David Cassidy

I've really sensed that people have an affection for me.

It's always nice to have people love you, but I'd just like to be judged fairly.

I understand the rock star deal having been one and still going out strapping my guitar on and performing. Now, I probably do 30 or 40 dates a year and I get to relive how I felt at 19 when I played in some really bad bands.

Everything in my life was about performance when I was doing 'The Partridge Family.'

Doing musicals and theatrical productions, I never did any of my hits.

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.

I played in garage bands and rock and roll bands when I was in junior high and high school and saw some of the great talents of all time in the local area where I lived.

It's a difficult journey when you're going through a divorce, is it not, for anyone?

I've always had a love for horses since I was really young. When I was 5 years old, the only thing that made me happy was when they'd take me out and give me pony rides.

In California, of all places, entertainment is the key to a vibrant economy. If we do not develop young adults capable of entering that world, the financial base of this state is sure to suffer and impact all of us.

If you're not a daydreamer, you haven't got any imagination.

All that stuff - 'teen idol' - that wasn't me.

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.

I read in one fan magazine that I was very self-centered. And I am.

I don't play nostalgia acts. I don't play nostalgia shows.

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.

For me to go back and to play for audiences some of whom have been following me for thirty years and some who have found me in the last five or six years, that's really an interesting thing. I have an audience that goes from kids to seventy year olds.

I bought my first horse when I was 15. I always loved racing and I started studying about breeding and I've been doing it now for 30 years, so I have some credibility.

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.

The television and film business has never really been kind or compassionate, in general.

I want to love. I want to enjoy life.

I don't want to end up being some joke on a bad TV series.

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.

Once they began doing 'Celebrity Apprentice,' apparently the audience wasn't that keen on the ordinary apprentice. That is probably the best indictment with our fascination with celebrity in our culture, which drives me crazy.

I turned up to all my son's performances and baseball games because my father never did that for me.

I've had a passion for horses since I was very young - I used to sit on the floor in front of the races on television and pretend to be a jockey - and I first began reading the racing form on the set of 'The Partridge Family.'

I nearly died twice after I replaced Michael Crawford in 'EFX.'

Nobody likes to be rejected, you know?

In a very short period of time, actors can become kind of relevant and hot.

It's not about the fame and the money because if you do good work all that stuff comes.

If people respond to the songs, whether they love you or hate you, then you've really done your job. You've evoked something.

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.

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.

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.

Thoroughbred racing is really my true passion. I'm living my dream.

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've done an enormous amount of bringing light into people's lives, and I'm very proud of that and touching and inspiring people.

The difference now is that the paparazzi get paid fortunes. That's what motivates people; it's about the money, sadly, at anyone's expense.

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.

I'm a really good team player. That's what it takes to work in the theater. That's what it takes to work in a band with musicians and writers.

I'm not saying that I won't tour again, but the chances are slim because my priorities are different now.

There's nothing wrong with becoming a role model, nothing wrong with inspiring people to become musicians, to become actors.

My mother gave up a good part of her career to look after me.

I saw Jimi Hendrix - it must have been four times. And he was incomparable, and his legend lives on.

I had a lot of very religious influences - Christian religious.

I have an audience that goes from kids to seventy year olds.

My mother, Evelyn, was an actress and singer, and my father, Jack, was an actor. My earliest recollection of my father is being taken to see him in a matinee.

Oh, yeah. I grew up in Southern California in the 1960's. It was very different. I was an only child as opposed to having siblings. My brothers all lived with my step-mom. I am very close to them, but we were not raised in the same house.

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.'

It's been the work that has carried me and I never wanted to rest on my laurels or go back and do what I done before.

I found myself very lost after 'The Partridge Family,' and I lost my dad and I lost my manager, and I lived in a bubble, and it took me 15 years to get through that and a lot of psychotherapy, and I'm laughing about it now!

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.

When I was 11, I moved to Los Angeles to live with my father and stepmother and my half brothers. I became really close to my stepmother, and I am still very close to my brothers. My stepmother is the actress Shirley Jones, who was in 'The Partridge Family' alongside me, so we worked together for years.

I work for me, 18 hours a day. It's my gig. So I don't have time to get a point of view.

I was very wary of repeating my father's behaviour and did everything not to act like he did.

My life has flourished in so many ways both personally and professionally that I can't ask for a better life.

When you have had the kind of fame I had, I was always hounded by the media and I lived a very isolated life. Now it's even more difficult. The world has changed dramatically.

All I had done for five years was work 18 hours a day all over the world. I needed to step back and distance myself from it.

As a father, I do everything my dad didn't do. My son Beau's birth changed my life.

My first five albums were triple-platinum, and I played a lot of concerts.

I just want to continue to produce good work. I don't want to do junk.

Learning how to be a good parent was easy in the end because I'd basically had the What Not To Do manual.

You cannot make a teenage idol.

I've had a great metamorphosis in my life. I struggled for a number of years because I was identified with that image of the Seventies.

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.

Most definitely, my dad was my biggest influence.

My mom used to take me down to the Jersey Shore when I was 7, 8, 9 years old. I can remember being down in that area - Belmar, Seaside Heights, Asbury Park and all those places that I went back and revisited.

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.'

My dad left when I was 3 1/2, and he left my mom and I.

My music was never considered cool, but I've always felt that connection with the audience.

I look fine. I've had no surgery apart from an operation I had decades ago to remove the fat under my eyes. My mum looked 30 when she was 60, so I guess I owe it all to genes and hair dye.

I've always had a special relationship with the U.K. fans, because even when I wasn't working they were very supportive.

It's amazing what happens to your body as you get a little older.

I don't listen to the news or read newspapers. I don't know what's going on in this world, or why I should vote for George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I don't have enough time.

If you put the talent of all my brothers together, they wouldn't add up to the talent that was in my father.

I'm never going to retire and say, 'This is it. This is my last show.' I will not go on tour - I promised my wife and son no more than two weeks on the road.

I was silver-white by the time I was 35, but having grey hair makes me look washed out. My wife and son have both said that grey hair doesn't suit me because I have a boyish face.

I've been able to go on and have a successful career on Broadway and certainly the last five years in Las Vegas have been amazing.