AP: In interviews at the time you said—
DC: [Getting angry now.] They weren’t accurate. I read things I never said.
AP: So, lots of that stuff that I thought I knew about you was made up by other people?
DC: All of it. Pretty much all of it. They’re going to write ten thousand stories in a hundred magazines that are all contrived for their audience of young teenagers, so at the beginning of the year, they’d come in and I’d give them all like an hour. They’d ask me a bunch of questions that were so silly: What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite drink? After a few times, you start making stuff up. What do you eat for breakfast? “Oh, ketchup and ice cream.” You think, I can’t do this shit anymore.
AP: Is it a hard thing to recover from?
DC: You don’t ever recover. It’s how you understand it, address it and move on from it. There’s always the scar. It’s just that when I push on it now it doesn’t hurt me so bad. If you’re in a corporation you climb up and you become head of department. They don’t give you a gold watch in my profession. You’re a god who no one wants to employ anymore, because you’re too old. That’s the saddest thing for me, watching the Oscars and seeing people you idolized so much getting treated like that because they’re old.
AP: What was it like after you quit?
DC: I said, no more recording sessions, no more TV. It’s very dark. It’s like you’ve fallen down the abyss and it’s very strange. I stayed indoors a lot in my little compound. I wasn’t a very happy camper at the time and was kind of lost.
AP: When I come here and meet you after all this time …
DC: I’m just some fifty-year-old guy. You don’t give a shit, right?
AP: On the contrary. We’re all getting older. One day, years from now, I’m going to be in my kitchen at home and I’m going to turn on the radio and they’ll say that David Cassidy, the seventies teen idol, has died. It will be an incrediby poignant and resonant moment for me and for millions of other women around the world. You are one of the ways we measure out our lives.
DC: A small part of you dies with me?
AP: I believe that.
DC: That’s why I’ve never taken it lightly. I think it is meaningful.
AP: Do you feel stuck in time? There must be moments when people are pestering you to do the old songs. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t want to move on.
DC: I spent ten years going, No, no, I won’t do that cos I don’t want you to think that I’m still back there. I’m not there. I don’t want to stay there just to make you feel good. I have to have a present, otherwise I’m just a relic. And I’ll never be a relic. That’s why I won’t be in an oldies show, I’ll never do that.
Will I do my hits? I’d love to sing them, they’re great songs, but I couldn’t do them till I had a present, understand? For me, saying this is what I do now, this something that may not have the impact the other stuff had, but it’ll never have that impact because you’ll never be thirteen again, I’ll never be twenty again.
AP: If you sing “Could It Be Forever” now, are you reconnecting with the young David Cassidy or are you singing it with an adult sensibility?
DC: I didn’t do my hits from ’74 to ’85. Never. I had to relearn them. Seriously. Two years ago, I went back and rerecorded all my hits on the Then and Now album—going in the studio and singing songs you haven’t sung for twenty-five years. Same studio, same microphone, same players—it was emotional. I’m singing these songs as a different guy, I can’t possibly sound like I sounded when I was twenty-three, twenty-four. I have to sound like I’m fifty, fifty-two.
AP: Actually, your voice hasn’t changed that much.
DC: No, but it’s impossible for me to be nineteen again, to be that innocent in life, [so open] to hurt and pain and relationships. I have so much more voice now, to be able to find that purity, like your skin is at nineteen, you’ll never get that back. I tried to be true to the material. I tried to be gentler.
AP: Which songs from that period do you really like?
DC: “How Can I Be Sure,” “Cherish,” “I Think I Love You.”
AP: How come from all the record sales and merchandise your face sold you didn’t make gazillions of dollars?
DC: Record companies are set up to steal. They do it at every point, from packaging to promotion. It’s a corrupt business and it always has been. They’ve never, in the history of the recording business, made a mistake in the artist’s favor.
They say to you, Okay, you can audit us. It’s going to cost one hundred fifty thousand to two hundred fifty thousand dollars of your own money to audit us. If you’re lucky. So we’ll settle for X amount instead of going through that nightmare. In the end, they have ways of stealing you don’t really know. They’re making money on everything and you never know what the real sales were.…
AP: They owned your likeness.
DC: I should have made a hundred million dollars based on the merchandising. If the corporations had a conscience, they’d write me a check today, but not a dime. I said, I have eleven compilation albums here and you were allowed only four in my original contract.
AP: You can sue them?
DC: [Plaintive and sad.] Well, how do you prove it? This record company was bought by that record company … I was in three lawsuits at one time. I just want what it says on the paper. Don’t do this to me …
AP: Do you think getting older is harder for you because people have this perfect memory of you?
DC: Yup, I think it is harder. It’s not like, poor me because what I have and what I get to do … [He starts twiddling unhappily on a guitar.] Yeah, it is hard.
AP: People judge you?
DC: “Hey, how come you don’t grow your hair back? Have you ever thought of getting your hair back?” [He winces.] I get it all the time. Same with Farrah Fawcett, icon of a generation. That’s the problem. They say, “Oh, I saw a picture of her recently, it’s sooo sad.” I can’t stand the idea of that being said about me. Hey, people get older. People relate to Robert Redford because of the way he looked at a certain age when he was a young man. That’s the thing he has to constantly be measured against. Sixty happens. They do it maliciously and it’s cruel, it’s mean-spirited. People love to be shocked and they love to see other people come down. “See, he’s not that handsome [anymore]!”
AP: Do you ever meet people and think they’re disappointed in you?
DC: Yup. “Why don’t you look like I remember you at nineteen?” Well, I tryyyy. Dare I say it, how old are you? I’ve got fans with pics of me meeting them back in the seventies—these sweet little innocent girls, twenty-five years have gone by and they don’t look anything like that. NOTHING like that. I was already a full-grown person. Can we ever look like we did when we were twenty when we’re fifty?
AP: All right, there’s something I need to check with you before I go. It’s really important. David Cassidy, was your favorite color ever brown?
DC: Brown? Never. No.
AP: For eighteen months I wore nothing but brown because I read in a magazine it was your favorite color.
DC: [Explodes with laughter.] Allison, it was all made up!
AP: [Laughing also.] That poor trusting girl living in South Wales … I looked terrible in brown. So help me God, I looked yellow in brown.
DC: It was never a great color on me, either. Do you see brown on me? Do I look like someone whose favorite color is brown?
Acknowledgments
Writing a novel is a long and lonely business. Certain people make it less lonely. Joanna Lewis was a constant comic inspiration and a reminder of the country we were both so lucky to be born in. While I was in South Wales worshipping David Cassidy, Sharon Dizenhuz was kissing his picture in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sharon’s American perspective, along with her glorious wit and wisdom, were invaluable in helping me get started. When it looked like I might never finish, Louise Swarbrick propelled me across the finish line by sheer strength of character.
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sp; Caroline Michel at PFD has shown incredible patience and never stopped believing. I don’t know how she does it. Jordan Pavlin, at Knopf, worked her editorial magic and made this book the best it could be. As did Clara Farmer at Chatto & Windus, who held her nerve—and mine.
I want to thank David Cassidy himself for his kind encouragement. David’s autobiography, C’mon Get Happy (Time Warner), was an invaluable source of information. Thanks must also go to all the Cassidy fans who shared their memories, particularly Judith Frame. I would love to hear from any more fans out there. You can reach me via the Allison Pearson page on Facebook, follow me on Twitter @allisonpearson or e-mail me at [email protected].
Special gratitude is due to Barry McCann, a walking encyclopedia of popular culture. Barry’s e-mail on “Cursing in the Seventies” deserves a book to itself. Tim de Lisle, another expert in the field, led me to Bill. Many others offered support and valuable suggestions: my American agent, Joy Harris; Cara Stein; Alison Samuel; Miranda Richards; Emma Robarts; Catherine Humphries; Jane Bird; Christobel Kent; Naomi Benson; Belinda Bamber; David Bamber; Julia Bamber; Lisa Collins; Caroline Dunn; Mary Hitch; Carolina Gonzalez-Carvajal; Philippa Lowthorpe; Laura Morris; Daniel Newell; Ysenda Maxtone Graham; Jane McCann; Anne McElvoy; Isolde Ivens; Professor Jon Parry; Anne Polhill Walton; Hilary Rosen; Christine Ford; Jeffrey Carton; and Natasha Walter. In Wales, I need to thank my mother, who made this book possible, and to salute the memory of her friend Jean Thomas, a fine artist and a lovely woman. I am also grateful to Eiry Evans and Edna and Dafydd Jenkins. Cymru am byth!
Nicola Jeal provided a fascinating insight into the world of magazines. At the Daily Mail, Tobyn Andreae and Maureen O’Donnell gave a five-star service to the struggling author.
The case history of Ashley, which Petra writes, is purely fictional, though I drew on the remarkable Case Studies in Music Therapy, edited by Kenneth E. Bruscia (Barcelona) and, from the same publisher, Psychodynamic Music Therapy, edited by Susan Hadley.
For thoughts on teaching and playing the cello, I am indebted to the great cellist Natalie Clein. Trevor Robbins, professor of cognitive neuroscience at Cambridge, shared stimulating ideas on music and the brain. The wonderful Nordoff Robbins London Centre in Kentish Town, North London helped me to understand the transformative power of music therapy.
At home, my own personal music therapy was provided by the songbirds Evie and Thomas Lane. “Have you finished your book yet, mum?” I have now, and I’m all yours.
While I was failing to write this novel, my agent, Pat Kavanagh, died unexpectedly. Pat would have been a remarkable woman in any century. Not just because she was beautiful, although she was certainly beautiful, but because she didn’t fear the truth and spoke it on a regular basis. I have missed Pat’s cool judgment, her praise, all the more precious for being hard-won, and the ripple of amusement in that lovely low voice.
Finally, I am lucky to have personal access to one of the world’s great critics. Lucky and unlucky. Anthony Lane sets the bar very high. I can never repay his love, encouragement and furious margin notes.
Picky is always good.
Allison Pearson,
Cambridge, Easter 2010
PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Lyrics from “Daydreamer” used with kind permission of the composer Terry Dempsey and publisher Angela Music Publishing Co. (Pty) Ltd.; “I Think I Love You” words and music by Tony Romeo © 1970. Reproduced by permission of Screen-Gems EMI Music Inc., London W8 5SW; “Cherish” words and music by Terry Kirkman © 1965. Reproduced by permission of Beechwood Music Corporation, London W8 5SW; “How Can I Be Sure” words and music by Edward J. Brigati and Felix Cavaliere © 1967. Reproduced by permission of EMI Entertainment World Inc., London W8 5SW; “(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden” © 1971 Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Extract from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot © the Estate of T. S. Eliot, reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Allison Pearson, an award-winning journalist and author, is a staff writer for the London Daily Telegraph. Her first novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It, became an international best seller and was translated into thirty-two languages. She is a patron of Camfed, a charity that supports the education of thousands of African girls. Pearson lives in Cambridge with her husband and their two children.
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