Love Is All That I Ever Needed. Chapter 16. Naked Lunch Box and Rock Me Baby..
In November 1971 Ruth Aarons was cited for trying to put info and articles about David in a serious music press, Billboard or Rolling Stone. These magazines normally didn’t write about teen idols.
In May 1972 the deal was made at last, and Jann Wenner, the Rolling Stone’s
publisher, set Robin Green on David. She accompanied him for some time, on the way to
concerts, at the hotels, saw some gigs, including Madison Square Garden, and she visited
David at home.
She was asking questions. He didn’t hide anything. She let him talk and wrote
down everything he said and everything she saw.
David was happy that at last he could say what he really thought about his career, life, and
fans. It was a chance to show the real David Cassidy - not his manufactured teen idol image,
so wholesome and good and happy.
It wasn’t a traditional interview, and the article was written in a way that nearly everything David
said could have been interpreted against him.
Robin Green was interested in the teen idol
phenomenon. She wrote about David’s lifestyle, limousines, groupies, drugs, the Madison
Square Garden concert, how proud he was of it, how many stuffed animals he got from fans,
and how, on stage, this quiet, short boy transformed into a superstar.
She talked with Ruth
Aarons and with Henry Diltz who said that Donny Osmond was that year's sensation and David
was on his way out.
Gloria Stavers, teen magazines publisher, said the same: ’David’s passed
his peak already’.
Robin Green wrote about David’s ambivalent feelings on his career, his fans, and the teen
magazines. He didn’t like the things that were written about him, but he also understood how
show business worked.
That article was a study of the character of someone rather lost, vulnerable, not very sure of
himself and also very tired and bored. Someone who was fed up with his job.
With the article were also David’s nude photographs taken by Annie Leibovitz.
He said: ’We
did the shoot inside my house in Encino and in a field. I was totally nude. I’m not embarrassed
by my body. The nudity was symbolic. It was artistic. It represented freedom. It was the real
me.’
Those photos were truly sensational. Among them a full frontal nudity, David just glorious in
his androgynous, young beauty. But the cover pic was even more controversial.
David lying
on the grass, with his outstretched arms, closed eyes. It was obvious he was completely
naked. A man-child. Peter Pan. The photo was at the same time innocent and very sexy,
because it made viewers think about what was going on in the cropped off bottom part of the
picture. He was a sex symbol but so different from traditional male ones.
David’s fans didn’t read Rolling Stone. However, soon everybody knew about the article. In
Europe, the pics were printed in The Sun and in some magazines on the continent, e.g. in
German teen magazine, ‘Bravo’. In the UK later in 1972 were published ‘David Cassidy Book’
and ‘David Cassidy Songbook’ with the article and small reprints of the Annie Leibovitz’
photographs. For many naked David was too much, especially for those who believed in every
word published by teen magazines, and his teen idol image, so the article backfired and alienated some younger fans.
The studio wasn’t happy either, especially after notes like that
one, called : ‘David Cassidy Shocks Studio’:
’David Cassidy probably disappointed lots of his teeny-bopper fans with an interview in a semipornographic, underground-type paper. It was not a family paper interview and his studio is
not happy at all.’.
David lost some contracts, but he never regretted doing the article or the shoot.
That Rolling Stone issue was sold out, and the pictures of David Cassidy taken by Annie
Leibovitz became iconic.
On May 1, 1972 during a very long recording session most of the songs for the next Partridge
Family album were recorded. There was another recording session at the beginning of
September.
In November, The Partridge Family Notebook album was released and it was
the first TPF record which didn’t make it to the Top 40.
The single from it, the cover of ‘Looking Through The Eyes Of Love’ wasn’t a great hit either.
It peaked at number 39 in January 1973.
The second single, ’Friends and Lovers’ (Wes Farrell,
Danny Janssen and Bobby Hart), astonishingly similar to the hit from 1969 called ‘Na Na Na
Na Kiss Him Goodbye’, managed to achieve number 99, in April 1973.
The Partridge Family
days seemed numbered.
David began to speak out about how he had had enough and about leaving the show. He said,
“I’ll be leaving the series. I can’t stay forever, I’m growing up, and though everyone involved
with the show acts if they are afraid to discuss the fact, it’s happening, you know. (..) I’ve got
them all shook up. It’s going to be rough.. I’m prepared for the worst - a lot of people aren’t
really ready to accept the change.’
At the time the work started on David's second solo album, called ‘Rock Me Baby’ which was
released in the USA in October 1972. Again produced by Wes Farrell, even that at the time
relations between producer and his star were strained. Once more, the best musicians worked
on this album with David. Hal Blaine, Jim Gordon, Max Bennett, Joe Osborn, Mike Melvoin,
Larry Carlton, Dean Parks, Louie Shelton, Chuck Findley, and John Bahler, Jackie Ward, Sally
Stevens. And Kim Carnes and Dave Ellingson.
The album was an attempt to introduce David to a more mature audience with more rock,
rhythm and blues, blue-eyed soul, and very adult oriented lyrics. David had much more to say
during the production.
The opener ‘Rock Me Baby’ (Johnny Cymbal and Peggy Clinger) was a strong glam rock
number with lyrics not very suitable for a teen idol’s audience. That song was released as a
single, and peaked at number 39 on the Billboard 100 in October.
David always loved Young
Rascals, and there were two covers of their hits, both written by Felix Cavalliere and Eddie
Brigati, ‘Lonely Too Long’ and ‘How Can I Be Sure’. Another great cover was David’s powerful
version of ‘Go Now’ (Larry Banks, Milton Bennett). Two ballads chosen by Wes Farrell, ‘Soft
As A Summer Shower’ and ‘Song Of Love’ (written by Adam Miller).
David was working hard on this album, and wrote two songs for it. ‘Two Time Loser’, a song
he performed often in 1972, was a very emotional and personal number probably about his
failed relationship with Meredith Baxter. The other one was also about unhappy love - ‘Song
For a Rainy Day’ co-written with Kim Carnes. Dave Ellingson wrote for David ‘Some Kind Of
a Summer’.
It’s interesting that on three songs on that album there are speaking fragments.
Yet just two years previously David protested violently when he was ordered to speak on
‘Doesn’t Somebody Want To Be Wanted’.
In October 1972 David, wearing a fantastic silver outfit and looking like a true rock star, sang
‘Rock Me Baby’ on the Bob Hope Special. The legendary Bob Hope looked a little bit surprised
by the song.
The album got good reviews, but David and Bell Records were disappointed. The highest
album chart position was number 41 in December, and another single from it ‘How Can I Be
Sure’ achieved number 25.
In the fall of 1972 there was another obvious direction for David. The country where
‘Cassidymania’ was on a truly gigantic scale. Just on the other side of the Pond.
The United
Kingdom.
David Cassiy;’Could It Be Forever?’, 2007, p.247
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