Once a teen idol, always a teen idol--even if you happen to be 52 years old. In the midst of his first solo tour in decades, David Cassidy is taking it all in stride--and enjoying every minute he shares with his fans.

"I'm having the best time in my life," Cassidy proclaims. "The people who come out for the concerts are just crazy--in the best way. [Laughs] They're up and dancing and shouting the entire concert. The only difference between now and, say, 25 years ago is maybe their voices have dropped an octave. [Laughs] And now when they throw their lingerie up on stage, they actually write their names and [phone] numbers in it. The moms are coming with their kids and we're all having this wild, fun time."

Cassidy is of course best remembered as the frontman for "The Partridge Family" television series from the early '70s. But the singer also enjoyed a hugely successful solo career, and at one time, his fan club was larger than those of the Beatles or Elvis Presley.

Earlier this year, Cassidy released a new album, "Then and Now" (Decca), which soared to the No. 5 spot on the British album charts. 

"We went back into the same studio and re-recorded all the [solo and "Partridge Family"] hits with the same band and even the same microphone I used 25 years ago. We also threw in some new stuff, and we just had a blast recording it."

Cassidy spent the past nine years working in live theater, first on Broadway and in a national tour of "Blood Brothers," and then in Las Vegas where he starred for three years in "EFX' at the MGM Grand and for the past two years in "At the Copa" at the Rio Suites.

"I worked for the past nine years doing eight to 10 shows a week, six nights a week, 48 weeks a year, so being on the road [laughs] is actually a lot easier--and more fun. It's something that I love doing. I strap on my guitar and I'm 19 years old again."

Cassidy recently moved his family--wife and songwriter Sue Shifrin-Cassidy and their 11-year-old son, Beau--from the desert landscape of Las Vegas to oceanfront property in south Florida.
 

HERE'S WHAT ELSE CASSIDY HAD TO SAY:

CD you're listening to these days: Marvin Gaye's "Greatest Hits"

Last good book you read: I re-read The Catcher in the Rye three months ago.

Last good movie you saw: "The Shawshank Redemption"

Best advice you ever got: It was from my dad [the late actor Jack Cassidy], at the peak of my career, around 1974. He came to one of my concerts and told me, "Fashion, fads, everything comes and goes, but true talent will survive. You've got it, so don't ever be discouraged."

The one thing you miss most about your dad: His great sense of humor. No one could make me laugh the way he did.

Your biggest musical influence: John Lennon. The Beatles wrote the soundtrack to my youth, along with Motown.

Best thing about being David Cassidy: Being able to have people all over the world tell you that you've been a part of their lives. What an incredible feeling it is to hear that.

Worst thing about being David Cassidy: I suppose just not being able to blend in to normal life, to just be able to go to the grocery store or stand in line at the bank unrecognized. But that's such a small price to pay.

Best disguise you wear in public: I don't often wear one, but if I do it's usually glasses and a hat.

First Partridge Family member you'd vote off of "Survivor": [Laughing] The first Chris [Jeremy Gelbwaks]. Because he had this really annoying habit of kicking everyone in the shins.

Thoughts on your daughter Katie recording "I Think I Love You": She didn't seek my advice, but I would have advised her not to do it, to simply not go into the business at such a young age (15). My advice would have been stay in school, go to college and then go out and attack it [a music career]. I do like her [hip-hop] version of it. I love her and I wish her all the best. 

Favorite Chicago memory: Oh, that would have to be Candy, this girl I dated when we were in our 20s. Wow. I had a really really wonderful relationship with her for a few years. We'd fly out to see each other. 

One word to describe your life: Blessed.
 

While going through some of his storage boxes recently, David Cassidy came across what to many teenage girls in the 1970s would have been a treasure.

"I discovered I had six untouched Partridge Family lunchboxes," Cassidy said with a fond chuckle during a telephone interview. 

The 52-year-old performer was immediately taken back to his days as a teen idol in the 1970s; days when, as a chart-topping singer and as the star of television's "The Partridge Family," he could incite hysteria by just poking his head out of a door. 

Now, 30 years later, minus the 1970s shag hairdo and velvety jumpsuits, Cassidy is still setting hearts aflutter on his current world tour - his first in the United States in 10 years and his first in the United Kingdom in 15 years.

"It's great to go back and do this," Cassidy said of touring. "I strap on my guitar and I'm 19 again."

On Saturday Cassidy will perform at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, the tour's only Chicago-area performance.

At the Paramount, audiences can expect to hear many of Cassidy's hits, along with music that has inspired him through the years, including Broadway tunes.

"I'm sure they will know every single song," Cassidy said.

Looking down from the stage these days, Cassidy no longer sees an audience made up of teenage girls screaming and crying. 

He now looks out at the faces of mothers and fathers in their 40s and 50s, along with their children, who may have just discovered Cassidy's music. There are even some senior citizens who come to sing along to the tunes, Cassidy said. 

"They range in age from 7 to 70," he said of his audiences. "It's amazing how the generations have come together."

In November, Cassidy will take his tour to Australia to coincide with the release of his new CD, "Then And Now." 

The CD, a compilation of fresh arrangements of some of Cassidy's greatest hits, plus new material, was released earlier this year in the United Kingdom where it quickly went platinum. The CD was released in the United States this spring. 

Cassidy said many tracks on "Then And Now" were recorded at the same studio where he first recorded his 1970s hits. The same musicians and backup singers traveled from around the country to join him for the project. Cassidy even used the same microphone.

"It was an emotional experience," Cassidy recalled.

As a youngster, life was not always easy for Cassidy, the son of actor Jack Cassidy and actress Evelyn Ward. 

After his parents divorced when he was 5, Cassidy and his mother lived for a number of years with his grandparents in New Jersey. Cassidy's grandfather read meters for the public works department.

Cassidy and his mother moved to California when he was 11, for a time living in a one-bedroom apartment. Cassidy, always interested in music - "I sang from the time I was born" - was in junior choir in church and chorus in school. As he grew older, he played in rock 'n' roll bands in high school.

Cassidy dabbled in summer stock productions, and, after high school, earned roles on television shows such as "Marcus Welby," "The Mod Squad and "Bonanza."

In 1970, Cassidy was a struggling 19-year-old actor trying to pay his rent. At the time, he and a roommate shared expenses and a lot of macaroni and cheese - "the Kraft brand was good," Cassidy recalled. 

That year, after six auditions and a screen test, Cassidy won the role of Keith Partridge in "The Partridge Family," co-starring with his real-life stepmother, Shirley Jones. 

Life would never be the same for David Bruce Cassidy.

When the show debuted on ABC, Cassidy was launched into the teen idol stratosphere, with his picture not only on the cover of every teen magazine worldwide, but on lunchboxes, paper doll sets, jigsaw puzzles and cereal boxes.

Cassidy soon found that he could rarely leave his home to go to a store or a restaurant - or anywhere - because of the crush of fans that followed his every move. Even getting to work in the morning was a struggle.

"I couldn't get to the set. I had to drive two or three different routes. Hundreds of people waited at the (set's) gate. People camped out in front of my house," he said.

As lead vocalist for "The Partridge Family," Cassidy had seven hit singles including "I Woke Up In Love This Morning" and "I Think I Love You," which became the best-selling record of 1971. He also topped the charts as a solo artist with five hit singles including "Cherish" and "Could It Be Forever." 

Cassidy's concerts broke box office records at places such as Madison Square Garden, London's White City Stadium and the Houston Astrodome. 

His official fan club membership exceeded that of either the Beatles or Elvis Presley. At the tender age of 21, Cassidy was the highest paid performer in the world, with not a moment for himself each day.

"I worked all day. At night I would record, and on weekends I was performing. I had no social life for five years," Cassidy said. 

And while millions of girls woke up each morning, hugging their David Cassidy pillowcases, he arose each day, looked in the mirror and "saw a very tired guy - but a very fortunate guy," he said.

After "The Partridge Family" ended its run in 1974, Cassidy continued with his television acting career, receiving an Emmy nomination for his performance in a 1978 episode of "Police Story." He also starred in "David Cassidy Man Undercover" on NBC, in the role of officer Dan Shay.

In the early 1980s, Cassidy ventured onto Broadway's stage, starring in "Little Johnny Jones" and the original production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." In 1994, he starred with step-brother Shaun Cassidy in sold-out tours of the Broadway production "Blood Brothers."

During the last six years, Cassidy has performed almost exclusively in Las Vegas. In 1996, he opened at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in "EFX," a $75 million high-tech musical. 

He also wrote and produced Vegas productions such as "The Rat Pack Is Back," which played at the Sahara Hotel and Casino, and "At The Copa," which was at the Rio. 

Today, Cassidy resides in Florida with his wife, songwriter Sue Shifrin-Cassidy, and their 11-year-old son, Beau. Cassidy also has a 15-year-old daughter, Katie, from a previous relationship. 

When he is not working, he enjoys breeding and racing thoroughbred horses at racetracks around the country.

After his current tour ends, Cassidy said he hopes to write and produce another Broadway show.

And the only clue he will reveal to fans about a new CD he will release next year is that it will be "very different." 

Cassidy is grateful he has been able to pursue his dreams for so many years.

"If you do good work, great things come," Cassidy said. "It's never been about money or fame for me. I think I am one of the most fortunate men that walks the face of the earth." 

The scoop

What: David Cassidy

Where: Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Tickets: $40-$75

Phone: (630) 896-6666
 

  You were probably in his fan club. Everyone else seems to have been. It was the largest official fan club ever — bigger, even, than the clubs of Elvis or the Beatles. David Cassidy was huge.

  And he's not slacking now. You might not have seen him in record stores lately — after his success with TV's The Partridge Family and the sell-out stadium tours that followed, Cassidy found himself writing, producing, directing and acting on TV and in theaters all over. But now he's back in front of a band, pushing a new album with a new tour — his first in a decade.

  "In many respects," he says, "it's like a whole new career again."

  The first one took a lot out of him.

  As the son of two busy Broadway actors, it didn't take Cassidy long to figure out how he would make his mark. He appeared in his first professional show at age 18, and left for Los Angeles not long after for a screen test. That job fell through — but word got around. By the time ABC was ready to premiere The Partridge Family in 1970, the network knew it had found its young star.

  Just like that, David Cassidy exploded.

  "When you see your picture on a Rice Krispies box, and you're suddenly seeing comic books and pillow cases with your name and likeness on them, it throws it all out of perspective," Cassidy says. "In the end, it kind of robbed me of my own identity because people assumed I was the character I played on TV."

  While his friends were going to college, Cassidy went from one show to the next. He went from TV appearances to tours and back again. It never seemed to stop.

  "It was phenomenal," he says. "I had the largest fan club in history and all the rest of it — it doesn't make you happy. It doesn't make you emotionally satisfied and well-balanced. You want to be doing what your friends are doing."

  By 1975, he was burned out. Cassidy called it quits.

  But in a sense, it was too late.

  "I think my own loss of those years created a gap for me," he says. "I was going, 'OK, I'm 19' — and I was 25. My friends were like, 'we did college already — where were you?' So I started drinking a lot of beer."

  There's no making up for lost time. For the next few years, Cassidy says, he lived in a sort of "retirement." A growing friendship with John Lennon helped, he said, to understand his own experience. Both men were very famous very young — and learning how to live the aftermath.

  "He was a great role model in that respect," Cassidy says. "He wanted to be a normal guy, a househusband ... There were very few people that could understand everything about the experience that he had had and that I had had."

  A mutual friend introduced Cassidy to Lennon; the former Beatles star showed up at Cassidy's house at 1 a.m. New Year's Day, 1974. They spent the evening drinking, Cassidy says, and playing old Beatles songs together. He had to re-teach Lennon a lot of the older ones.

  The friendship helped. David Cassidy rested.

  And then he worked again. By the '90s, his focus had shifted to acting — he starred in the original Broadway production of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, broke records in London with Blood Brothers, then moved to Las Vegas to star in EFX. Within four months of opening, the show was voted "Best Production Show in Las Vegas."

  Still, it's good to be doing concerts again. The new tour, Cassidy says, has been like no other. There have been surprises — one of his first-grade classmates showed up backstage on one stop with an old picture of him at a birthday party. At another show, he ran into an actress that had starred with him in his first Broadway show.

  The schedule's easier — eight shows per month, says Cassidy, instead of eight per week. That means the 52-year-old has time to see his wife and 10-year-old son. For the first time in a long time, he'll be at home on Christmas.

  Pop-star culture is a little different now, too.

  "Now they throw lingerie," Cassidy says. "Before, they used to throw love beads and Puka Shell necklaces. So it's gotten a lot cooler."

  And — yes — the fan club is still alive and well.

  "This past year has been probably the best of my career," Cassidy says. "I'm having the best time I've ever had."
 

THERE'S NOT really that much difference between then and now--aside from the women's underwear.

Almost three decades after "The Partridge Family" went off the air, the lust remains.

The pubescent girls who bought millions of teen magazines with David Cassidy on the cover are now middle-aged. But they scream louder than ever on his current concert tour to promote his latest Universal/Decca Records album, "Then and Now."

He's 52 now, but women in their 40s and 50s still go crazy when he sings "I Think I Love You," the Partridge Family song that was the biggest hit of 1971.

"It's a lot more intense now," Cassidy said in a telephone interview. "It's different when teenagers do it. When you hear adults that really and truly are letting themselves go, it's incredible. 

"They're throwing their bras and underwear," Cassidy said with a chuckle. "So it's pretty cool--I have to be honest. I'm having the time of my life."

In middle age, Cassidy remains laid-back, youthful and likable, much like his alter ego, the singing teen heartthrob Keith Partridge.

The show revolved around a family that traveled the country as a pop band. Cassidy's real-life stepmother, Shirley Jones, played his mother on the hit sitcom.

Life imitated art when Cassidy became a real pop performer. He had the biggest fan club in music industry history and sold millions of records.

He later shifted gears and returned to acting, appearing on Broadway and London's West End, where he earned critical praise as a dramatic actor.

But in the '90s, VH-1 helped start a nostalgia craze that re-energized his music career and helped him become a big Las Vegas attraction, go on a world tour and get a new major-label record deal.

"After I diversified and had so many different opportunities working on Broadway and in Las Vegas, it's come full circle the last year," he said about the release of the new album and the tour.

"It's probably the most satisfying time of my life," Cassidy said. "I'm strapping on my guitar and feeling like I'm 19. The most amazing thing is the reaction of the audience to me and the material."

"Partridge Family" co-star Danny Bonaduce, who played younger brother Danny Partridge, had plenty of problems in life after the show went off the air.

But Cassidy, who was out of high school when the show began taping, never really was a child star and escaped emotionally unscathed. He said he never had any problems as a result of becoming a star at a young age.

Cassidy declined to talk about a former relationship with co-star Susan Dey, who played his sister Laurie Partridge on the series. That relationship was the focal point of a made-for-TV movie about "The Partridge Family."

"We have an obsession with celebrity relationships and the sex lives of celebrities," he said. "I don't get it. I don't care what other people are doing."

When he was a teen idol, Cassidy had a very full social life. That was then. He's married now. 

"I've been with the same woman for 16 years," he said. "We're happy together. So life is good for me."

Suddenly, Cassidy sounded 52, not 19.

"I don't understand people's preoccupation with their [private parts], preoccupation with sex everywhere you look," he said.

He said it's had a bad effect on society.

"There's no innocence looking at what we're looking at on television today," he said.
 

AFTER four years in the Partridge Family, 10 years in therapy and five years on stage in Las Vegas, you'd expect David Cassidy to be either a very, very nice man, or dead.

He's very, very nice.

Even when he's working a little hotel function room for a handful of (mostly) female journalists, hardly the gig of his life, he plays it like it's main stage at the Hollywood Bowl.

Anecdotes, jokes, goofy play-acting and heartfelt confessions pour out, coated with a honeyed voice that sounds like he's introducing a musical number.

He starts with a little speech about how much he loved Sydney . . . then modifies his line as he realises he's in Melbourne, to a general praise of the Australian people.

"We envy your love of life and your celebration of life, how open (you are) and how you have a great time and enjoy yourselves," he says.

It's all in the earnest delivery. But . . . maybe he's a little too cute for a 52-year-old. And there's the occasional hint that he feels his age more than most.

David Cassidy was the young star of the Partridge Family when the show premiered in 1970 and became the world's highest paid solo entertainer by the age of 21.

Since then he has pursued acting and then in 1996 opened at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas with a huge production called EFX, that played to nearly a million people.

Now he is back on the road with a concert tour.

He tells the story of the last time he was in Melbourne in 1974, playing in front of 75,000 people at the MCG.

"It was a remarkable day, very hot," he says. "An amazing event."

The outfit he wore on the day - burgundy velvet with bird-like decorations - was stolen.

But in April this year a fan came to his show at Hammersmith Apollo in the UK, with the suit.

"I have the suit now, she gave it to me," Cassidy says. "The same suit that I wore and you know what . . . I tried it on.

"I got into it. It was tight in here but I was a really skinny young guy. You know. Young, underlined."

He pauses, sighs.

"I'm fit, you know. I stay fit and I work so much, I'm relatively the same size.

"It's a cruel thing, age, isn't it? You lose hair here, you get hair here and here."

He points out the appropriate bits.

"But I strap my guitar on and I'm doing the same thing I did when I was 19. I feel relatively young."

He's certainly keeping busy. For the past year he has done up to 10 shows a week.

He has done 3000 shows in the past decade, nearly 100 concerts.

But this is the first time he has returned to Australia.

"The last time the only way I could travel was wrapped up in a blanket and chucked into the car," he says.

"The band was out having a great time and I'd be locked up in my room, sitting up there having baked beans on toast and watching rugby and soccer."

His life is different now. The fans are just as enthusiastic, he says - the atmosphere at the concerts is incredible - but there are differences.

"There was a pitch to 13 and 14-year-old voices that you can't quite recreate," he says.

"The voices have dropped an octave and they don't throw love beads and toys and things at me. They throw really sexy G's and bras and all that lingerie kind of stuff."

It's good not having to be a role model any more, he says.

Back then he was good friends with rocker Alice Cooper.

"Alice is a sweet, very religious guy," Cassidy says. "But his image was the prince of darkness and I was the prince of light.

"And we used to hang together and I was much wilder than him. But because of my television show and the character I played and the innocence of the show and the time . . . they marketed that.

"I was a red-blooded American boy. In my teenage years at high school I saw Hendrix five times, I saw Clapton, Cream, Jeff Beck, BB King . . . My friend and I hitched up to (hippie central) Haight Ashbury . . .

"I wasn't a bad guy or a dangerous guy but I was a wild rockin' teenager. Now I'm a wild, rocking, 50-year old."

He finds it hard to pick a highlight of being Keith Partridge but he thanks the role for giving him the chance for a career in showbiz - and the chance to do this concert tour.

"It's high-energy, it's a love-fest, it's a celebration," he says, earnestly.

"My shows are . . . you can't describe it, you have to come and see it. But I promise you, from what I have heard from people, I don't know that you have ever seen the likes of it."

So what do you do in this show, asks an awed reporter.

"I get naked," he replies. The room cracks up. He's a showman, that's for sure.

David Cassidy plays the Burswood Theatre on November 21

NEW YORK (AP) - Paige Turco (news) plays CIA operative Terri Lowell on the CBS drama "The Agency," a workaholic who's skilled with computers and goes strictly by the book. 

Lowell is a wizard in the CIA's graphic design department, and her ambition and good instincts have made her a prime candidate for fieldwork. 

Off-screen, though, Turco, who received training from real-life CIA operatives, says she's rebellious and isn't particularly computer literate. 

But the 37-year-old actress is working to understand Lowell's psyche, including catching up on the news when she's off the set. And, like her character, Turco (a former ballerina) is studying martial arts. 

"The Agency," now in its second season (Saturdays, 10 p.m. ET), also stars Beau Bridges, Rocky Carroll, David Clennon and Will Patton. The pilot had a plot line involving Osama bin Laden; a later episode involved an anthrax scare. Both shows were written and shot before last year's terrorist attacks but aired after Sept. 11. 

Viewers responded particularly well to her character, Turco says, because Lowell was new to the CIA and learning how the intelligence world works — just like all the people glued to the news on television. 

Turco graduated from the University of Connecticut and performed with the New England Dance Conservatory, the Amherst Ballet Theater Company and the Western Massachusetts Ballet Company. 

Her first acting jobs included the daytime soap operas "The Guiding Light" and "All My Children." She had roles on the TV series "American Gothic," "NYPD Blue" and "Party of Five," and starred in two "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" films. 

Although "The Agency" is shot in California, Turco considers Manhattan her home. On a recent weekend visit, she squeezed in a doctor's appointment, this interview and a double cheeseburger, delivered from her favorite diner. 

1. Why can't you commit to Los Angeles? 

Turco: In New York there is more of a diversity of lives. Most of my friends aren't in the business but in L.A. so much of the city is `industry' — not that that's a negative thing ... for me, though, I need to be able to walk around real life. Last year, I walked somewhere (in Los Angeles) and people almost drove their cars off the road. 

2. A broken ankle ended your career as a ballerina before it really got started. Any regrets? 

Turco: I went through a period where I couldn't even go to the ballet and watch because it was so painful and I missed it. ... Now I think it was the biggest blessing that could ever happen in my life. What I learned from that — and I try to live this way — is you really never know what's going to happen. 

3. What's it been like to work on "The Agency" since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks? 

Turco: None of us wanted to keep doing the show just for the sake of keeping our jobs, not for the sake of entertainment if it was going to make people feel uncomfortable or bring them any more fear or pain ... but we also became a voice in saying this really happened, there are real people involved and there are people left behind who deal with this pain every day. 

4. How did you react to your first meeting with former teen heartthrob Shaun Cassidy, an executive producer of "The Agency" and on your previous show "American Gothic"? 

Turco: He'll kill me for saying this, but when I first met him all I could hear was `Da Doo Ron Ron.' But he's my buddy now. And he's my boss. 

5. Can you describe that rebellious streak you mentioned? 

Turco: When I first started doing soaps I always played the goody-goody. I said to my mother, `Well, it's kind of fun because I get to play the perfect daughter you never had.'