Love Is All That I Ever Needed. A David Cassidy Biography. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Sex, Drugs and Rock&Roll

David Cassidy was a child of the 60s. It was his decade. 

He wrote, “To me, the 60s were about freedom.” To the end of his days, he was a hippie at heart. He believed in everything that was fought for during that decade: civil rights, feminism, gay rights movements. He was anti war. He believed in freedom of speech and choice. And there was also new exciting music. And drugs. And sex. The Summer of Love.

What’s more he lived in Los Angeles, California, the best place to be in the 60s for a teenager. Especially for someone like David - always ready for a new experience and eager to try everything. It was the happiest and the most carefree decade of his life. 

On February 9, 1964 The Beatles sang ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ on the Ed Sullivan Show. A generational event, watched by 73 million Americans. David already played drums and started learning guitar. After watching The Beatles, he begged his mum to let him have an electric guitar. 

He didn’t dream about being a professional musician or a rock star. He just loved playing music. All over the world, millions of teens played in garage bands. David was one of them and wanted to play in a band with his friends. 

Friends became very important. In 1962, while in his first year at Emerson Junior High, through a mutual friend he met a boy, who became a very special person for him. During his life David had many short, very intensive friendships, which very often resulted from working together. New projects meant new friends. The friendship with Sam Hyman was another kind. He became a lifelong friend David could always count on. 

At first they were just acquaintances. In the fall of 1964, Sam joined David at Emerson Junior High and they became very close. Sam lived only a mile and a half from David. In 1965 they began high school together at University High, but David was expelled from it, and later from another school. Next he went to a continuation school and at last finished his education at Rexford. 

In an interview from 2012, Sam Hyman told Mark Wyckoff, “David went to quite a few high schools - and not because he was recruited,” Hyman said, laughing, “He wouldn’t wake up in time to make it to class, and they’d kick him out.”

They were the same age. Sam was born in May 1950. They both loved surfing and had similar, difficult relationships with their fathers - both named Jack. Sam’s dad died in the late 60s. The boys were spending a lot of time together, just having fun. They hit the waves, picked up girls, went to concerts, and listened to music. After school they wore what they wanted, and Evelyn let her beautiful son wear his hair long and dyed it blond when he was at the private high school. 

They also started playing music. In 1965, they formed their own band called the Pains of Glass 15 and even once performed in a club. David played drums and sang, Sam played the   rhythm guitar, and another boy tried playing the lead guitar. They did covers. Sam told Mark Wyckoff that, “It was pretty terrible,” and was happy that no one had recorded their first show. 

David Cassidy said many times that in the 60s he wasn’t a bad boy - just wild. At 13 he was small, very slim, had beautiful, expressive hazel eyes, long lashes and a captivating smile. He looked sweet and innocent. He was polite and could be very charming when he wanted. And very secretive. He did many things his parents had no idea about. He wrote in his book, “I had an appetite for living on the edge from the time I was 13 or so.” and “I was very good at being a teenager, I was good at getting away with anything - staying out all night, messing around, lying to my parents, all the while trying desperately to act older than I was.”

All rules provoked him to do the opposite. 

David started regularly smoking cigarettes when he was 13. He was restless and prone to mischief. He loved stealing bicycles. Just for fun and excitement. After several days he returned those bikes, but nevertheless he was stealing. If David had been caught the consequences would have been very serious. He was a terrible student, didn’t learn, didn’t do homework, and was addicted to truancy. 

Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’Roll. That was how David lived in the 60s and what he loved doing -. listening and playing music. David’s favorite musical heroes were (besides The Beatles), the Beach Boys, Eric Clapton, John Mayall and the Blusbreakers, B.B. King, Albert King, Albert Collins, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, and Jimi Hendrix. He went to concerts with his friends and saw the most important artists of the era. A lot of them lived in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. 

Thanks to another school friend, Steve Ross, David started playing guitar seriously. They could jam on fav blues or Hendrix numbers for hours. David's most important and special friend was Kevin Hunter. Artistically talented, smart, sophisticated and rebellious, David found in him a true soul mate. Kevin was also expelled from schools several times, and they both finished their education in the private school, Rexford. They were spending a lot of time together. Every day after school (or during school) the both of them, sometimes with other friends, including Sam, would hang out in Westwood Village. For them it was the most exciting and interesting place in LA. The entertainment center, with a lot of shops, bars, nightclubs, restaurants and movie theaters. The home of The University Of California so a lot of students lived in the area. Of course, no one let the boys enter nightclubs, but sometimes Sam Hyman, who looked the most mature, was able to buy some alcohol. They loved coming there also because of girls. We can read in Mark Wyckoff article, - “If one of them managed to charm a girl, The Mathias Botanical Gardens at nearby UCLA was the perfect spot for a secluded make out session.’ 

It was with Sam that David had his first joints at the age of 15, but it was Kevin Hunter with whom he had some related drug adventures which could have ended tragically. Like when in 1967 David and Kevin hitchhiked to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, the hippie mecca of the 60s. They barely slept the whole weekend. Instead they were smoking pot, taking acid and attending an outdoor big concert in the Golden Gate Park. A lot of drugs were handed out free and a lot of people had sex on the grass. It was the peak of the Summer of Love. David wasn’t sure who performed on stage or how they managed to get back home. When he returned, he 16  went to his room and slept for 22 hours.

There were other adventures. Kevin was talented and creative - a great pal. They not only enjoyed taking drugs together, drinking beer, picking up girls, cutting classes and generally fooling around, but Kevin and David also wanted to become actors. They inspired each other and even tried to write plays. 

David, in spite of being very sensitive to any kind of drug, tried everything in his late teens. Pot, hash, psychedelics, mescaline, THC, Tuinal and more. In the 60s, that’s what a lot of young people did, and drugs became an important part of David's life. \

LSD was a counter-cultural substance and people believed in its recreational and spiritual use. Also the sex was better. David described, in his first autobiography, one very long, lasting several hours sex he had after LSD, with a girl from school.

When people started dying, LSD became illegal. First in California and Nevada in 1966. But still drugs were very common and popular among young people. The deaths of Jimi Hendrix in September 1970 and Janis Joplin several days later ushered in real change and a sobering effect for David. 

At the end of November 1970, when ‘I Think I Love You’ was number 1 on the Billboard charts, an old friend called him and said that Kevin Hunter had died of an overdose. For David it was a shock. 

David's personal life in the 60s. He had a lot of girl friends and got bored with them very quickly. He blamed adults for it. They didn’t stay together, so why should he?. The other reason for it could have been an unhappy love when he was still at junior high. A girl named Laurie, who went for an older boy. David wrote in his autobiography that she had broken his heart. 

But he didn’t write that when he was 13, he fell in love with 16-year-old Meredith Baxter. In February 1974, Sharon Lee, the Tiger Beat’s editor, who knew everybody and about everything, wrote in her column ‘Meow’, “David’s been seen in the company of a pretty, tall, blonde, young woman who you’re already familiar with! Meredith Baxter of ‘Bridget Loves Bernie’ fame! David says it’s not serious. They just enjoy each other’s company, but other unnamed sources say differently. This Meredith is the same Meredith David was interested in a couple of years ago. David’s been a friend of Meredith’s for a long, long time, because her father was his mother's agent.”

In his book David wrote about that romance in a way that you would think that he only met Meredith on the set of The Partridge Family and that she dumped him after a month or two in 1971. She did, but they met from time to time later. Finally she married his lucky rival. In November 1974, we can read in Tiger Beat that David broke off with a girl met in Europe, but he was not very heartbroken because, ‘Reliable sources say David may be pining for ex-girlfriend, Meredith Baxter, who recently married David Birney.’

 But in the 60s having one steady girlfriend wasn’t so important. David just loved sex. He had his first sexual intercourse when he was 13, with a girl a year or two older than himself. Once he started, for a few years, sex became his main activity. At school, he dreamt about weekends and going to drive-in movies with a girl. 

When David got his driver’s license in 1966, Evelyn gave him her 1959 Oldsmobile convertible. It was a big car - just great to have sex in, and David loved it when it was a double date. In the 60s, sex was available, and young people only were scared about unwanted pregnancy. Teen parenthood was a popular theme of many films and documentaries made for teens in the 60s and 70s.

In 1971 David himself appeared in an episode of a long running ‘This Is The Life’ Lutheran Television dramatic series. That episode was about problems of premarital sex. While in high school, David had one case of gonorrhea, and also mononucleosis. 

David Cassidy wrote a lot in his autobiographies, especially in the first one, how he liked sex when he was a teen. It looks like he really missed that time, the pure joy of sex, that anticipation and excitement. Even when he was young he liked older, experienced girls which turned out to be a real boon when he became a teen idol. But there was also a dark, dangerous side of sex, and again David didn’t write about it, at least not everything. 

Born in 1939, Sal Mineo was a former teen idol, nominated for an Academy Award when he was 17. David wrote about him, “Sal Mineo - one of the kindest, most honorable people I’ve ever known - was rejected by most Hollywood as old news by the time he reached his mid 20s’21 David wrote that he knew Sal was bisexual, but he didn’t care because Sal was a friend who liked having young people around. They had a great time together talking and listening to music. David was a loyal friend of Sal’s until the end of Mineo’s life. He was stabbed in the heart by a mugger outside his LA apartment on the night of February 12, 1976. 

Probably Sal was the friend David wrote about, who in the 60s wanted to have a sexual relationship with him. David was very pretty, had delicate features, very slim, he had long legs and narrow hips. A lot of men found him attractive. Like most teens growing up, he was wondering about his sexuality, even though he never was attracted to men. Sal Mineo befriended a lot of young boys besides David. It was through Sal, he met Don Johnson, another good friend in the 60s. Don Johnson, a little bit older than David (born in December 1949), played in a controversial LA stage production of ‘Fortune and Men’s Eyes’ in 1969, produced and directed by Sal. He was also Sal Mineo’s roommate at the time he was murdered. 

In Mineo's biography written by Michael Grgg Michaud, we can read that David met Sal in 1965, after Elliot Silverstein had directed Mineo in a TV show. Sal really liked David, “He was teaching him how to play drums and the teenager crashed at the house and got stoned with Sal often.” He also encouraged his 19-year old protegee, Susan, to have sex with 15-year-old David. Later, he wanted to know the details about their love making from the girl, and even peeped in on them.. 

But whatever he did, David didn’t forget about his dream. He wanted to become an actor. When he was still in junior high, Evelyn helped him to appear on stage for the first time. He loved being backstage watching her preparing. Helping others, even sweeping the floor. One night he was on stage during the performance, in full costume, as a member of the chorus. In 1965 he performed again with his mother, in a play ‘And So To Bed’, at the LA Theater Center, and he got a standing ovation for his singing.  When David was 17 he actually joined the Los Angeles Theater Company, being the only non-professional, and he worked in two productions while still in school. Jack and Shirley took him for film or theater premieres, and a lot of people in Hollywood knew that Jack Cassidy had a talented son. 

School. That was always a problem. 

He had to attend summer school, three times in a row. After David was expelled for the second time, he was sent to a continuation school for difficult students with educational and emotional problems. The high schools got rid of them, but they were too young to drop out of school for good. David didn’t like the place at all, and he knew the joke was over. He had to graduate if he wanted to become an actor. He begged Evelyn to let him finish his education in a private school called Rexford. There was less discipline there, small classes, students were allowed to dress like they wanted and have longer hair. 

Kevin was a student there. David promised his parents that he would work very hard and he really started getting better grades. He also attended drama classes and, of course, they were his favorite. In his final year of high school, Evelyn’s second marriage was over. Elliot Silverstein, who didn’t have his own children, was genuinely sorry that he lost contact with this sensitive, smart and talented boy for whom he tried to be a surrogate father. Many years later they became friends. David treated him as a family member. 

At last he graduated, but not with his class. He had to go to summer school again

https://www.davidcassidy.com/fansite/InPrintPages/2012%20Sam%20Hyman%20interview.pdf

David Cassidy : ‘Could It Be Forever?’, 2007, p.38

https://www.davidcassidy.com/fansite/InPrintPages/Mag_TigerBeat_February1974.html.

https://www.davidcassidy.com/fansite/InPrintPages/Mag_TigerBeat_November1974.html

https://www.davidcassidy.com/fansite/InPrintPages/BookSalMineo.html