Customer Reviews

Could It Be Forever?: My Story

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Kind of boring and a bit whiney - half the book has a "poor David" tone to it - his parents were jealous of his success, other people lost his money, he didn't get recognition for his talent and none of the magazines ran stories about the real David.
Well if this is the real David, then who could blame them - the teen idol was way more interesting.
He's worked with a huge range of actors through his career, but offers hardly any insights on what they were like to work with. He skips over other key periods and details too - covering his first marriage (to actress Kay Lenz) in about two pages and his second marriage in even less! Plus there is way too much detail about writing/producing songs with people that really isn't that interesting.

i remember idolizing David Cassidy as i was a young teen at the height of his popularity. I so wanted to take a trip down memory lane and love this book but..i didnt.

This book did not hold my interest and hate to say it but was not well written. It felt like a first draft not a final copy.

A lot of things weren't covered in enough detail. I would have liked to read more about being on the set of the tv show in the 70's, and later on more about how marriage and kids impacted his life. I could have lived without all the details about girls throwing themselves at him and thought it was TMI(Too much information) to talk about for example having oral sex with a fan through a gate ( !!)and then him saying "I am embarrassed for the way i treated women." MAybe if he really were embarrassed he wouldn't write about it? SOrry but he came off as as pig not a mature man who suppososedly regreted some of his actions. I hope his kids don't read the book/


UGG definately not worth the read. Instead of learning more about the man and liking him more, I wish i wouldnt have read the book so i could have kept my positive memories of the public David Cassidy intact.

I couldn't put this book down! More than a celebrity tell-all, it's a story of inspiration! A very good read, and a must have for any David Cassidy fan.

This new updated version of a 1994 publication, was co-written and edited by music author Ken Sharp. He also arranged and conducted the interviews with family members and friends. These updates gave this 2007 edition a better feel. Some parts of the orig. 1994 edition, which was co-written at that time by music author Chip Deffae, were also left intact.

This new book takes some of the rough parts of Come On Get Happy and mellows it with age and wisdom. It brings home the blessings and trappings of fame - in David's case, fame so great that only a few people in the world can understand fully what he went through. He does a great job of bringing us into his world during the Partridge Family years - and helps us understand how his mind at the time processed what it was like to be in the midst of it all.

Having a hip surgery and knowing I'd have some down time, I decided I'd pick up David's "memoir." I was 11 when those Partridges first hit the airwaves in the fall on 1970. My musical tastes have matured since those days but my very first album was "The Partridge Family Album." The Book: Well written and compelling, David gives plenty of background on his life prior to Partridge fame. Then he describes all the wonderful details of what it's like going from a barely known to the biggest thing since Elvis or The Beatles. I felt what it was like to go on stage in front of thousands of adoring, screaming fans. And what it was like to have ones privacy completely obliterated, to be a spent and exhausted "working machine." What I didn't expect was to find out what a caring, concerned and conscientious person David was even in the face of a head wind of fame, demanding schedules and all other pressures. What a ride! Way to hang on David. And thanks for the book.

I liked Keith Partridge, but the guy behind the face is an egomaniac...good quick read though...book good, I'm just not sure if the star can get over themselves.