Breaking up is hard to do: Fans mourn heartthrob David Cassidy

TO a generation of young, mostly female fans, there was a clear choice: David Cassidy or Donny Osmond.

It wasn’t the music that mattered, it was the style, the smile and the swagger.

Cassidy, who died yesterday at 67, was the bad boy of the pair. Although the star turn of an idealised American TV family, his back story suggested a life more well travelled.

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Last night, as his peers and followers mourned his passing, his demons were all too apparent: three failed marriages, an alcohol problem, substance abuse and, finally, bankruptcy.

Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67
Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67

Earlier this year, Cassidy revealed he was battling dementia. “Part of me always knew this was coming,” he told People magazine. The condition, he said, ran in his family.

In the glam rock era of the early 1970s, it had all seemed so different. Cassidy was the Justin Bieber of his day, a mullet-topped heart-throb who could do it all: sing, act and play guitar.

He was a minor star on Broadway and in Bonanza when he was offered the lead role, opposite his real stepmother, Shirley Jones, in The Partridge Family, a musical sitcom about a family who make pop records and go on tour in a school bus.

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The show was an international hit, and made Cassidy an instant teen idol, first with Partridge Family numbers like Breaking Up Is Hard To Do and then solo efforts such as Cherish and How Can I Be Sure?

Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67
Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67

When in 1974 he visited the UK in for a string of concerts, crowds of adolescent fans fell at his feet, just as they had in his home country. At London’s White City, it all became too much, and hundreds stampeded the stage

Around 800 were hurt, and 30 taken to hospital. A girl of 14, Bernadette Whelan, who had a pre-existing condition, died from cardiac arrest a few days later.

When the fans grew up and the cheers faded, Cassidy’s star dimmed. “I struggled for a number of years because I was identified with that image of the 70s,” he said.

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“When you have had the kind of fame I had, I was always hounded by the media and I lived a very isolated life.”

Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67
Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67

By the 1980s, Cassidy had gone some way to reinventing himself and was enjoying a career resurgence, releasing an album and landing stage roles in Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway and Time in the West End, co-starring with a hologram of Sir Laurence Olivier.

In 1996, he moved to Las Vegas to star at the MGM Grand and 15 years later returned to television with a comedy called Ruby And The Rockits, on which his half-brothers Shaun, Ryan and Patrick also worked. He later said he “wouldn’t trade that experience for the world”.

Cassidy was said to have been in need of a liver transplant when he was rushed to hospital in Florida, last week. His family said he had died “free from the pain that had gripped him for so long”.

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Some of today’s stars who had grown up admiring David Cassidy, have posted tributes.

Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67
Pop star David Cassidy, who has died aged 67

Singer Coleen Nolan said she and her sisters “idolised” him when we were kids”, telling ITV: “Linda was obsessed with Donny Osmond and Bernie was obsessed with David Cassidy.”

Comic Dawn French said on Twitter: “I cherished you.”

Newsreader Kay Burley said Cassidy was her “first love”, and stand-up comedian Jenny Eclair said he was among those who “soaked up all the tears” for teenagers in the 1970s.

Musician Marie Osmond, Donny’s sister, said she was “heartbroken” at the news.

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