David Cassidy Liked These Artists, Not The Partridge Family’s Music

David Cassidy was known for his portrayal of Keith Partridge on The Partridge Family. The show brought him fame and fortune as well as identification with “lightweight” pop music. However, pop was not the genre he was really interested in. Let’s find out what he had to say about the type of music he enjoyed as opposed to the type he was most associated with.

David Cassidy preferred these artists to The Partridge Family

In his memoir, C’mon, Get Happy – Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus,” Cassidy gives us a glimpse into how he began to play guitar. A friend of his, Steve Ross, was a guitarist in the very first garage band that Cassidy joined. Cassidy says Ross “turned me on to guitar.”

They would play The Beatles, blues, and Jimi Hendrix. “Personally, I progressed from being a real pop music fan like an average kid to a rhythm and blues music fan – I was looking for something deeper, more authentic – to a hard-core acid-rock, Hendrix, Clapton, Jeff Beck, Peter Green, John Mayall, Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield type of fan.” Cassidy viewed the music he enjoyed as reflecting the social changes that were happening in society.

Cassidy goes on to say despite playing “sweet, lightweight, mainstream pop music,” he did not enjoy that type of music at all. Ironically, he was interested in “the antithesis of mainstream pop.” His interests were blues and acid rock. He liked “being on the cutting edge of pop culture.”

David Cassidy and the concerts and parties he attended

While teens were buying records like “Yummy Yummy Yummy,” Cassidy and his friends were attending Hendrix and Cream concerts. “Hendrix was about as far from mainstream pop as you could get,” he opined. Hendrix would become more mainstream after his death.

Cassidy discusses attending a party with Janis Joplin. He states “She was a big deal at the time … maybe late ’66 to ’67.” But she was there getting high like everybody else.” So while Cassidy portrayed a more conservative image on The Partridge Family and recorded pop music, his true interests were elsewhere.

The public’s reaction to The Partridge Family’s music

Cassidy wasn’t a huge fan of bubblegum pop. However, the public embraced The Partridge Family’s bubblegum music. The Partridge Family released nine songs that reached the Billboard Hot 100. Of the nine songs, three were top ten hits, specifically “Doesn’t Somebody Want to be Wanted,” “I’ll Meet You Halfway,” and “I Think I Love You.” The latter song took the number one spot which peaked in 1970 for 19 weeks on the Billboard chart. Although Cassidy did not enjoy the type of music he sang, he still found success commercially.