I was never a fan of him or his music, but he seemed like a decent enough guy. RIP
Ah sad news, I heard he was in the hospital. RIP sir.
David Cassidy, I think, is one of the great what-ifs in pop and rock history. Setting aside the good looks and some pretty solid chops as an actor able to play light comedy…Cassidy had a tremendous voice. For a while anyway.
At his peak as a solo teen idol, he got fed a lot of crappy material…but also some surprisingly strong stuff that he clearly relished. And as the glint started to fade from the teen idol stuff, he was clearly casting around for someone to work with to write and arrange material of a more serious bent (there’s a great song out there with him collaborating with Mick Ronson, for instance).
Sadly, this was about the same time the drinking and drugs kicked in and derailed all that.
I mean seriously. David Cassidy was one hell of a singer.
Dig:
and a collaboration with Harry Nilsson? Yep.
RIP dude. Wish it had gone better for you.
I don’t even recognize that as him singing. I had no idea. To me he was the guy on TV when I was a kid, who I never heard again. (and he was only 11 years older than me).
Goes to show how much that luck factors into success. He apparently had bad luck after TV.
Agreed…sorry it didn’t go better for him. RIP. Thanks for Partridge Family memories.
@triggercut Holy shit! He sounds incredible in those tracks! Anyone who can hold their own against Harry Nilsson has some serious chops. I was only ever familiar with him from his big hits.
Rest in peace, David Cassidy.
To be clear though, while the teen idol thing was never going to be viable long term, what cost a talented guy a career as a fairly serious artist was his own self destruction. Or, to paraphrase a friend, he not only inherited the good looks and visible self-assuredness of his father, but also his father’s faulty genetics that made substance abuse such a deep trap to fall into.
Hollywood can and will do that to one.
Funny thing, I always got him confused with Shaun Cassidy from the Hardy boys tv series just a bit later. Same hairstyle, tiger beat teen heartthrob, I guess.
I remember David Cassidy from my youth. Of course then I was a Susan Dey fan, my sister was the David Cassidy fan.
I always thought Shirley Jones was his mother, but she was his step mother.
His brother, I think.
Yea…his younger brother who was big a few years later.
I came here to post exactly this, you bastard. Worded slightly different, but exactly the same meaning.
Totally in love with Susan Dey.
Sister in love with David. I believe she still has her high school three-ring binder with a big photo of his face emblazoned across the front and back. Or wait, maybe that was Donny Osmond. She had a crush on them both. Also Frampton. Go figure.
I have “Frampton Comes Alive” memorized because of her constant playing of it back then, and I can still call up anything from it at any moment in my mind. Could have done worse I guess.
Anyway, RIP David Cassidy.
As a Hardy Boy IIRC?
I believe he had a couple of radio pop hits as well.
Da Doo Ron Ron (a remake of a 1960s Crystals song) and “That’s Rock and Roll” (written by the Raspberries Eric Carmen) were the two big AM radio hits for Shaun.
Shaun is a TV producer and writer of some note. American Gothic, Blue Bloods, Emerald City, etc.
OMG! That’s right! I had forgotten that. Great show for its time. Haven’t seen the others you mentioned.
And I thought the two songs you mentioned turned out rather well. Anyway, I kinda liked them back in the day, even though he was singing them. :)
A humorous eulogy for David Cassidy:
But what really surprised me were the comments, of which about 95% did not get the humor, and took the article at face value:
Ouch. Burn!