A young George Michael interviewed David Cassidy about stardom, struggling with fame, and doing a comeback that was published in the June 1985 issue of the Ritz fashion magazine. Read the full transcript of the interview:
- When George Michael Interviewed David Cassidy (Ritz Magazine, 1985)
- George Michael Interview of David Cassidy (Part 2)
- George Michael Interview of David Cassidy (Part 3)
- George Michael Interview of David Cassidy (Part 4)
- George Michael Interview of David Cassidy (Part 5)
DC: So I’m going to see this album through and then go on tour.
GM: Did you find when you were doing stage work, that there was any resentment in TV and film when singers go and become actors?
DC: Not really, because I’d come from the stage and the theatre. My first job in the business was when I was 18 years old, in a Broadway show.
GM: Did people know that and remember it? By the time you’d gone through being DAVID CASSIDY and done the Partridge Family?
DC: Well, a lot of people understood that I’d got that part as an actor and I had done a lot of other things. I was an actor first. When I started seriously just doing anything again, I knew I didn’t want to go back doing rock n’ roll or making pop records again. I just knew I didn’t want to go back in the studio and open that can of worms. It’s very difficult to turn that around, as you well know, the business is about momentum.
GM: If you lose it, it’s very hard to get it back.
DC: Very hard. As an it’s more difficult to get it than it is with one record. I’m back in it again and I’m very pleased to be sitting where I am with the album and the record. As an actor, it’s going to take some time. Hopefully from this, and with people being aware that I am back in the business again, as opposed to dead, gone and buried. I think that, hopefully, the scripts that I’ll be looking to do will be coming my way. A lot of people do know that I am an actor. I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next couple of years. But it’s definitely at least a year from now.
GM: In terms of coming over here to make an LP and comeback, which makes very good sense these days with the way America looks upon England …
DC: I think Britain is the most important place and has more to do with influencing the direction and music and is more important than any country in the world, in terms of what is going to be successful in pop.
GM: It’s funny. Like the top 4/5 records in America this week are British.
DC: For good reason. If you hear the records that come out of Britain and America, there is a sense of climate here in Britain that there isn’t in America. A few things do become successful, and in this climate, it it’s good, it will be successful. You don’t have to invest six million dollars into an artist like you do in America, nobody is willing to do that unless it is a proven artist and consequently there are very few new artists. When “The Last Kiss” was in the top ten, I looked up and said “Thank you Jesus. I can still make it!”
GM: Having come here and done things from a British angle, do you think in terms of the way you’ve presented yourself, i.e. videos, clothes, etc. that you’ve made any British concessions that you wouldn’t have made in America?
DC: Since I’m a product of being here, for the best part of a year now, my taste in music, clothes fashion has changed and I’m a lot more aware of what’s going on coz I’m confronted on the streets here – a lot more than in America. On the farm, nobody wears anything other than dungarees, wellingtons, etc.
GM: (Laughing) I used to have a great pair of dungarees.
DC: That’s it! I’m totally removed from it over there. In America, for instance, by the time the punk thing got over there, it was very watered down. I was in the Kings Road on Saturday – it’s a great show.
GM: It is a great show. It’s amazing the King’s Road has kept the late 70s alive, it’s all there.
I’m not gonna talk directly about your career. Right, where do I start.
DC: (Laughing) Why did you change your haircut? Oh I’m sorry …
GM: Everyone always asks me how many times I wash my hair! If you really want to know that, it’s three times a day!! What was the longest period of time you spent out of England between the early ‘70s and now?
DC: It was quite a while. It was from ’77 to ’84 – seven years.
GM: Do you see differences – what do you think are the main differences that happened during those seven years?
DC: You have to understand first of all from my perspective how I viewed England. I viewed it from a limousine in the 70s or from the boot of a car, surrounded by thousands of kids and security guards on tour. So I never got into the heart and soul of England. In those days, I came over as an American sensation (I hate that word), and on News At Ten, the first day I arrived, they said, “We understand you’re the greatest thing from America since processed cheese!” I can only judge people from the media standpoint, which is TV, radio, magazines, etc. My impression is that it hasn’t changed that dramatically. Only something that is controversial is worth printing. Not something that has any substance or artistic merit or creative value. The only thing that’s important is how ANDREW RIDGELEY got on last night at the Hippodrome. The only thing that really means anything to them now is if it’s going to shock someone into buying it. It’s absurd. So my impression is more escapist – it seems now like when ANDY WARHOL, said that eventually everybody is going to be famous for 15 minutes – that’s his famous quote. I’m not sure how good ANDY WARHOL is or anything, except for that quote, the more I look at it, the more I find incredible wisdom behind it.
GM: I find the Americans are starting to follow the British pattern and starting to throw away people very quickly …
DC: Yeah, that might be, but I think probably we always have. I think it takes so much to break an artist now. With yourself, it took two years, so you know how big it is and what it takes. We try to savour and maintain it a little longer. I’m not sure that fans and the record buying public is as fickle as the media, I’m not so sure that they would want to continue to buy people’s records if the record company didn’t dictate and the radio didn’t dictate.
GM: Yes, I think radio has started to dictate in the same way. It’s frightening that PRINCE was heralded by everyone as taking over from MICHAEL JACKSON, not “Is PRINCE” good for this or that reason?
DC: What kind of comparison is that?
GM: Exactly. The guy is black, he’s been around for a while and he’s camp. There the comparisons end. They’re two totally different things.
DC: Well, I don’t think that MICHAEL’S even camp.
GM: (Laughing) Oh I think MICHAEL’S camp!
DC: No, not at all.
GM: Well, anyway, PRINCE is now being knocked down for his latest album, which I haven’t heard yet, so I don’t know. I think he’s an incredibly talented performer. The point is, he’s set himself up to be burnt out, just like MICHAEL JACKSON and now in PRINCE’s wake is MADONNA, she has five records being played now on American radio as we speak. I was over there last week, and couldn’t believe it. It’s like everyone is setting themselves up to be burnt out.
DC: Back to before, maybe ANDY WARHOL was right.
GM: I think it’s going down to five minutes!! (Laughing) We’ve got a bit of sidetracked here haven’t we! What I basically feel about England, after people say it’s ten years behind America, is it’s probably twenty years behind! England hasn’t caught up. That is why these days being a pop star is national press because it’s trivia.
DC: It’s escapism, being a pop star is really rubbish now, you’re right.
GM: I think it’s always been like that. The records are what they are, whether good or bad, but being a pop star has always been rubbish. I wondered if you find any differences with the attitudes towards money? There was a huge area of time where wealth was not something to be proud of. These days wealth is in.
DC: Yeah, I know. It’s very hip. Glam rock is very fashionable.
GM: Here we are in 1985 and it’s all money again. It’s realism. When the greenbacks are put in front of them, they take them. I find that very much more in America. The last time things were really glamorous I was only 13, so when I grew up, there was no respect for the rich. Suddenly I’m one of the figureheads of that and I’m rich …
DC: So you have to deal with it. So you have a difficult task in your life as I do, because most of my friends and people I grew up with didn’t become popstars and famous, and in a way, I felt embarrassed about it and I’ve always played my wealth down. I lived in a very simple environment, I’m not a real flash person. I like to dress up and enjoy myself…
GM: (Laughing) I don’t see any gold medallions.
DC: Yeah, SAMMY DAVIS and I are not close friends! But you know I mean. When I made a lot of money, I was 21 and I was incredibly rich in those days. In America being 21 years old and a multi-millionaire that you’d made yourself – forget it. It was a joke. Nobody knew how to relate to it and didn’t either.
Part 2 | Part 4
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- When George Michael Interviewed David Cassidy (Ritz Magazine, 1985)
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