ALBUM: David Cassidy - The Bell Years 1972-74

Cherry Red's 7T's imprint revives a quartet of releases from TV hearthrob and frustrated performer David Cassidy. Partridge Family not included.

Image: Cherry Red Records

It’s sometime in 1971. A young actor/singer by the name of David Cassidy suspects he is being taken for a ride. He’s starring in The Partridge Family, a hit TV show from Columbia Pictures’ Screen Gems division following the adventures of a Cowsills-inspired family band. The show has spun off hit singles and albums for their Bell Records label which have sold in massive numbers. Cassidy is the lead voice on most of them, but (thanks to a bad contract) isn’t entitled to a cent in royalties from sales.

Luckily for Cassidy, his agent has spotted a critical oversight in the contract: The actor was technically underage when he signed it. A panicked Columbia agree to renegotiate, upping his weekly salary from $600 to $4,000, awarding him an unprecedented share in net profits and giving him a future say in his recorded output. Solo records are approved in the deal, just so long as recording commitments for The Partridge Family are also met.

The solo results of that renegotiated deal are represented on The Bell Years 1972-74, a period which ironically saw Cassidy’s popularity at home diminish after his contractual showdown, but paradoxically go through the roof in the UK when The Partridge Family finally took off here, after a move from the BBC to ITV.

We join the story for 1972’s Cherish, a record which didn’t stray far from the already established template of the Partridge Family recordings, with regular producer Wes Farrell employing the same Wrecking Crew musicians. The title track had already provided a US top 20 hit, albeit one that paled next to The Association’s original. Curiously, the single’s UK release in November 1971 was cancelled, and it was instead bundled on the flip of Could It Be Forever in March 1972.

Could It Be Forever was easily the standout on the album, an epic, big pop record (co-written by Farrell) which only the hardest of hearts could fail to succumb to. Something of a slow burner on release, it gradually made its way to number 2 over an eight-week period. Only T. Rex’s Metal Guru could hold it off.

Despite impeccable performances and arrangements, the album fell into something of a stylistic rut after a strong opening. Notwithstanding the charming Cassidy-penned Ricky’s Tune which closed the album, much of Cherish essentially feels like Partridge outtakes.

The near simultaneous release of The Partridge Family Shopping Bag (complete with actual shopping bag) can’t have helped matters, a product-hungry record company spreading their prized commodity somewhat too thinly. Regardless, as a soundtrack for young girls to gaze wistfully at the sleeve, Cherish sold by the proverbial shed-load in Britain and consolidated Cassidy’s pin-up credentials.

1972's Rock Me Baby LP

His second long-player of 1972, Rock Me Baby perhaps indicated more clearly where Cassidy’s heart really lay. Farrell stayed as producer, but the mix of material saw the performer’s own tastes coming through, making for a somewhat schizophrenic set which mixed the expected pop ballads with more rock-tinged numbers. Two Young Rascals covers catered to both bases, with a rock gospel-tinged version of I’ve Been Lonely Too Long and a gloriously over-the-top take on How Can I Be Sure. With the latter, Cassidy succeeded where both the Rascals and Dusty Springfield had failed, taking the song to number one in Britain.

There were likely raised eyebrows on a few parents when their daughters unwrapped the LP on Christmas Day, and the radio gram pumped out the opening title track:

I can warm your coldest night

I'll make everything alright, c'mon

Ooh, rock me, baby

Let me feel the beat

I said, ooh, rock me, baby

Right down to my feet

Indeed. When the song proved a relative chart disappointment as a single (11 in the UK), Cassidy went for another change of tack. Some Kind Of A Summer (coupled with Cherish track I Am A Clown) was rushed out to keep the market happy while the fidgety singer worked on his next record.

Dreams Are Nuthin’ More Than Wishes (1973) threw something of a curve ball, as Cassidy broke away from Wes Farrell and enlisted former Nilsson/Jefferson Airplane producer Rick Jarrard. The choice of producer was likely not an accident – Cassidy professed to being a big Nilsson fan, claiming to own a collection of his demos. It would be a Nilsson lyric which provided the album title, as The Puppy Song joined the winsome Daydreamer on a double-header UK number one single.

There seems to be a real effort to replicate the feel of Harry’s early records in the production of the album and its eclectic assembly, but with a uniting, breezy feel. Cassidy himself selected all of the songs, perhaps trying to show yet another side of himself as an all-round song interpreter, and wrote sleeve notes to explain his choices. Non-album single If I Didn’t Care (along with b-side Frozen Noses) rounds off this disc.

1974’s Cassidy Live is possibly the most historically fascinating album here. Recorded on a mammoth burst of touring, the singer perhaps saw this as the big chance to show everyone what he was really made of. Freed from the shackles of being Keith Partridge (the TV show having been recently cancelled), he seized the day.

After knocking out a few hits, Cassidy upsets the apple cart with renditions of Delta Lady and Please Please Me (the latter lifted as a top 20 single). Composure regained with two more hit ballads, he knocks a screaming audience for six with a finale covering songs from Buffalo Springfield, Mitch Ryder, Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry before the big finish of Rock Me Baby arrives, and before you know it Mr. Cassidy has left the building.

For all its sonic flaws, it’s a set full of energy which feels like Cassidy is throwing everything into it, mounting a full-on assault to break out of the Partridge bubble and be taken seriously as a rock star. I’ll be darned if he doesn’t almost pull it off.

Almost. Alas, hindsight tells us that he didn’t quite manage this most Houdini-esque of escape acts.

If Cassidy’s assertion (in his memoir Could It Be Forever?) as to the recording’s provenance is accurate, it adds a chilling dimension to proceedings. He states that the recording was made at White City Stadium, the penultimate show of the tour where tragedy struck. His pleas to the crowd (edited from the resulting album) to stop pushing forwards were barely audible in the pandemonium. A 14-year-old girl died as the result of a front-stage crush. 30 more were hospitalised, while up to 800 others were said to have been injured.

His Bell contract fulfilled, a clearly shell-shocked Cassidy retreated from view. When he reappeared the following year, it was with a view to focusing on recording and song-writing. A new deal was made at RCA, where he would hook up with once-and-future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston for 1975’s knowingly titled The Higher They Climb The Harder They Fall.

This set stops frustratingly short of that intriguing burst of creativity over three LP’s for his new label. Nevertheless, what we are left with on The Bell Years is a fascinating document, charting a moment in time when an American heartthrob on the slide reversed his fortunes to become a very British phenomenon.

The collection also happens to contain some of the classiest pop singles of its period. They’re perhaps best sampled alongside his Partridge Family smashes on one of the numerous hits compilations out there, but social historians and excavators of early 70’s pop will find much of interest, stored in this chronicle of a pigeonholed talent getting restless. That its varied and eclectic contents were created when the performer was simultaneously working on a hit TV series, recording separate songs for that same series and trying to keep his sanity in check in a whirlwind of hysteria is reason enough to be impressed.

David Cassidy - The Bell Years 1972-74 is available on September 27th 2019.