I was a card-carrying member of the David Cassidy fan club. After sending off a few dollars in the mail, a tiny, red wallet card arrived, telling me I was, officially, one of his followers. If you witnessed his stardom, you know it was... fandemonium. I wore the love beads (he sent them to me! ME!). Several years later, I was gifted with his signed autobiography. The book was, as you might expect, a Faustian tale, trading semi-obscurity for unimaginable, sometimes dangerous, fame.
Becky and the Swingin' Bards did an adhoc version of "I Think I Love You" (upon request, an unexpected musical dare) a year or so ago at Main Streets Market & Cafe. Enough time had passed for the song to enter the sphere of "unexpectedly charming" rather than "WTF cheesy."
I’m not sure I understand why his death so saddens me. The music was catchy but not memorable. We all know I love a good, dopey pop song. His songs weren't the best or the dopiest (check out Alan O'Day's "Undercover Angel" for a tasty confection!). The music didn't change me in the way, say, Jackson Browne altered my world when I saw him on stage. I was 13. Stunned by Browne's song "Jamaica, Say You Will," I thought: "I want to be a musician."
Cassidy was prettier than all of us, so that wasn’t the lure. He was the cousin I could dream about, a sanitized hippie with nice manners, safely removed from the scarier, hairier variety. A clean little object of affection for an eleven year old girl who was afraid of everything. How to put David Cassidy in context? Let's blame it on mortal juxtaposition.
Charles Manson also died this week. Manson scared the crap out of me, launching evil right down the freeway from my childhood home. As a kid of the sixties, I watched news channels spew political assassinations and Vietnam at 6:00pm, but when that entitled, dirty bunch of drug-addled assholes murdered Southern Californians in their sleep and wrote on the walls with blood, the world seemed truly, TRULY unsafe. And insane.
These two public figures are gone in the same week.
One brought terror into my little girl heart, and left me fearful that the justice system might rationalize their freedom some day.
The other, with his swingy hair cut and faux family in a custom-painted bus, brought peace and butterflies and safe little love songs. Behind the music, life for Cassidy wasn't very Partridge Family-like. He was as human as any of us. But -- back then -- he was safely cool, flipping his hair, walking with his signature step, and singing about love and longing.
I am grateful for his image, that fictional boy/man, who loved his television family and followed his muse. He paid over and over for his stardom, and I wonder if it was all worth it.
And so on December 9, the band may just -- once again -- perform a musical tribute to someone who did no harm and, in fact, may have mended a little girl's heart -- just for a bit.
