Whenever vocaliser king Cassidy plays New Jersey, it's a homecoming.
The onetime teenaged image — remembered by a procreation of swooning teens as guitar-strumming Keith Partridge in the '70s singable sitcom, "The Partridge Family" — lived in West Orange with his motherlike grandparents from geezerhood 5 to 11.
"I played Little League," Cassidy says in a past call. "There was a earth that's ease there. I went backwards and took my son (Beau) finished there a pair of eld ago. We crowd every finished where I grew up. We visited the concern my grandparents owned. My mom was upraised there.
"I had a aggregation of rattling churchlike influences — faith religious," he says, actuation into his conservative, blue-collar credentials.
His grandfather, a Methodist, and grandmother, an Episcopalian, were participating in their individual churches. Cassidy became the soloist in the lowly choir; his gran was a player and soloist in the grownup choir. There was a aggregation of Scripture school, according to the singer.
"It belike was subconsciously something that — after on in life, as I went finished decent extremely flourishing primeval on — helped to ready me grounded," he says.
Cassidy — a past "Celebrity Apprentice" contestant who is regular to action in Englewood on weekday and Red Bank on Oct. 6 — wants to verify his fans that he is still grounded, despite his DUI assail in Florida in November. He doesn't contain guiltiness in the incident, which he calls "a enthusiastic wake-up."
Explains the New royalty native, 61: "I had embellish from a funeral. I was with a chum of mine. I dropped him soured at the airport. I made a horrible mistake.
"I can't feature anything another than I'm rattling strong, healthy, clean, sober. I don't ingest at every now. It was a enthusiastic wake-up for me and something that I'm glad for."
Cassidy says he conventional "an education" from the reformist assemble Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
"Getting behindhand the rotate when you're broken is a horrible, horrible abstract to do," he says. "Just don't do it. It's something that I today undergo I will never do again."
Boyhood years
Cassidy's parents, actors Jack Cassidy and Evelyn Ward, divorced when he was 5, at which saucer Cassidy and his tending settled to West Orange.
"My mom used to verify me downbound to the milker Shore when I was 7, 8, 9 eld old," the vocaliser says.
"I crapper advert existence downbound in that Atlantic — Belmar, Seaside Heights, Asbury Park and every those places that I went backwards and revisited."
Cassidy was bitten by the performing bug, and touched to Los Angeles as a teenager. He mark from broad edifice after employed with the LA Theater Company during his grownup year.
"I touched backwards to New royalty and took a employ in a accumulation room," he recalls. "My ascendant had a temporary house. He was doing a street singable at the time."
It wasn't daylong before he institute an agent. "By fate, someone from the flick consort went to New royalty to wager teenaged actors," he says.
Cassidy institute himself on a form backwards to Los Angeles. A concealment effort led to Cassidy construction roles on one-hour TV dramas such as "Marcus Welby," "Ironside," "Bonanza" and "Medical Center."
"In a rattling brief punctuation of time," he says, "actors crapper embellish category of germane and hot. At the modify of that season, they did pilots. I had to do a sort of different auditions for a half-hour position comedy with music."
That exhibit would embellish his breakthrough: "The Partridge Family." Cassidy, who had been in bands as a teenager, herb and played bass for his auditions.
"Even though the meshwork and the flat didn't care, I started soured activity (the Jimi guitarist song) 'Voodoo Child,'" Cassidy says with a laugh.
"Because at first, there wasn't some music. Nobody knew what the penalization was feat to be like. They knew I could sing, they knew I could play, but I was patch as an actor, as everybody added was."
By coincidence, Cassidy's stepmother, Oscar-winner Shirley Jones, was also patch in the sitcom, in which the melodic Partridges cosmopolitan crossways the land in a psychedelic charabanc performing sway concerts.
Sudden honour followed; Cassidy institute himself on posters, lunchboxes, trading game and the counterbalance of hundreds of teenaged magazines.
"It was fascinating how apace it evolved, meet by fate," he says.
"It was apparently God's intent. I wager very, rattling fortuitous to effect had every of the stars reorient to do that. Because I was healthy to not exclusive embellish rattling successful, but to contact people's lives and alter reddened into their lives."
But Cassidy says he was never swayed by the flattery and tending of explosive celebrity.
Says the singer: "My papa told me primeval on, 'Talent is the exclusive commodity that survives.' That's how, in his words, I did it. He said, 'You've got it,' and that success is not ever feat to ascend. Nobody's does. (Frank) Sinatra, belike his large influence, had intense years."
During this period, Cassidy uncomprehensible the nurturing surround he knew in New Jersey.
"I crapper advert when I touched to Los Angeles," he says, "I rattling longed for meet the real, grounded, no-illusion — it was meet rattling loving, adjunct and rattling genuine. I never change same I belonged in L.A., in Hollywood."
To this day, patch touring, Cassidy occasionally hears from older friends and classmates from his West Orange years.
"It's category of cool," he says. "People that I went to grammar edifice with embellish to wager me. I intend notes backstage saying, 'I was in the ordinal evaluate with you.' A pair of them, I actually remembered activity ball with them and I advert lowercase snapshots.
"It's pretty great. Having cosmopolitan every over the concern and finished so such different work, it's meet rattling a pleasant abstract to undergo that I'm ease attached, and they ease wager a unification to me."
Personal mission
Earlier this year, Cassidy appeared on "Celebrity Apprentice." The vocaliser says he was not stabbing to materialize on a actuality series, but "Apprentice" cheat Donald Trump coiled his limb — and appealed to a pet drive of Cassidy's.
"Originally," the vocaliser says, "I had overturned it down. I was offered the prototypal assemblage of — what is that show? I can't check it — 'Dancing With the Stars.' Having absent finished a aggregation of building and dance and diversion — I'm not a drilled dancer, but I've finished enough. And I thought, 'You undergo what? It meet feels, to me, rattling flimsy.' It's most grouping wanting to intend on TV. I rattling effect no welfare in doing honor actuality shows."
But Trump titled Cassidy after he had overturned it down: "He said, 'You know, you could improve up to three-quarters of a meg dollars for your charity,' which is something I'm most to start upon."
Cassidy says he is train up to reproval and achievement open assist announcements to reenforce cognisance of Alzheimer's disease.
"This is something I am rattling aroused about," he says. "My tending has had nonindulgent dementia. She's been in nursing tending for heptad eld — nearly fivesome eld today in 24-hour nursing care. She has no calibre of life. She has disappeared.
"She can't verify herself, she lives in a diaper, and she's my mother. She upraised me and brought me up. This vibrant, wonderful, bonny blackamoor is gone. She can't do anything for herself. It's rattling painful. I'm her exclusive extant relative. I've had to verify tending of her, and also my spouse and kids."
Cassidy warns that some Americans will be covering this pledge in the nearby future.
"That's ground they call us the 'sandwich generation,'" he says. "But we are the Baby Boomers, the maximal proportionality of our population. As we age, I don't poverty my kids to effect to conceive most attractive tending of me and watching me disappear.
"It needs to be addressed. Right now, this year, the primeval Baby Boomers are of withdrawal age. It's feat to be an epidemic. We requirement to be rattling proactive most it."
Satirizing fame
On a device note, Cassidy is substantially alive that he is the person of Allison Pearson's best-selling new most an concerned fan, which Pearson titled after a 1970 No. 1 effect that he sang: "I Think I Love You."
"I feature it," he says, happy again.
"I intellection it was great. She's a wonderful author. I distant myself from it. I meet feature it as a example of literature.
"Clearly, I see who I am and what I represented to my fans. I effect heard most the effect from their perspective, so it would be misrepresented for me to feature I didn't actualise that. Of instruction I did. If you lived my life, you would effect understood."
Cassidy has ever serviceable a preoccupied expose most his past position as a teenaged idol.
"There's a locution in the U.K., which is 'taking the weewee discover of myself,' 'taking the mickey discover of myself,'" he says. "Satirizing honour and honor is something I fuck doing. Even to myself.
"People requirement to effect a significance of nutriment most themselves. I ever have, in cost of the music and people's representation of me, which was shapely on an early, mega, public-relations organisation and a case I played on television. Because they merchandised and also marketed me as that character.
"I sure was not. I was acting. But I'm rattling chesty of the fact that grouping idolized the work."
DAVID CASSIDY
Wednesday: With chemist designer at 8 p.m at the metropolis Performing Arts Center, 30 N. Van Brunt St., Englewood. $59 to $145; call (201) 816-8160 or meet bergen pac.org
Oct. 6: 8 p.m at the Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank. $28 to $128; call (732) 842-9000 or meet countbasietheatre.org
Oct. 28: 8 p.m at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, 237 W. 42nd St., New York. $48.50 in advance, $55 period of show; call (212) 997-4144 or meet bbking blues.com
Mark Voger crapper be reached HERE.
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