already decided to quit both touring and acting in The Partridge Family, opting instead to focus entirely on recording and song-writing. International music success continued when he released three critically well-received solo albums on RCA between 1975 and 1977. During this time, Cassidy became the first artist to have a major hit with the song I Write The Songs, a Top 10 record in Europe well before the song became Barry Manilow's signature tune. Cassidy's recording was produced by the song's composer, Bruce Johnston of The Beach Boys.

In the late 70s, Cassidy also starred in an episode of Police Story, for which he received an Emmy nomination. Due to the success of the episode, NBC created a show based on it called David Cassidy: Man Under Cover - but it was not a hit, prompting cancellation after just one season.

Major music success continued with the 1985 Arista release of Last Kiss (#5 in the UK), with backing vocals by George Michael and the album Romance. These recordings went gold in Europe and Australia and Cassidy supported them with a major sellout concert tour of the UK which resulted in the "Greatest Hits Live" compilation of 1986. To the surprise of some, Cassidy returned to the American Top 40 with his 1990 release of Lying To Myself released on the ill-fated Enigma label. In 1998, he had a Top 10 AC hit with No Bridge I Wouldn't Cross from his album Old Trick New Dog. His 2002 CD Then and Now went platinum internationally and returned Cassidy to the Top 5 of the UK album charts for the first time since 1974.

Cassidy has appeared in several Broadway musicals, including a version of Little Johnny Jones (played on-screen by James Cagney) and the original version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat , Time in London's West End, and Blood Brothers opposite Petula Clark and half-brother Shaun Cassidy - among others. In 1996, he replaced Michael Crawford in the Las Vegas show EFX, turning it around with his complete re-write into one of the Strip's favorite hit shows - although Cassidy quit after injuring his foot during a performance. He also created another show called The Rat Pack Is Back, in which he made guest appearances as Bobby Darin, and which ran very successfully. In 2000, he wrote and appeared in the Las Vegas show At The Copa, with Sheena Easton as both the young and old versions of the lead character. In 2005 Cassidy played the manager of Aaron Carter's character in the film Popstar. In 2006 he made a special guest appearance for BBC Children in Need performing live, and then assisting host Terry Wogan with collecting donations from the in-house studio audience.

Since 2002, Cassidy has continued to record and has toured almost continuously around the world, packing in the fans in concert venues both large and intimate across the USA, UK and Australia.

Personal life

Cassidy's first wife was actress Kay Lenz, whom he married in 1977 and divorced in 1982. According to their mutual friend, Sandie Clark, David and Kay were best friends before they married and it just didn't work out. His second wife was South African sports-woman Meryl Tanz, whom he married in 1984. This marriage was short lived, ending in divorce in 1985. On March 30, 1991, Cassidy married his third wife, Sue Shifrin-Cassidy, with whom he has a son, Beau Devin Cassidy. He has a daughter, Katherine, from a previous relationship.

The Globe reported that Cassidy once had sex with Partridge Family co-star Susan Dey.[2] He said he loved the teenage actress like a sister during the time when they were shooting The Partridge Family together, but she was (unbeknownst to Cassidy) in love with him. When the show closed, Dey confided her feelings to the pin-up. The couple slept together just once, but Cassidy regretted it. He told the tabloid The Globe "I find a certain sluttiness very attractive in a woman, and Susan just didn't have it. She was sweetness and innocence, a good girl, and I couldn't think of her as anything but my sister whom I love dearly to this day."[citation needed]. In 1990, Cassidy hired his recalcitrant TV brother Danny Bonaduce to do his intro/ warm-up act.

Cassidy has written another memoir that was published in Great Britain in March, 2007. “Could It Be Forever” tells of Cassidy’s drug use, wild sex, his infatuation with Partridge Family guest star Meredith Baxter, a romp with Barbara the Butter Queen who liked to cover her sex partners with butter, and an encounter with 1950s screen star Gina Lollobrigida. “I’ve always been very comfortable with my sexuality and my brothers call me ‘Donk’ — as in Donkey. People have talked about me being ‘blessed’ in my physique,” Cassidy writes in the book. “The first time [I met Gina Lollobrigida] she looked me up and down and said: ‘I hear you’re a monster. I want to meet the monster.’ Well, I decided that if I had it, there wasn’t any point in just keeping it in the holster all the time.” A spokeswoman for Cassidy said “Could It Be Forever” was published in the UK first because he is still almost as popular there as he was in his heyday. [3]

Discography (solo)

File:Davidcassidy.jpg
David Cassidy, from the opening credits of The Partridge Family

Discography (The Partridge Family)

Filmography

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Cassidy&oldid=183283100"