19 October 1972
Every generation has its male pop teen-idols and pin-ups. Since the ’90s, they’ve tended to originate in variety packs of four or five, known to science as boybands, so that you can choose your preferred dreamboat from the cheeky one, the cute one, the tough one, the talented one, or—let’s not kink-shame—the one just standing at the back. In the mid-’70s, the whole work of a boyband seemed to fall on the shoulders of individual boys – and two boys in particular. Here’s where we meet the first of them.
David Cassidy’s name recognition today may be as much for being a pin-up as for being the poster boy for When Pop Stardom Goes Wrong. Even knowing his story, culminating in his death in 2017, I can’t say I was familiar with any of his post-Partridge Family solo hits; better known to me today, ironically, is his father Jack Cassidy from another corner of ’70s pop culture as the wolfish villain in several episodes of Columbo. (A glorious factoid for you: Shirley Jones, David Cassidy’s real-life stepmother and Partridge Family fictional mother, says in her spicy autobiography that Jack Cassidy once had an affair with Cole Porter.)
‘How Can I Be Sure’ isn’t the simpering bubblegum balladry you may fear from such ’70s pop merchandise. The Bacharach-style ’60s orchestration suggests that Partridge Family light-entertainment continuity was the quaint concern of the record, leaving the photo of wee David on the sleeve to cater for the more modern teen-idol business. It’s a solidly functional track—it had previously been recorded by Dusty Springfield—and Cassidy has a competent voice for this sort of cabaret number. Still, the dissonance between the old-school song and the youthful packaging shouldn’t be so strange to us when we recall how Boyzone fans in the ’90s were buying covers of the ’70s bubblegum schmaltz of Cassidy’s teen-pop rival. ‘How Can I Be Sure’ is stronger than I expected but still not strong enough to dispel two looming clouds: the misfortune of David Cassidy and the cynicism of Louis Walsh.
