I felt my life changing rapidly. It’s hard to convey how big the teen-idol phenomenon got. America’s youth were being conditioned to believe that I was the hottest young actor and singing star, the dream guy that every girl was suddenly supposed to most desire. Sometimes it seemed ridiculous. Walking on the Paramount Pictures lot one day, I was spotted by a couple of the girls from The Brady Bunch. When they saw me, they dropped to their knees and screamed. It didn’t matter that they were featured in a popular TV show themselves—and in fact had been so the year before, when I was just an unknown scuffling for enough work to pay the rent; to them, I was this fantasy figure from the magazine covers.
It was exciting for about the first year, to be the object of so much attention. I could feel my career building: more fan mail and more money for personal appearances. The Partridge Family show steadily picked up viewers as the first season wore on, and attracted even more the second season. Although we drew a family audience, we were especially popular with teens and preteens. And even if I wasn’t drawing a salary commensurate with star status, the public was certainly treating me as the star of that show. In fact, by 1971–72, I had the highest Q rating (a “Q” rating reflects a performer’s likability quotient) of anyone in television.
My record sales were huge. My very first record, “I Think I Love You,” won the National Association of Record Merchandisers’ award for being the biggest-selling single of 1970—even bigger than “Let It Be” by the Beatles, who broke up that year. In the spring of ’71 Bell released “I’ll Meet You Halfway,” the third Top 10 Partridge Family hit single in a row. I took pride in those record sales, even if I wasn’t receiving a dime in royalties. Everything was really rockin’. I felt like I’d gotten on some huge roller coaster that was still just going up, up, up—with some wild twists and drops certain to come. I knew someday they would.
The fans clustering outside the studio gates morning and night were becoming a problem for me, though. To try to avoid them, I started to go in and out by different exits; there were three or four gates I could choose from. But inevitably one or two of the fans would start following me. That became a major pain in the ass. Losing them was really hard.
So I had to start meeting someone every morning about six blocks from the studio gate. I’d leave my car there, lie down on the floor in the back of this other fellow’s car, and ride in through the gate unseen. It became an incredible hassle. People snuck into the studio trying to meet me.
Security at my home became an issue, too. There were women showing up, unannounced, uninvited, at all hours. You might think this is every male’s fantasy come true. (And I’m not going to claim I turned down every opportunity for fun and games that was presented to me—far from it!) But I wanted to maintain some sense of control over my space, over my life. And here, too, I just felt I was losing it. I’m basically a very private person.
If I went out to eat at a popular restaurant, it seemed like the moment I’d get some spaghetti in my mouth, some guy would be standing next to me, demanding, “Come on, come on, give me an autograph. Let me take your picture. It’s for my kid.” And if I didn’t give fans what they asked for, sometimes they’d stomp off saying I was an asshole. I was happy to discover a couple of restaurants that would put me into a private room so I could eat without disturbance—like the Imperial Gardens in Hollywood; I went there a couple of times with John and Yoko.
At heart I was still a teenager. But I’d been given a variety of adult responsibilities. I really wasn’t ready to deal with financial concerns; I’d had no education or preparation in that area. I figured my manager, Ruth Aarons, could take care of such matters for me, although the truth was, Ruth had never really been a money-oriented person herself. She’d always taken care of building her clients’ careers—she was interested in the creative end. She had generally let her brother take care of money matters. However, Ruth’s brother had died shortly before my own career took off. She found other people to manage her clients’ money. I didn’t worry much about who was handling mine—although in time it would become painfully clear I should have. I just had so many other things on my plate.
I was well aware I had become an idol for millions of people. I felt I had to be careful about where I was seen going, what I was seen doing. Could David Cassidy be seen going into this sleazy bar?
I knew I had fans who looked up to me, expected me to have answers for everything—often to a degree that I found uncomfortable. I mean, I certainly didn’t have all the answers. There were people who started quoting me, emulating me. They’d say, “I read that you drink 7-Up and are a vegetarian. Is 7-Up the only thing you’ll drink? Do you not eat meat at all? What exactly do you eat in the morning? Let me jot it down so I can be like you.” I had enough trouble coping with the stresses of life myself, without having to be anyone else’s guru. You may find this hard to believe, but I actually had fans who told me, “I do only what you do.” And, “I moved to Los Angeles just so I could see you.”
For the TV show and concert appearances, of course, I wore whatever shit I was told to—whether some “mod” maroon crushed-velour outfit or a skintight white jumpsuit (often made by the same guy who was making them for Elvis). Those were simply costumes, designed for public consumption. If you saw me walking around on my own time, I liked to wear jeans, a ripped T-shirt, and tennis shoes. That was the real me: a pretty gritty, earthy person. The problem is—when you wind up working eighteen hours a day to perpetuate this public thing, the real person of David Cassidy gradually gets lost. He vanishes. And that’s what I felt was beginning to happen to me.
It became harder for me to do some things that once were so natural, like hanging out with pals. I’d be invited to some old friend’s birthday party and I’d look forward to going and relaxing—just being myself again, like in high school days. I could get sort of nostalgic for the old days. But when I’d get to the party, the whole focus would turn toward me, the “star.” And I didn’t need that! I’d been the focus of attention all day. I needed to be left the fuck alone. “It’s your birthday!” I’d be saying. And, “No, I don’t feel like getting up and singing for everybody tonight. We should all be singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you.” I mean, maybe it took all my energy just to get to the party that night. I just wanted to hang out, the way we used to. I didn’t want to be some star performer and meet new people who treated me sort of funny.
People constantly asking me questions, wanting to talk with me because I’m a success—that could be wearing. It took so much out of me, emotionally and physically, trying to explain to people I’d meet casually that I wasn’t that guy on The Partridge Family. New acquaintances would say they felt like they already knew me because they’d been watching me on TV and reading articles about me. But of course they didn’t know me at all. Not the real David Cassidy, who as a teen had been busy taking acid, hitching around, having sex. How do you explain all this in forty-five seconds? “Hello. I’m not that guy, I’m this guy. I’m not really the sweet, shallow sixteen-year-old you think you know.”
You nod, you say you hear them. You seem to agree with whatever it is they say. Whatever it is they imagine. It’s too much trouble to fight it. You start to tune out. There were some people who assumed that because Sam Hyman and I shared a home and traveled together we were lovers. There’s always going to be some talk about guys who are roommates. I never said a word to encourage or discourage that kind of speculation. You can’t control what people are going to imagine. It’s not worth the effort to try. People could think whatever they wanted.
There was never time for me to read any more than a fraction of the fan mail that I got. But some of it was disturbing—like letters from girls I’d never met who were carrying on lover relationships with me that existed solely in their minds. Writing things like, “David, you’re going to have to stop all of this. I know you’ve been seeing other women. And other men. You have to remain faithful to me. And you really must send me the money I’ve asked for now, or I’ll be forced to come after you.” You couldn’t help wondering if they really might come after you. For there always seemed to be fans underfoot.
Once, I remember being booked to play an auditorium some-place in southern New Jersey. I arrived fifteen minutes before I was supposed to go on and went into this trailer that was to serve as my dressing room. I got out of my street clothes. I’m standing there, naked, looking for a place to take a leak before putting on my stage costume, but this primitive trailer didn’t have a bathroom. All I could find was a big beer cup. So I’ve got old Harry the Horse in one hand and this beer cup in the other. I’m directing a stream of piss into the beer cup when I hear these little squeaky, high-pitched sounds from under the vanity. For a moment I think, What is that? Mice? Rats? Then the laughter. I see these eyes looking at me through an opening in this vanity. It turns out that two girls have been hiding in the trailer for twenty-one hours, waiting to meet me. They’ve stockpiled fruit drinks and bananas under the vanity. And now they’re unable to stop giggling at the sight of their idol, naked, trying to piss into a beer cup. I just lost it. I flipped out. “Get the fuck out of here!” I threw the cup of piss, shouting, “Here I am, babe! Is this what you expected?”
And I wasn’t the only one being pestered by fans. In the first year that The Partridge Family was on the air, my mom moved back to West Orange, New Jersey, to take care of my eighty-one-year-old grandfather. He had lived quietly in that same modest house his entire adult life. My mom told me that kids were coming around, ringing the doorbell all the time, and generally driving my grandfather nuts, because they knew that that was David Cassidy’s old house.
It felt like the only time I could really be me was when I was alone in my room. Sometimes I just craved being by myself. The only time I really had to myself was when I slept or took a crap. And there wasn’t much time to get the sleep I needed. If I didn’t get six hours—and I often didn’t—I’d be irritable. I’d tour every weekend while the TV show was in production. When the show would go on hiatus, I’d tour without pause for weeks at a stretch. Filming The Partridge Family actually occupied about half of the weeks of the year—in the five years that the show was on the air, we filmed a total of ninety-six episodes, an average of fourteen episodes per year—so I had time for extended tours.
I didn’t want my security people to be too heavy-handed in maintaining crowd control. My concerts would draw some very young kids. I always wanted my people to be really careful, really gentle with them. But even young fans could become frenzied and destructive; they could very well scratch my eyes out in attempts to touch me. We were actually more worried about the younger fans than the older ones. I had fans who were in their late teens and twenties. They wouldn’t scream and go berserk the way the younger ones would—as people get older, they tend to get more control over their emotions. The older fans were often more likely to hit upon me sexually, if given an opportunity to do so. The younger fans were more likely to simply get hysterical. Their energies were less focused.
So how do you control kids thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old? You can’t slug them if they get out of line, but you can’t let them run all over you, either. Some of them could be really violent. They could actually wind up killing you, if you weren’t careful. So security on tours became an issue, and many meetings were held about it.
It was expensive carrying all of the people I carried on tours—musicians, security, hangers-on. (Eventually we’d even charter our own flights.) But costs hardly seemed significant at the time. The concert bookings just came pouring in, and they kept getting bigger. My agents never had to solicit bookings for me. They just answered the phones and booked me on as many dates as possible. The more I worked, the more money they made. They took their 10 percent commission on my gross earnings and were very happy. One agency eventually made $800,000 in commissions off me. (Think about it: I had to earn $8 million for them to net that $800,000.) They didn’t have to work at all to get those jobs; in almost every instance, they simply accepted offers that came in over the phone. I was a kid who didn’t know any better, so I went along without questioning. I mean, $800,000 just for answering phones! The gag in the business was that I had the world’s highest-paid answering service.
And I was working almost to the point of exhaustion. When I had to travel for a concert date, I’d get out of bed at the last possible minute, throw two or three things in a bag, along with my toiletries, and go. I’d take no money with me. Even when I began touring abroad, I’d carry no cash. I didn’t need it, because I was never asked to pay for anything. (Ultimately, of course, I paid for all of it.)
I was glad to have Sam and Steve with me when I toured, and also with me when I was at home. (Throughout much of this period, Steve was living with Sam and me.) I trusted them implicitly. Even when things in my life were really a hassle, it helped having these two very close friends to share experiences with me. We all lived well, of course. I had no money worries then. Money seemed to be no object.
I was forced to move in 1971, because too many fans were invading the privacy of my home in the Hollywood Hills. It turned into chaos up there. I’d arrive home and find people living in my house. Or throwing a party. There’d be chicks in the pool, in the house—some of ’em naked, trying to look inviting. Sam and Steve enjoyed the fruits of my success, but we knew we needed someplace with more security.
I bought an old stone house, with a guesthouse behind it, out in Encino, on two and a half choice acres of land, near the reservoir on White Oak Avenue. There was plenty of space here for Sam, Steve, and me. The house was expensive, but thanks to all the concerts I was doing I could afford it. Michael Jackson’s family lived out that way, too. Jimmy Webb lived up the street. This house had been built in 1925. At one time, I’m told, Clark Gable had kept a mistress there. In more recent years, it had belonged to Wally Moon from the Los Angeles Dodgers, and to Chad Stewart from the folkrock duo Chad and Jeremy. It had a huge orange orchard.
Some of my belongings seemed to get lost or left behind in the moving process but I generally didn’t worry much about possessions I lost. I figured most anything could be replaced. There would always be more tours to do, more money to be made. The one item I lost during the moving process that I really regretted losing was the gold record I got for “I Think I Love You.” I never really coveted awards and never put any of my gold records up on display. But still, I would like to have that first one.
I loved the Encino house. It was a great crash pad for me and my friends. Rustic, really beautiful, old hardwood floors. The place had a casual kind of funk to it. No air-conditioning. In the summer we’d just throw open the windows. It felt almost like camping out. The area was still very rural back in ’71. We even had sheep in the meadow above us. To get some privacy, we put up an electric gate with a buzzer, which helped for a short while, anyway. But people seemed to find out where I was living, quickly enough. So many strangers would press the buzzer, so a lot of times I’d simply disconnect it. And too many people seemed to get hold of my phone number, even though it was listed under another name. I needed peace and quiet. I gave a lot of thought to what I could do to get some.
To gain greater privacy, I assumed the alias of Jackson Snipe whenever I needed another alias. The name had always stuck with me, and it felt good using it now.
I got a telephone answering service, but I didn’t tell them I was David Cassidy. To them, I was simply Mr. Jackson Snipe. Then when I’d give my telephone number to people, I’d caution them, “Don’t ask for me—you have to ask for Jackson Snipe.” My friends never forgot the name. They’d call my number, which would be answered by my service. My service would then call me, saying, “Mr. Snipe, I have so-and-so on the phone.” And, if it was someone I wanted to talk to, I could say, “Okay, put him through.”
I also had a direct phone line at the Encino house. But I gave no one the phone number for that line except my manager. Ruth was the only person who could call me direct, without having to go through the service. Well, maybe my mom had the number, too. But no one else. I needed to be able to shut everyone out.
For the concert touring, we had things timed as tightly as possible. If we were flying anywhere within the continental U.S., my roadie would be at my house in a limo just thirty-two minutes before the flight. If we hustled we could make it to LAX in time. We’d have the radio on in the limo. I loved hearing them play my records. But I was so worn-out, I’d usually fall asleep again before the limo even made it from my house to the airport.
When I first began doing concerts, I could walk through airports like any ordinary citizen. But as the TV show grew in popularity and my own following grew, I couldn’t go through the airports anymore; my presence would cause too much commotion. So it was arranged that when I flew anywhere, the police would meet me on the tarmac and escort my limo to a hotel, where I’d go in through a back entrance. In the early days, the band and I would stay at the same hotels. But eventually we found we were attracting so many fans, we had to separate; the band would go to one hotel and I would go to another, trying to maintain as low a profile as possible. Even so, fans would somehow show up at both hotels, causing problems. It finally got to a point where some hotels simply wouldn’t take me; they didn’t want all the aggravation.
I had always tried not to take life too seriously, but it increasingly seemed to be getting serious. I feared I was losing myself with this whole David Cassidy thing. Weeks turned into months. I’d realize I hadn’t had a moment to think, what do I feel like doing? Not get up and function, perform, learn your lines, do the show, do the interview, do the photo session, make the plane, get in the car, get in the helicopter/plane, get to work on time. I felt I was becoming some crazed machine.
Before the first season of The Partridge Family ended, my body began breaking down from overwork. When you’re under stress and completely exhausted and warped and being pushed too hard, your body had to rest. It breaks down in the weakest part of you, which in my case was my gallbladder. I was one of the youngest patients these doctors said they’d ever seen—just twenty-one years old.
One Sunday night I got back from doing a concert. I felt a little funky and went right to bed. About 2:30 in the morning I woke up screaming. I passed a gallstone. The pain was so intolerable, I was jumping around. I started banging my head against the wall to knock myself out. It was forty-five minutes until the doctor got there. I had a big lump on my forehead. I’d never felt pain like that in my life. It was like nothing I’ve ever felt, to this day.
They knocked me out with a shot of Demerol. They put me on this diet, no spice, no fat. I was eating toast and oatmeal, just nothing. It lasted a couple of months, and I really got skinny. I never weighed much to begin with—maybe 125 pounds. I got down to 112 pounds. I was a rail.
Then, after we’d begun the second season, I had another attack, for which I had to be hospitalized. By the time they cut me open and removed my gallbladder, I’d already become jaundiced and it had affected my liver. That was really a close call. I’m very fortunate they got it out in time.
But while I was in the hospital, things got really nutty. It was on the news that I’d been hospitalized, forcing production of The Partridge Family to be suspended. Fans gathered outside the hospital and down in the lobby and started to send me gifts and cards—thousands of them. Some fan broke through security and was heading toward me in intensive care when I was recovering. There was some scare—I was too out of it to understand exactly what was going on—about that fan wanting to put something into my IV. All I can tell you is, for the two weeks I was in the hospital, it was a circus. Fans, family, media. Me on Demerol. Flying. Just flying.
Six weeks after the operation I played the vast Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. But I had to return to work, doing the TV show and the concerts. It was big news that I was working again. I broke the record at the Garden State Arts Center—the biggest single day’s business ever done. The box-office take was huge. Running more on nerves and adrenaline than anything else, I did six shows in one weekend. When I got back home after that weekend, every muscle in my body was fucked. I felt like I got hit by a Mack truck. But I dived right into the same pace I’d had before the gallbladder operation. In some ways it was even heavier. They had me on a stupidly heavy public relations schedule, doing five or six things each day—almost as if to make up for lost time. This was while we were shooting the TV show, of course, and I’d also begun making records under my own name in addition to those under the Partridge Family name. And I was trying to regain my overall strength. I got my weight up to 114 pounds, 116 pounds. But I was still just skin and bones.
I developed a small tumor on my back. It was removed. My face began breaking out in infections, which could not always be hidden with makeup. (I suspect the infections made it even easier for some viewers to identify with me. I can imagine teens worried about their acne saying, “Look at that. Keith Partridge has pimples, too.”) I was put on antibiotics, but the facial infections remained a recurring problem throughout the second, third, and fourth seasons of The Partridge Family. The fundamental cause of them, I’m sure, was simply stress. My body was breaking down under pressures greater than it could withstand. I felt really burned-out.
Around this time my friend Steve started fasting and becoming diet and health conscious. He started getting me interested in it, too. I figured maybe the gallstones, the tumor, the infections, were trying to tell me something. I went on a total nonfat diet. I stopped eating meat. We all started eating natural food. I hadn’t taken drugs since high school really. Giving up foods that weren’t good for me sort of seemed like the next logical step to take. I wanted to feel really cleansed, really pure.
I met this great girl, Kathleen, through a mutual friend, who became my housekeeper. She became instantly like my sister, instantly took care of me. “Let me give you a back rub,” she’d say. It was a totally platonic relationship. I never had any sexual contact with her. We’d love and kiss and hug but no sexuality. She really looked after me.
She saw my dilemma; it was like I was riding a runaway horse. You’ve got to keep riding it—you can’t stop or you fall off. You think of most rock stars smoking and taking drugs. I was the total opposite. I cleaned my body out, was completely pure.
In the end of ’71 and beginning of ’72, I took about two months off. I couldn’t sustain the pace anymore. I said I had to take a break or I’d lose my mind. When you’re working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, you have to be able to let down once in a while or you’ll die. I had no fun, I had no life at home. I couldn’t do recreational things. And at heart, I was basically still a teenager. I was twenty-one. My dick was always hard.
So I vacationed in Italy and France, in towns where I could go unrecognized. The Partridge Family show hadn’t reached there yet, so I could travel like a normal guy. It turned out to be a great experience for me. I read a lot, meditated a lot. I stayed at little inns. No one knew me anywhere. I love to be alone. I thoroughly enjoy my own company. It was just great. I recharged my batteries.
I reached France right before I broke there as a recording artist. I was never that big in France anyway, for some reason. It’s its own market. I don’t know why. Maybe because they’re French.
Then I was to head to England, where the show had been airing and our first album was being released that week. My manager, Ruth Aarons, was to meet me at the airport, along with people from my record company’s British office. The radio had mentioned I was coming in and there was some blip in the newspaper; the record people thought it conceivable that a hundred fans might turn up at the airport.
Flying in, I was thinking, I’ve never been in London before; this is going to be great. I wasn’t thinking about being David Cassidy the “celebrity.” While vacationing in Italy and France, I’d been totally out of that mind-set. I got off the plane in England. And there were all these cops and people standing around. I thought, What’s going on here? Some official, pointing his finger at me, shouted, “Mr. Cassidy! You’re the one that’s caused all this!”
I said, “Excuse me? Are you talking to me?”
He said, “We can’t even bring you through customs.”
I asked, “What are you talking about?”
He said, “You can’t go through passport control.” And I certainly couldn’t—there were far too many people. Thousands of fans had shown up. Over two thousand, I was told. There was no time for me to worry about getting my luggage, they said. More people had turned out at Heathrow for me than had ever turned out for the Beatles or the Jackson Five. It was insane. I hadn’t even been successful there yet.
The authorities rushed me through another part of the airport that was presumably secure, but somehow somebody spotted me, and screams started. People started stampeding. They broke through barriers. The authorities urged me frantically, “Go, go, go!” Fans were screaming at the top of their lungs. We were running down steel stairs; we sounded like a herd of elephants.
Suddenly I started laughing, uncontrollably, hysterically. The cops were looking at me like I’m a fucking fruitcake. They began pushing me, saying, “You don’t understand this! There are thousands of kids out there, and they’re going crazy! Move! Go!”
The whole madness just hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d come to Europe to get away from all of this. The cops threw me into the back of a Daimler that was waiting out on a field. I saw Ruth. I saw Dick Leahy, the managing director of my record label, Bell, in England. And we took off with a police escort. Dick said, “Hello, David. Welcome to London.”
They had me doing press interviews throughout my whole stay in England—from the moment I’d wake up each day until I went to bed. In a week I became a big national name. It was overwhelming. My album, released that week, went right to the top spot.
I stayed at the Dorchester Hotel. By the end of the week, there were 15,000 kids in front of the hotel, stopping traffic on Park Lane. It was on the news.
The unusual thing about the English fans is that they would sing. From about seven to ten every night, they’d be like serenading me, outside my hotel. For teenagers to be out alone that late, with buttons and banners, singing all my songs—it was incredible.
You couldn’t get in and out of the Dorchester. Fans were getting crushed trying to push through the revolving doors. The management of the hotel was aghast. This in 1971 was an English hotel, run in a very proper, thoroughly British fashion. The idea that I was causing all this commotion was totally unacceptable.
That was the last time I would be able to stay at a London hotel for the entire 1970s. No hotel would have me after that. The next time I went to England I ended up on a yacht because no hotel would have me after what had happened on this first trip. And it got worse!
In my concert tours in the U.S. and abroad, I visited many different places, although I can’t say I actually saw many of them. For security reasons, it was often necessary for me to just stay put in my hotel room when not performing. If I were to try to even walk through the hotel lobby, fans might riot. Thus I began feeling more and more removed from the band, from my friends, from the world. I became isolated.
As the tours became bigger, the more isolated I got, the lonelier I got, the more I wanted somebody’s company, and the more I found myself sitting in my room watching TV while the rest of my entourage was partying.
Everything had to come to me. That was when it became a difficult issue: who to bring into the inner circle. Is this person trustworthy? What is this person’s motivation?
I started to become more and more hyper and anxious about shit as things evolved. I was perpetuating something that I didn’t want.
I didn’t know what to do. This thing was gaining momentum weekly, daily. I was getting more famous. I was becoming less and less me and more and more this guy whom people perceived as Keith Partridge.
I no longer trusted anybody. Everyone I met wanted me for my sex, or for their alignment to me to make themselves more important, to be with someone that famous and successful. Or for money, to enhance their own personal wealth. And it became very difficult to decipher if there was anyone I could trust beyond the original guys I knew, like Sam and Steve—who I knew were around simply because I liked them and they liked me. I distanced myself from almost everyone. It took me a long time after the Partridge Family years to regain trust in anyone.
I had long since disliked people’s reaction to me. I was embarrassed when people started screaming just because they saw me. And the more famous and successful I became, the bigger the arenas and the more shows I did, the more difficult it all started becoming for me. I felt I suddenly understood—I could never conceive of a reason before—why the Beatles had broken up, why they were saying they never wanted to go out on the road again, regardless of public demand. I really learned the downside of being a rock star when I became the deal. No matter how pleasurable it might be for that one hour of the day you were performing onstage, the other twenty-three hours of the day were going to be impossible to cope with. They were hell.