I don't need to remind myself of the trophies. I know what I accomplished.
— David Cassidy
Every day is a blessing - not to get too schmaltzy, but, really, it is.
I was always really proud of the fact that I had a very positive influence as a role model.
Most people view success by the results, and I don't.
In the '80s, it was difficult and frustrating to appear in the theater and TV again, even though I had some successful shows and hit records. Now, I have to say, the '90s are the best decade of my life. I've done the best work and, in a funny way, I'm enjoying the most success... more than in the '70s.
Let me tell you, 10,000 is an intimate room. Believe me. I want to be able to connect to everybody in the room, and you can't with a venue any bigger than that.
I gave up my whole life to my career.
There's nothing wrong with becoming a role model, nothing wrong with inspiring people to become musicians, to become actors.
If people respond to the songs, whether they love you or hate you, then you've really done your job. You've evoked something.
I just want to continue to produce good work. I don't want to do junk.
Kids need role models, whether it's baseball players, actors or musicians: people to bring a little positive light into their hearts and minds. We need to be a little kinder to those people because it's not easy being that role model, looked upon as something we are all incapable of being - too perfect.
Contrary to public opinion and the image people have of me, I grew up in a very lower-middle-class, blue-collar environment 40 minutes outside of New York until I was 11.
Doing musicals and theatrical productions, I never did any of my hits.
I was very wary of repeating my father's behaviour and did everything not to act like he did.
Most definitely, my dad was my biggest influence.
Having all that - the fame and adulation and women and all that stuff they talk about - doesn't make you happy. You have to make yourself happy.
Going through 'The Partridge Family,' I looked up to people like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and all those guys. But as an actor playing a part, I had to sing what was right for the character and the show.
We are too occupied with celebrity. Believe me, it's not what it's cracked to be.
When you go through hell, your own personal hell, and you have lost - loss of fame, loss of money, loss of career, loss of family, loss of love, loss of your own identity that I experienced in my own life - and you've been able to face the demons that have haunted you... I appreciate everything that I have.
There were times when I was a joke, but talent survives.
What I want is credibility I got as a songwriter and actor and doing 'Blood Brothers' on Broadway with my brother Shaun.
You know, many people who become famous and enjoy great success when they're young disappear after that. Maybe I've lucked out because I came back and went to work.
When you cut your life into a film - 90-some minutes of film - you end up taking snapshots and vignettes of the highlights of it - marriage, divorce, death, success, fame, loss. The up and the down and the up again.
It's not that my father didn't love me, it's just that he wasn't capable of consistently being there. His mood swings were gigantic.
It's always nice to have people love you, but I'd just like to be judged fairly.
Anybody who carries the albatross of that teen-idol thing - well, people tend to look and say: 'There he is again. It's Fabian.' It's a very tough thing. Everybody wants to discount your talent because you have become so... I don't know... a god, if you will.
Just do me a favor. Don't call me 'former teen heartthrob,' okay? It's as if they were constantly discussing your second year of college. I'm not back there anymore. I'm living in the present.
I hitched up to Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love, you know? And I was very much politically aligned with that whole mentality, the whole ideology of that generation, the music, the culture, the behavior.
It was amazing for me growing up in the musical decade of the '60s. I saw The Beatles on television and went out and bought an electric guitar.
I wasn't ever a bad guy, and I was never arrested or anything like that, but I was a wild boy in many respects.
Learning how to be a good parent was easy in the end because I'd basically had the What Not To Do manual.
Acting was absolutely my first focus. I graduated high school in L.A., and two weeks afterwards, I moved to New York City, and I got a job in a mail room, and I got an agent, doing what actors do, with head shots and all the rest of it.
The television and film business has never really been kind or compassionate, in general.
I didn't end up some sad, tragic guy singing in a lounge somewhere. I never went out and took big money for nostalgia and became like an oldies act.
I've had an awful lot of good fortune.
What happened to me during the last couple of years of 'The Partridge Family' was I became so famous and so isolated and so unhappy that I had to do anything I could to end it.
You can't be 24 again; you can't be new when you're 40 years old.
I think of my career as something apart from myself.
I wouldn't want to play anything bigger than 10,000 again. I think it's too much, and you lose touch.
Until I really dealt with a lot of the demons in my life - the fear and self-doubt and unresolved issues with my old man - I could never feel fulfilled and happy. I would wake up in the morning and feel bad.
Just getting your name in the papers and having people talk about you is not always a good thing.
It wasn't until later when people became aware of my writing that I would hear begrudgingly, 'You know, you really are a pretty good singer, I guess.'
I don't want to end up being some joke on a bad TV series.
All that stuff - 'teen idol' - that wasn't me.
It is difficult to be famous and that successful where you can't even walk down the street without people chasing you, and having people build monuments to you and worshiping you - all that stuff - but I never took that to a place where I believed it. I saw it as being temporary and a phase.
I had people sleeping in front of my home. I couldn't go anywhere. It confronted me from the moment I woke up. There would be 100 people at the lot where we shot 'The Partridge Family.'
I turned up to all my son's performances and baseball games because my father never did that for me.
I saw Jimi Hendrix - it must have been four times. And he was incomparable, and his legend lives on.
My first five albums were triple-platinum, and I played a lot of concerts.
It's amazing what happens to your body as you get a little older.
