Could It Be Forever? My Story (10 page)

I was nervous. I didn’t want to screw up or cause problems for all these pros who had no idea who I was. We’d be chatting and I’d hear some voice on the loudspeaker saying, ‘Could you please ask the singer, whatever his name is, to shut up?’ Or we’d start to do a take and some voice would request, ‘Can you ask the singer not to slow down?’, or ‘Can you ask the singer not to rush?’ I was totally overwhelmed by the experience.

In a three-hour period we’d cut three or four sides. That’s without strings or horns or background vocals, which would be added later. I didn’t really play the guitar on the early sessions. On TV it would look like I was playing, but the audience would actually be hearing some pop session player like Larry Carlton, Louie Shelton or Dean Parks. As time went on, I did get to play on a few Partridge Family tracks, but basically Farrell wanted to leave it to better, quicker players. I really only got to play on a regular basis later, on my own records.

To give The Partridge Family a distinctive, readily recognisable instrumental sound, Farrell decided to feature the harpsichord, rather than the usual acoustic or electric piano, on our recordings. Playing the harpsichord for us on
I Think I Love You
was Larry Knechtel, who had played piano on
Bridge Over Troubled Water
by Simon & Garfunkel and had worked with Duane Eddy, The Byrds and Phil Spector, and who would soon become part of the successful band, Bread. I remember him breaking up laughing during the harpsichord solo when we recorded
I Think I Love You
. I have no idea what was so funny, but they managed to filter or edit it out somehow.

The bright horn leading the ensemble on
The Partridge Family
theme song,
C’mon, Get Happy
, belonged to none other than jazz great Shorty Rogers, who periodically contributed music to the show, as did such seasoned pros as Hugo Montenegro and George Duning. The producers finessed the issue of whether The Partridge Family actually played and sang on their recordings by running a line in the show’s closing credits claiming that The Partridge Family’s performances had been ‘augmented’ by other musicians.

During the four years I was recording The Partridge Family
albums, I was never allowed to become the songwriter I should have been because of the control that Wes Farrell had. I did write a few songs on those albums, but I’d usually have to write with Wes; rarely would I be allowed to write or record anything of my own. Part of the reason was money and at times I blamed Wes’s ego, although he was good at what he did and I was young and inexperienced.

Although most people didn’t appreciate the merit of the songs back then, I think that the fact that they’ve held up to time proves they were good. Although it wasn’t my personal taste in music when I was 19 and 20, I’ve always been proud of the work I did. I was fortunate that I was working with the greatest musicians, the greatest writers. I learned how to write from being around amazing songwriters like Tony Romeo, Wes Farrell, Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. I had an education that no college or music academy could have ever given me. I learned fast. I was like a sponge.

Tony Romeo, who wrote
I
Think I Love You
, had previously
written some of The Cowsills’ most memorable songs, including
Indian Lake
and
Poor Baby.
He was one of the great lyrical and musical forces of the era – unique and very special. Through Wes, Tony and I became friends. Wes didn’t have the depth that Tony had. Years later I had to remind Tony about
Point Me in the
Direction of Albuquerque
. He’d forgotten about it. I told him it was a brilliant song. Tony was a romantic and he painted pictures with every line.

Another song of Tony’s,
Summer Days
, is very evocative and provocative. I also really liked
You Are Always on My Mind
. I loved the first line. ‘Wake up in the morning feeling all right, ’till I recall you’re gone from my life, and I stare like a dummy against the wall.’ That was such a great hook. I loved that song and I’ve never done it live.

Russell Brown and Irwin Levine, who wrote
I
Woke Up in Love This Morning
, one of the biggest Partridge Family hits, also wrote such chart-toppers as
Tie a Yellow Ribbon
,
Knock Three Times
and
Candida
, which Tony Orlando and Dawn recorded for Bell in the early 70s. Farrell got Gerry Goffin, who’d co-written pop hits like
The Loco-Motion, Up on the Roof, Pleasant Valley Sunday, I’m into Something Good
,
One Fine Day
and
Will You Love Me Tomorrow
, to write
material for The Partridge Family, too. Even Paul Anka was persuaded to do a little writing for us, contributing songs like
One Night Stand
.

Everything we did was about happiness, joy, light; the songs are positive, inspirational. Love them or hate them, you need to look at them objectively for what they are.
Sound Magazine
, the third album, is the best Partridge Family album we ever did. It had the best songs and, to me, it all came together during those sessions.

Not to say that
I Can Feel Your Heartbeat
and
It’s One of Those Nights
aren’t great songs and records; I love
them. But the first album and the third album were the best, in my opinion. There were two or three great songs on the first album:
Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque
,
I Think I Love
You
and
Heartbeat
. And the third album had songs like
Summer Days, Echo Valley 2-6809, One Night Stand
and
You Are Always on My Mind
.

The studio drummer, Hal Blaine, has played on more hits than anybody on the face of the earth, I think. He made classic records from
Good Vibrations
to
The Beat Goes On
to
California Dreamin’.
He played with Elvis. He played with everybody. And he played on almost all of my Partridge Family
and solo records.

Jim Gordon, who was also a drummer and played on
Rock Me Baby
, was in Derek and the Dominoes. Their song
Layla
was on the car radio as I drove to the studio. I said to Jim, ‘Hey, I heard your new single.
Layla’
s great.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I wrote it.’ And I went, ‘You did not.’ He went, ‘Yeah. I wrote it.’

Mike Melvoin was at the piano and Jim said, ‘Mike, get up.’ Jim got out from behind the drums, walked over to the piano and played the whole song, all seven minutes of it. My jaw dropped. I went, ‘Jim, where did you learn how to play like that?’

A very tragic story about him. I got to know him fairly well, but he was getting burned. I think Eric Clapton, Duane Allman and those guys were heavily into drugs and it was tough hanging around them without indulging. I think Eric’s talked quite a bit about it, you know, the amount of drug-induced creativity and what happens to you when they stop the tape. And poor Jim, he started hearing voices in his head and he just couldn’t cope. It was very, very tragic, very sad. Jim has been in an institution since he was convicted of a felony and lost his mind. I think that very few people now think of him or acknowledge him, but he was one of the greats.

Mike Melvoin was a big influence on The Partridge Family sessions. He played on 90 per cent of the material that we recorded. He created and played the piano lick on
I’ll Meet You Halfway
. He arranged the rhythm sections with Wes. Wes was valuable, but Mike was the real arranger and the players would sometimes give their input. Each player would listen to the demo and a key was chosen based on everything they knew about my voice.

Wes had some problems with the way I naturally sounded. In his opinion my voice had too much power. He wanted my voice to sound light and young and airy. He didn’t want any character in it. But what was so flawed about that idea is that you lose any sense of individuality. He had me double-track vocals (the way Neil Sedaka had so often done) to give my voice added pop-ness and, by altering the tape speed, he was able to raise the pitch of my voice a half-tone above what it actually was. I didn’t catch on to that trick until we’d made a couple of albums. When we made
Sound Magazine
I insisted he stopped doing that.

Right before
The Partridge Family
aired in the summer of 1970, I was on the set making episode three or four. When I was on a break somebody walked me out of the gate and into a studio. Wes Farrell was there and said, ‘Here’s the theme for the television series. It’s called
C’mon, Get Happy
.’

They played me the track and Wes sort of sang me the song once. I read through the lyrics, did one take and that was it. I was in the studio maybe 11 minutes. I walked back on to the set and never thought another moment about it. I re-recorded one verse the next year, because they’d changed some of the lyrics. And I never heard it again. Never. I never saw the show. I was working every Friday night. There were no videotape recorders then, so if you missed the show, you missed it. Which also explained a lot of the hysteria. You didn’t see performers on MTV or VH1 in those days. People saw their favourite stars in live performances and on filmed television shows that could only be seen when they were broadcast.

For the last 30 years, people have walked up to me singing, ‘Hello, world, here’s a song that we’re singing, c’mon get happy.’ For a long time, I’d go, ‘Huh?’ It was never on an album until Arista put the song on a
Partridge Family
Greatest
Hits
CD. People still play
C’mon, Get
Happy
or
I
Think I Love You
every time I visit a radio station to do an interview. It’s a great little theme song and is really representative of the show and the era.

All the recordings we made were intended for eventual use on the TV show and for release as singles and/or on albums, which the show would be promoting. Remember, this was the same company that had brought America
The Monkees
. So, of course, they knew exactly what was going on from day one. But even when we began recording, I still didn’t get it. My attitude was,
Gee, I’m going to be a rock and roll singer!
I wasn’t really even listening to the songs. I was just so caught up in being among such great musicians. I was naïve.

They made me some test pressings of the unfinished recordings. I took these lacquer pressings over to my friend Don Johnson. We spent an evening together. I played a few songs, all excited that the producers of
The Partridge Family
were now permitting me to make records, not just act. Don was an aspiring singer himself, not just an actor (he got his first film work that year in the low-budget
The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart;
he was still really struggling as an actor). Don seemed really happy for me, just blown away that I’d somehow parlayed my interest in music into what could be an actual recording career. Neither of us could anticipate what was in store for me as a singer. Over the next couple of years, I continued to see Don from time to time. He and Sal Mineo went in separate directions. Don hooked up with one of Sal’s ex-girlfriends, as I recall.

Meanwhile, on
The Partridge Family
set at The Burbank studios, where we were filming, an optimistic spirit developed well before the first episode aired in the fall.

As we got closer to the first broadcast, I started realising that people from coast to coast would see me singing these songs and think that’s the kind of music I was into. The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable and out of control I felt.

I realised Screen Gems had every intention of trying to market me as a teen idol. When they started talking about all of the merchandise and music they planned to sell, I got really scared. I panicked. I thought:
I don’t want to be a teen idol. I want to be thought of as a serious actor.