Suddenly, the rush is back with us. Rodney Bewes yesterday, David Cassidy today, and I didn’t even mention Jana Novotna, one of the nicest Wimbledon winners there’s ever been, on Monday. It’s like being back in 2016 again.
I confess that David Cassidy was not a favourite of mine in any way. I certainly never liked his music, and this was emphasised by the cover versions he recorded of two of the sweetest pop ballads of the Sixties, The Association’s ‘Cherish’ and The Rascals’s ‘How Can I Be Sure?’, which he took to No. 1 over here.
As a singer, he was one for the little girls. My ex-wife once told me that, at school, it was like tribes: there were the Osmonds, the Jacksons and David Cassidy and you had to take sides, even if you had no real preferences any way. She chose the Osmonds because that was who most of her friends had picked. No, not my thing, even at that semi-nascent stage of my musical development.
But we used to watch The Partridge Family each week, and I didn’t object, so I must have found it funny to some degree, though I expect I’d find it all a hideous experience now, though I’d probably find myself fancying Shirley Jones more than the young Susan Dey if I did.
Jones was Cassidy’s stepmother. His daughter, I have learned today, was Katie Cassidy, of Arrow, though they were estranged.
David Cassidy was never in any sense someone who I cared about, but for all that he’s no less a part of the web of memories that constitute part of my life, and he’s another one down. And I don’t like the way the toll is accelerating again.
Martin Crookall - Author For Sale 