Could It Be Forever? My Story by David Cassidy

knows with television, of course; it’s a roll of the dice at best. But everybody felt good about it. It was new and had a lot of things going for it: the humour, the music, the possibility of hit records, the possibility of David becoming a young teen idol. We were aware of all of those possibilities and they all came to be. The music was not my cup of tea, but I figured it was aimed at a younger generation. I was used to singing Broadway and other ‘legit’ music.
    As we got closer to the first broadcast, I started realising that people from coast to coast would see me singing these songs and think that’s the kind of music I was into. The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable and out of control I felt.
    I realised Screen Gems had every intention of trying to market me as a teen idol. When they started talking about all of the merchandise and music they planned to sell, I got really scared. I panicked. I thought:
I don’t want to be a teen idol. I want to be thought of as a serious actor.
    I saw the first teen magazines bearing pictures of me, playing guitar in the Keith Partridge clothes Screen Gems had had custom made. The studio was beginning to craft an image of me as this innocent young singer/guitarist/songwriter. I lost it. That just wasn’t me.
    I called Ruth and said I wanted out. I was only 20 and highly concerned with what other people thought about me. You know, you’re just becoming a man, you’re feeling like,
I want to be cool, I want to be accepted, I don’t want to do cute records for young kids, because that’s not cool.
I didn’t want my friends to think less of me. I got into a lengthy argument with Ruth.
    I tried to tell her, ‘This isn’t me. I’m into Hendrix and B.B. King. And I want to be thought of as a credible artist, perceived, like my father, as a respected, working actor.’
    And she said, ‘You’ll be perceived as a respected, working superstar.’
    I had moved out on my own, done what I wanted to do rather than going to college like everyone else. I’d forged my own way as a struggling actor. And suddenly there’s my dad, stepmother and manager standing before me saying, ‘You’ve got to do it. If you don’t, you’ll be sued. You won’t have an agent. You won’t get jobs. You can forget about keeping that house on Laurel Canyon. Bye-bye, baby!’
    It was at that point that I gave up and said, ‘OK, I’ll do what I’ve got to do.’
    I certainly wasn’t given much, if any, chance to express myself artistically, either on The Partridge Family records or on the solo albums (yes, albums!) I began making under my own name the following year. They were produced by the same producer, also for Bell Records. Contractually, I had to do as I was told. I felt they were using me, and I resented that. As I became more popular, I certainly would have likedto have had some say over what and how I recorded, and what image I projected to the public.
    That said, I’ve also got to acknowledge – as an adult looking back over three decades later – that I have great respect for Farrell and the others who created that music. Farrell didn’t get a lot of recognition for his accomplishments because bubble gum music was not taken seriously. But, I have to say, it was quality bubble gum music. It was innocent but well-crafted. In retrospect, I realise Farrell had a great understanding of the genre. He understood commercial viability and how to translate that into a pop song.
    And Wes had a real instinct for spotting talent. The songwriters he brought to The Partridge Family were gifted pros. As Keith, I was supposed to write all of the Partridge Family songs and I’m sure there were some young fans who believed that. In fact, we used the best songwriters in the field.
    By the time the air date for the first episode of
The Partridge Family
approached – 25 September 1970 – we all felt confident the show would catch on. I was a little skeptical of how my friends would react