SANTA YNEZ — Shaun Cassidy steers his Dodge Ram 250 into the parking lot of the Maverick Saloon and throws open the truck’s passenger door, refrigerated air whooshing out of the cab, where he sits behind the wheel wearing sunglasses, black jeans and a black T-shirt.
The onetime teen idol who topped Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1977 with his chirpy cover of the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” — this was seven years after Cassidy’s mother, Shirley Jones, and his half brother, David Cassidy, hit No. 1 as the Partridge Family with “I Think I Love You” — has made a lunch reservation at a vineyard not far from where he lives in Santa Barbara County so the two of us can talk about his upcoming concert tour.
“But the place is as big as Knott’s Berry Farm, and I didn’t want to spend 20 minutes looking for you,” he says, with a laugh. “That’s why I thought better to pick you up here.”
The drive also allows Cassidy, 66, to show off a bit of the picturesque region he’s called home since 2011, when he moved from Hidden Hills with his wife, Tracey, and their four children. (He has three more children from two previous marriages.) “It’s not as remote as it was before the pandemic,” says Cassidy, who’s spent the last few decades working behind the scenes in television. Through the truck’s windows, a panini shop and a microblading clinic roll by. “COVID happened, and suddenly it became part of Los Angeles — a lot of new people,” he says.
“But I grew up in L.A. and New York” — Cassidy’s dad was the actor Jack Cassidy — “and I always envied people that came from somewhere else. My folks told us, ‘Don’t worry, we’re gonna buy a farm in Pennsylvania or move upstate,’ and it never happened.” Here in the Santa Ynez Valley, Cassidy adds, “I’ve managed to manifest the family life that my father always told me was important but somehow couldn’t find for himself.”
Now he’s leaving home for his most extensive run of shows in more than 40 years.
Cassidy’s tour, which kicks off Saturday at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry and has dates scheduled through March, will revisit the lightweight pop pleasures of the musical career he maintained alongside his role as Joe Hardy on TV’s “The Hardy Boys Mysteries.” As the younger brother of an established heartthrob, Cassidy came in hot: His self-titled debut for Warner Bros. Records went platinum within months and spun off three Top 10 singles in “That’s Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Hey Deanie”; Cassidy was even nominated for best new artist at the Grammy Awards in 1978, where he turned up onstage in a white pantsuit at age 19 for a bum-waggling rendition of “That’s Rock ’n’ Roll.”
“This young man,” proclaimed the show’s host, John Denver, “is definitely going places.”
Four more LPs came in quick succession, ending with the willfully eccentric “Wasp,” for which Cassidy recruited Todd Rundgren as his producer. Then, following a 1980 gig at Houston’s Astrodome, Cassidy abruptly quit music to focus on writing and acting, which he describes as his real passion.
“I didn’t love being famous,” he says, as we pull onto a dirt road approaching Vega Vineyard & Farm. “But I think I needed to be famous. I came from a family where everyone was well known, and I didn’t want to go through life being someone’s kid or someone’s brother. So I had to sort of step out into the spotlight and announce myself, and once that was done, I could figure out what I want to do.”
Why return to the stage now? For one thing, Cassidy says he’s singing better at the moment than he ever has — a claim supported by his old friend Bernie Taupin.
“Shaun’s voice has matured in the best way possible,” says the lyricist known for his half-century-long collaboration with Elton John. “But the other thing is that he’s a born raconteur.”
Indeed, Cassidy’s road show, which he’s been workshopping sporadically since 2019, is a songs-and-stories affair in which he looks back on an eventful life he has yet to recount in a book. “You have to be fearless and brutally honest when you write a memoir,” he says, pointing to Patti Smith’s “Just Kids” (2010) as one worth aspiring to. “David wrote a s— book, and my mother wrote a s— book, so I feel a bit of responsibility to represent my family accurately and honestly.”
We’re seated now at a picnic table in the shade, where a server has brought over several bottles from Cassidy’s line of wines — the line is called My First Crush, which is perfect — and a couple of Greek salads. “I don’t think there’s anything I’d be scared to write,” Cassidy says. “My bigger fear would be hurting people.”
Who have you used as a comparison point to explain your ’70s stardom to your youngest child?She has the poster on her wall: Harry Styles. And I didn’t say it to her; her mother did: “You know, your father was that guy.” My daughter’s like, “That old in guy there? Not possible.” But there was a chain you could tie me into. My record had been No. 1 a week or two before Elvis died, so when that happened, lots of reporters called me: “How do you feel about Elvis passing? How do you feel about walking in the King’s shoes?” I was like, “If he’s dead at 42, I don’t want to be in those shoes.”
Did you actually say that to a reporter?I was too polite. But there’s a lot of truth in it. Ricky Nelson had just been a guest on “The Hardy Boys,” and I remember thinking that I didn’t want to be guest starring on a TV show in 20 years. Look, my brother David didn’t handle fame well. I had a model for what not to do, and I had a model for what to do: my mother, who’s 91 and lives five minutes away and is as gracious and lovely and happy a human being as you’ll ever meet.
I like to say I’m in show business, but I’m not of it. I love the work and the creativity — I’m not a red carpet guy. She never was either. She was like, “They tell me where to go, I show up, I do it.” And people love her.
There’s a great photo of you in the L.A. Times in 1978 standing in your backyard next to a swimming pool.I got “The Hardy Boys” when I was 18 — still living at home with my mom in Beverly Hills. My parents are separated — my father died while I was shooting the pilot, which was pretty traumatic — and I’m like, I gotta get out of here. The family’s business manager calls a bank and says, “He’s top of show on a new series making $2,500 a week.” They got me a loan to buy a house without a down payment. So I went and bought a house on the weekend while my mother was out of town.
Was she pissed?No, she wasn’t. She was happy for me — sort of. Yeah, maybe. I don’t know.
You went through the whole emotional spectrum in that answer.It was weird. I only lived there for like a year because now I’m making a lot of money, so the business manager says, “You need to buy real estate and you need to spend more money,” which is dumb, as it turns out. Keep that little house you bought with your first check and put the rest of it in the stock market, and you won’t need to worry about anything forever.
So somebody finds me a place on Mulholland. Warren Beatty is over here, Brando and Nicholson are over here — Valley view, Beverly Hills view, on a promontory with a pool. This is the house in the picture. When I first go up to see it, there’s a recording truck in the driveway and all this recording equipment inside. Fleetwood Mac are there doing something. I’d met Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.
What, as proud Warner Bros. recording artists?Just at parties in L.A. before they joined Fleetwood Mac. I was out all the time. My parents sent me to boarding school in Pennsylvania in ’73 — I ditched the entire time on a train into New York to go to CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City. Danny Fields took me to CBGB’s to see the Ramones when he was managing them. And why did I know Danny Fields when I was 15? Because he was writing for 16 Magazine where [editor in chief] Gloria Stavers was putting pictures of me in there with no record deal: “It’s another Cassidy — isn’t he cute?”
Danny was interesting. He’d managed Iggy Pop, and I knew Iggy — Jim — from hanging out on Sunset because this was the time Jim was living in Hollywood kind of between jobs. Smart guy — big influence on me. Early on, I played Rodney Bingenheimer’s club. I’m there shirtless with a bow tie, screaming, looking kind of like Iggy at 14 or 15.
It’s wild that your most chaotic years happened before you were even 18.They cleaned me up. I was on “The Hardy Boys” playing a character who really couldn’t look like a punk. My earring had to go.
You ever feel hemmed in by the job?No, because I was playing a character, and my identity wasn’t tied to the success of the show. Miguel Ferrer was one of my closest friends, and his dad, Joe — José Ferrer, real actor’s actor — I remember he said to me, “So, my boy, you’re thinking of going into the business? Let me give you a piece of advice: I have known success and failure, and they are both impostors.” He took it from Rudyard Kipling, I think. But it stuck with me. Anything I did, even “Wasp” — I don’t view that remotely as a failure. I view it actually as a bold awakening.
One of the great pop-idol freak-outs, 1980’s “Wasp” found Cassidy alternately crooning, yowling and barking his way through new-wave-y covers of tunes by the likes of David Bowie, the Who and Talking Heads while backed by members of Rundgren’s group Utopia.
“All I wanted to do was work with Todd,” says Cassidy, who’d been unhappy making “Room Service” in 1979 “because there was so much pressure from the record company to dive into disco, which I was never a fan of and which felt completely inauthentic for me.” By that time, Rundgren had produced hip records for the New York Dolls and the Patti Smith Group in addition to scoring hits of his own like “I Saw the Light” and “Hello It’s Me.” “He said to me, ‘You’re an actor — let’s do some acting.’ So we created some characters and experimented with different things.”
The album bombed. “My audience wasn’t ready for it, and there was no new audience showing up on FM radio that was gonna embrace me,” says Cassidy. “I think eight people bought it.”
Having been told by a Warner Bros. executive that he should go away — “And he was 100% right” — Cassidy “stayed home for the ’80s,” he says. “My big spending spree would be Friday night. I’d take my rock-star money to Crown Books and bring home $250 worth of books in my Porsche.”
In 1993, he let his brother lure him into co-starring in the musical “Blood Brothers” on Broadway.
“I turned him down three times,” says Cassidy, as we open a second bottle of wine. “I already had a deal at Universal as a writer with an office and an assistant, and I’d sold a couple movies for television. I was on my way, and David’s pitching me: ‘No, no, no — we can be the kings of Broadway!’” He takes a sip. “As it turned out, it was great — really emotionally satisfying. And the show was a big hit.” (David died from liver failure in 2017.)
Yet “Blood Brothers” was enough limelight for Shaun, who quickly turned back to TV. “American Gothic,” the first show he created, premiered in 1995 — an achievement that, he says, “meant a lot more than having ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ as a No. 1 record.” Since then he’s been an executive producer on “Cover Me,” “Cold Case,” “The Agency” and “New Amsterdam,” among other series.
“He reinvented a whole new Shaun Cassidy career,” says Steve Lukather, the Toto guitarist who’s been friends with Cassidy since he appeared in an episode of “The Hardy Boys.” Cassidy’s wife, who’s also worked in TV, didn’t even know he’d been a musician when they met on one of his shows.
“I said, ‘Where you from?’ and Tracey said, ‘Miami,’” the singer recalls. “I said, ‘Oh, I played Miami.’ She goes, ‘What position?’ ”
Still, Lukather reckons that more recently his pal “started missing being onstage a little bit. He knows where it’s at.” Cassidy, who plans to play bass in the show, called Lukather not long ago for some guidance on the instrument. “I told him to play simple — don’t overthink it. It’s not like he’s going out and doing the Mahavishnu set.”
It’s half past 3, and Cassidy has a virtual pitch meeting for a new show at 4 p.m. But first he has to pick up his youngest daughter from school, so we hop back in his truck and head there from the vineyard.
On the ride he says he’s been working on a couple of new songs — the first of his own that he’s recorded since the handful he placed on his albums back in the day alongside stuff by pros like Eric Carmen, Brian Wilson and Carole Bayer Sager. One of them sounds like it could’ve been cut by Mel Tormé, he says. “The other one, it’s very anthemic — I don’t know, maybe like the Killers.”
“It’s been fun to see him to go the piano instead of the computer as an outlet for his passion for storytelling,” Tracey tells me later, though of course Cassidy knows that fans will show up to his gigs wanting to hear the classics.
Who did you long to be at the height of your teen idolhood?First concert I saw was the Rolling Stones at the Forum in 1972, with Stevie Wonder opening. I took pictures and put those pictures on my wall. Mick and Keith in ’72 — that was a show. I saw David Bowie on “Diamond Dogs” in ’74. And I saw Iggy a lot. Somewhere in between those three is where I wanted to be. Obviously, I was safer than that.
What do you see when you watch the kid singing “That’s Rock ’n’ Roll” at the Grammys?He’s confident, but he’s not cocky. I remember afterwards Lou Rawls said to me, “Son, never turn your back on the audience.” I said, “They seemed to like it when I shook my ass.”
You lost best new artist that night.So did Foreigner. Lou Gramm somewhere is still upset.
I wondered if you remembered who else was in the category.Debby, of course.
Debby Boone, who won — another nepo baby.Hey, if your dad owns a hardware store and you take over the hardware store, I have no issue with that at all. I don’t know who else. Andy Gibb?
Stephen Bishop and Andy Gibb.I knew Andy a little bit.
Kind of a similar deal to you, right? Younger brother of a pop sensation.He had a different challenge, though. This is me being shrink, but I don’t think that anybody got to really know who he was, because Barry [Gibb] was so strong. And I don’t think Andy had a problem with that. I’m sure growing up, he was like, “I want to be a Bee Gee too,” and Barry said, “OK, here’s how we do that.”
What was your relationship like with David in terms of the advice you took or rejected?David never gave me advice. I think it was very difficult for him because he was at a career low point. I would ask him, “What do you think of this?” and I could tell he was conflicted about it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want me to have success. But he was in a place where it was hard for him to enjoy my success, I think. And I knew that, so I didn’t talk to him about it.
What’d you think when he posed nude on the cover of Rolling Stone?I thought it was dumb. That was his “Wasp” moment — I thought, You’re putting a bullet in something here, whether you know it or not. Now, I’m not so sure. It’s a cool picture. All I know is he complained a lot in the press. He had a chip on his shoulder because he wasn’t Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix or somebody that he revered. It’s like, “OK, play as well as Hendrix and maybe you’ll be Hendrix. But you’re a really charming guy on a big hit television show, and 8 billion people are in love with you. Tell me why this is a bad deal.”
Why did you understand that and he didn’t?Because I’m Shirley’s son and he’s not. And I got to watch him — I saw how you can handle it differently.
You never burned to be taken seriously?I took myself seriously. I’m very secure, and that’s rare in show business. I never needed the love of the audience to feel like I was whole.
You got that love elsewhere, and David didn’t.He would say that.
Was he not right?Maybe. I mean, to my mother I could do no wrong — to the point that she had no credibility. But if you’re going to err on one side, that’s a better side than, “Where are my parents?” Both of his parents were actors — they were gone a lot. Then his father left his mother to marry a movie star and have me. David would have every reason in the world to hate me as a little boy, but he didn’t.
My brother was a really sweet — I’m gonna get choked up talking about him — he was a really sweet soul who got hurt and couldn’t overcome that. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I spent a lot of time with him. Again, “Blood Brothers” was great because it was an equalizer. I wasn’t the flavor of the moment, and neither was he. That’s one of the things I miss most about him — that he was the only person in the world I could talk to about our experience.
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