At the time, being the age I was, I was too pre-occupied trying to establish avant-garde and alternative credentials with The Faust Tapes, Focus and Tonto's Expanding Head Band than to openly admit I liked David Cassidy but I reckon more of us did than were prepared to let on. At this distance, nostalgia even allows blokes of my generation to enjoy Donny Osmond records but that was far too risky at the time. You didn't need to be gay to realize that David Cassidy was cute, though, as the Partridge Family gave way to his succession of solo singles expertly designed to melt young girls' hearts.
As a reader of the uber-cool NME, one could only sneak a quick glance at your sister's Jackie but where are Brewer's Droop, The Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra or Stone the Crows now that the series of Jackie compilations provide all one needs to recreate the period, from David, through the New Seekers to Mud. It is yet one more example of 'they were right and I was wrong' to add to my penitent list.
I have four music t-shirts- T. Rex, Mozart, Buxtehude and David Cassidy, the last worn not as ironically as if I were to wear a Pink Floyd t-shirt (and nobody would realize that was a joke) but to relish the incongruity of a man in late middle-age crooning,
I'm just a Dave Green, ah,
I'm walking in the rain,
Chasing after rainbows I may never find again.
and, soon after buying it a few years ago, I read some advice that one should never wear a t-shirt of anyone better looking than oneself. Whoever wrote that must have seen me wearring it.
Each generation is routinely provided with its requisite heart-throbs to swoon over and it's possible that one day there might be another with David Cassidy's relaxed charm and summery charisma.
I guess so. On the other hand, I doubt it.