Could It Be Forever?: My Story [Paperback]

David Cassidy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2009

In 1970, after a brief acting career on Broadway and a few spots on various television shows, David Cassidy was catapulted to fame with the success of The Partridge Family. Almost overnight, the 20-year-old reached the pinnacle of teen idol fame as his records sold millions of copies the world over. In this brutally frank autobiography, Cassidy gives a firsthand account of those mind-blowing days of stardom in which being David Cassidy was subjugated to being Keith Partridge. His accounts of sex and excessive drug use explode the myth of the squeaky-clean Cassidy, and tell the true story of how an exhausting tour schedule quickly took its toll. This story reveals how to keep on living and loving when the fickle fans fall away.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Candid look inside a pop icon."  —Library Journal

"The story . . . is often harrowing, as Cassidy details the terrible emotional, physical, and financial toll of the treacherous Faustian pact that is global fame."  —Scotsman Magazine

"Brutally frank."  —Daily Mail

About the Author

David Cassidy is also the author of the memoir C'mon, Get Happy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing; First Edition edition (January 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0755315804
• ISBN-13: 978-0755315802
• Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 5 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #799,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Life, March 31, 2007

By 

P. N. Clark "Music Fan" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Could It Be Forever?: My Story (Hardcover)

When you grow from being a boy from a broken home with all the associated heartache into the arguably the biggest teen idol of all time - you can bet this is going to be a very interesting read. What stops this being a tragedy are the facts that (a) David Cassidy found real peace, love and happiness through his wife, son, daughter and extended family and (b) he found lasting, enduring success.

This is the true life story of pain and loss, of an ordinary person being thrust into an extraordinarily intense, mad and extreme fame, fan mania and associated excesses. But most importantly, it is an inspirational telling of how someone can face the greatest extremes in life and come through it all intact - as a decent person, a greatly respected talent and a personal and professional success.

I have always admired David Cassidy. I haven't always known or understood what he went through in order to be the David Cassidy I perceived him to be but I admire him all the more for who he has become today.

I've had the greatest pleasure in meeting David on two separate occasions on two separate continents. What struck me both times was that he was incredibly down to earth and very genuine. "Just a regular guy" as he would say. But a "regular guy" who has had a highly irregular and fascinating and inspirational life.

This book is an absorbing read. It's so well written, it's like David is talking to you personally. The story has no pretensions, no illusions of grandeur and is wonderfully annotated throughout with comments from the key people in David's life, past and present.

David Cassidy can legitimately claim to have once been the biggest superstar on this planet. He had an extraordinary fame that could so easily be forgotten simply because he was tagged a teen idol. But he also possesses an extraordinary talent and deserves every bit of the admiration and world-wide success that he still enjoys to this day.

If you purchase this book, I can assure you that you will find it an honest and sincere telling of an extraordinary life - and I can only hope that there will be many more chapters yet to come.

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars DO NOT BUY this updated version!, November 9, 2008

By 

LB - See all my reviews

This review is from: Could It Be Forever?: My Story (Hardcover)

Although I enjoyed the first copy " C'mon Get Happy " that was written over 10 years ago.. This book is a joke . Why?? Because it is exactly the same book as " C'Mon Get Happy, with the exception of the one chapter that discusses the sex, drugs and rock n roll. In this new version, all he did was rewrite that one chapter to tone it down so it wouldn't be so raunchy. His first book probably offended his wife so he altered that one chapter. The rest of the book is a carbon copy of his first book. I feel quite insulted from him propheting from somthing he already had published years ago. The author tries to mix up the chapters so that readers won't pick up on this. Shame on David Cassidy for treating us like fools to make a buck. DO NOT BUY if you already read the first book.

44 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Revealing and endearing, June 15, 2007

By 

Allan M. Lees (Novato, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Could It Be Forever?: My Story (Hardcover)

I grew up in Arabia, Germany, and Africa through the 1960s and first few years of the 1970s. TV was non-existent and popular radio featured light jazz or nightclub-style piano music plus a smattering of recycled 1950s BBC radio programs. So I missed almost the entire David Cassidy phenomenon. As a teenager I caught him once only, on a BBC TV program called Top of the Pops. David had just arrived at London's Heathrow Airport and he performed a song on the tarmac before rushing off to some engagement. I remember thinking the song was weak, but the performer was phenomenal. Back in those days in which everyone and their dog seemed to be dressing up and playing "let's pretend" (and yes, I do mean you, among many others, Mr. Bowie...) here was a young man who had the ability to communicate directly and whose singing voice, even after a transatlantic flight, was highly personal and very professional.

My family then went to Spain so I never saw David Cassidy after that; by the time we returned his star had faded and my future lay peripherally in the orbit of people like Jeff Beck. Years later I came across a David Cassidy album and played a few songs. I was impressed by the artistry and one song, "I Am A Clown" had a haunting quality about it that stuck in my mind. But I wasn't really his target market, and besides I was moving into madrigals, Bach cantatas, fourteenth-century polyphony, and eventually 20th century composers like Shostakovitch and Prokofiev.

But... Fast forward to earlier this month. A friend of mine in the UK happened to mention that she'd just read a book written by a teen idol she'd had a crush on back in the early 1970s. His name was David Cassidy. I looked on the 'net and there it was and there he was - now in his fifties but still with that direct, optimistic look that I remembered from the one and only time I'd seen him on television when he sung his song on the tarmac at Heathrow. Gambling a few dollars, I bought the book.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about David Cassidy is that he seems to be the kind of person most people would really enjoy having in their lives. No doubt he has omitted the less salubrious aspects of this life, and no doubt he has his quirks and imperfections. But all in all he comes across as painfully honest, decent, and - dare I say it - nice. He describes his roller-coaster life without settling scores or whining. And his life really has been an astonishing journey. A young man, with no intellectual foundation and a painful family background, was thrown into the maelstrom of super-stardom and then, at the height of his fame, he left the stage of his own volition and over the coming years descended into a personal hell.

In a way, the David Cassidy of this book is an archetype. Take every rock-n-roller fantasy you've ever imagined and then turbo-charge it and you still wouldn't get close to what he experienced. Amazingly, the David Cassidy who shines through in this book is now a reasonably well-balanced, thoughtful, and basically good person. Not many of us would fare so well in the face of the experiences he went through, and very few of us would escape the insidious corruption of the soul that comes from such fame and its attendant power, all experienced at a very young age. I ended up greatly admiring both the young and naive David Cassidy and also the mature man who wrote this book. Of course part of it is self-justification, self-portrayal. He's eager for us to know that he has real talent. If this were a book by someone else, much of the references to his talent would result in the reader becoming irritated; but in this book I think we end up sympathizing. And listening to some of those old songs confirms the claim: he really is a talented performer. It's this talent than enabled him to exert force of will to recover from the ultimate in "Career Over" post-idol job death.

I finished the book knowing that while I'll never meet David Cassidy, the world is just a little bit of a better place for his presence in it. I imagine he will continue to bring pleasure to his many fans for years to come, and I would also imagine that most people who read this book - even if, like me, they aren't David Cassidy fans - will feel the same way. The book may not be literature and its style of writing may be simplistic, but it's a genuine and genuinely touching account of an astonishing life and a decent human being. It's also an excellent "what to avoid" manual for any aspiring performer.