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by Anonymous |
It's the eyes that grab you first, hold you and won't let go. They are special eyes. Quiet, Peaceful. Sexy, too. Shaun Cassidy has the most beautiful, compelling eyes since Paul Newman.
There's more to Shaun than the eyes, of course. Eyes alone don't project well on television, where Shaun first won recognition for his work in The Hardy Boys, now entering its third season. But if Shaun ever reaches the big movie screen, watch out!
At 19, Shaun Cassidy is a full-fledged star. Ratings for The Hardy Boys have been consistently good and Shaun is the acknowledged attraction. His record sales are astounding total sales for his first three albums, including the new Under Wraps are hovering around seven million copies. And his concert crowds are mammoth. The fact of the matter is that Shaun Cassidy is the only true entertainment giants to surface in this latter part of the 1970's. He's the only true star of our generation.
All of which Shaun finds more than slightly amusing. "I'm not such a special person," he claims, though his smile suggests that he knows he is very special indeed. "The only difference between me and those people out in the audience is my background and the fact that my picture has been in hundreds of teen magazines. The fan magazines make me seem like a superman but I'm really not all that different."
Of course, Shaun is different. His mother, Shirley Jones, and father Jack Cassidy, were one of the best-known teams in Broadway musical history. Shirley, in particular, was a star; you can see her on the late show in any of a dozen film musicals. Or you can catch her almost any afternoon on reruns of The Partridge Family with Shaun's half-brother David Cassidy.
Because of my parents, I was involved in show business very early," " Shaun admits. When he was younger than six months old, he was already touring with his parents. By the time he was 11, Shaun was also appearing on stage. And at 15 he made his first film, a dud titled Born Of Water. In other words, Shaun had opportunities to learn everything worth learning about show business.
And he had time to go through the personal problems involved with show business life. His parents separated when he was still young. For a while, Shaun rebelled against any form of discipline. Finally, his family was forced to send him to a boarding school in the eastern United States and rely on the school's discipline to straighten him out. Probably because of the discipline there, Shaun was able to accept the tragic news that his father had died in a bedroom fire three years ago.
Maybe I'm lucky," Shaun muses. "I had more opportunities to learn than David."
Shaun, of course, is not the first of the new generation of Cassidy's to break into show business. Between 1970 and 1974, his older half-brother David (now 28) was one of the biggest names in entertainment. David's total record sales ran around 20 million copies. The Partridge Family was one of the most popular television shows. And the hysteria seen at Shaun's concerts today is mild compared to the audience enthusiasm at David's shows.
But the adulation was too much for David. He turned to drugs to help him overcome the stress. But the drugs only made matters worse. His career began to slip, at 24, he was already too old for a teenage audience and he didn't know what to do. "It seemed that everyone had a piece of me, pulling in different directions, David moaned "I'd lost control of my life."
David was able to regain control of his life only by retiring from show business. Today, he runs a horse farm outside Santa Barbara, California and relaxes away from the glare of publicity. "I just couldn't handle the pressures now," David admits.
The difference between David and Shaun is that Shaun can handle the pressure or arrange his life so that there is much less pressure. "The main difference between David and me is that people started to think of David as Keith Partridge because David was part of a musical television show. I act in a drama series, so fans see me in that type of activity. My singing shows a different side of me. In other words, my fans are accustomed to knowing me in many different ways while David's fans would never accept him as anything other than a bubble gum singer.
The people close to Shaun know him as a private type of person, a young man who knows how to unwind away from the stage. Dick Klotzman, the Baltimore tour producer who arranged David's concert tours and now handles Shaun showed us around his farm where Shaun sometimes relaxes during the tour. He needs time to unwind but he's one of the most easy-going people you could hope to meet, Klotzman claims, pointing to the swimming pool where Shaun exercises.
As David's career progressed, he became increasingly bitter that people refused to recognize his vocal talent (David really could sing!) and preferred to concentrate on his teenage stardom. Shaun has suffered from some of the same reluctance by critics to take him seriously but shrugs it off good-naturedly. Perhaps it's just that Shaun knows he's got talent.
"Music has always been part of my life, Shaun points out. I was playing in bands long before The Hardy Boys came long. I've paid my dues. In fact, Shaun is proud of the fact that, before his music career broke in North America with Da Doo Ron Ron, he had already been accepted as a major star in Europe. Morning Girl was a huge hit in Europe almost two years ago, even though The Hardy Boys isn't shown on European television.
The people around Shaun talk about him as a true musical artist. "Listen to his voice," Klotzman demands. That's the voice of a true talent. His arranger-producer-guitarist Mike Lloyd agrees: Remember that Shaun is still developing. In a year or two, he's going to be amazing.
As far as Shaun is concerned, though, he's happy just to have the opportunity to play his music the way he wants it played. He gives the impression that the music is very much determined by him, not selected and arranged by people who don't care about rock-and-roll. I like to play loud, he says forcefully. "Rock-and-roll was never meant to be subtle. I like the feeling it gives me to play with volume."
Slowly, the critics are beginning to realize that Cassidy really does have talent. It's been a bit easier for him than it was for David because, near the end of David's career, it was obvious that there was something special in his music; the respect that David cultivated has now been granted to Shaun.
Show business is a learning process, Shaun has found. I've learned from David's career. Now I hope that I have been an influence on my brother (16-year-old) Patrick. I hope that he'll be able to differentiate between the real and the unreal in this business. Just as it was always assumed that Shaun would follow in David's footsteps to success, it is now considered inevitable that younger brother Patrick will become a rock-and-roll star, too.
But Patrick will have to wait until Shaun is tired of his own career. For now, there's no indication that Shaun is ready to step aside, even for his own brother. "There's no other experience quite like performing in front of a live audience," Shaun says enthusiasti-cally. TV can be boring; there's no opportunity to relate to the audience. But the minute I step onto a stage, the audience can feel my presence and I can feel their moods.
The hysteria can be hard to take. But I can live with that. For a long time.
©1999 TG Magazine/Le Magazine TG
tgmag@tgmag.ca