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Go to ShipStation.com and use code START to try ShipStation free for 60 days. Music, mayhem and magic. I like that. Perfect, you were literally born into the royal family of American entertainment. You had a what, Tony winning dad, a Oscar winning mom, a brother on the Partridge family. I'm wondering for you as a kid, is that pressure or confidence for you? It's just weirdly normal. I use the analogy. If you come into a family of plumbers, everybody's a plumber, there's a lot of pressure to go into plumbing. And I did. I went into plumbing and I found that I was successful at plumbing, but I didn't love plumbing. I was able to transition early on. I had success as a singer and an actor like my parents and my brother David, but I found that my true calling was writing. And I wanted the life of a writer, more privacy, hopefully more healthy. So I stepped away for like 30, 40 years and I've written and produced a bunch of television shows, most recently a show called New Amsterdam medical show, but I found I missed the connection with people. So in 2020, after not doing a concert tour for 40 years, I went out again, not knowing if anybody would be there. I'd like it, but people showed up and I loved it. And now I'm doing the biggest tour of my whole career. So it's a full circle. Yeah, I know. I heard you say that you had to completely relearn the guitar for this tour, which kind of fascinates me because there is something mysterious about the way music and muscle memory and the way those tunes live on our brain. But how long did you take away from the instrument and how rusty were you? Was it all still there? You just had to knock off the rust or was it a lot of work? Well, I could still play the guitar, but I'd forgotten how to play songs that I had written when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. I just hadn't played them forever. I had maintained, we have a piano in our living room and I've always played piano. I'm probably a better piano player than I am a guitar player anyway. And I played that and I'd sung, you know, I'd sang around, you know, the piano at Christmas and stuff, but I hadn't had a career as a performer. I had made a very specific transition behind the scenes and, you know, I'm grateful that I was able to do it. I had a great run still. I'm still writing. I just turned into a new pilot to NBC yesterday that I wrote while I was on the road in hotel rooms and in the back of SUVs from city to city. But as I said, I missed the connection with an audience. I felt like Rick Ben Winkle. I went in my office at 29. I stepped out at 59. It's like, what happened? Are there people there still? And I, especially since the pandemic, I felt everybody got so isolated. You know, if you could be a conduit to get people out of the house for anything, but I think you need to do it. We're talking with Sean Cassidy's hitting cities all over the country on this road to us tour. If you want to experience these songs, these stories, grab your tickets today, a live show. It's a good one. And you can pick those up at Sean Cassidy.com. Take me back to year in high school. You get signed by Warner Brothers. What advice would you give that kid? What was going through his head at 18 when you inked that deal? What advice would you give him now all these years later if you had the chance? I'd say have more fun. I was an old soul. You know, I, and honestly, I kind of had a producer's brain even then. I didn't know that, but I reflect on a lot of the choices I made. And you know, I also, as I say, I'd watched my father was a Tony award winner. My mother was an Academy Award winner. My brother, David, was a very big pop star in the early seventies. So here I am in the late seventies, starring on a television show and opening the Grammys and having a bunch of hit records. And like, it's crazy, but kind of scared me honestly, because it was like so much. And I don't think I enjoyed it quite as much as I could have. But you know, me now in my sixties, I can look back at that kid and go, you did okay. You made the right decision stepping away. I wouldn't be here talking to you if he hadn't done that. All right. Well, let me set the scene for the audience. You mentioned some of the things, some of the wild stories that I'm sure you're going to hear a lot of these on this new tour at Sean Cassidy.com to pick up tickets, but let me set the scene. It's 1978. You're nominated for Best New Artist, 20th Annual Grammy Awards. Sean Cassidy, our guest here, he's a teenager. And oh, by the way, he's the opening act. And to me, this is not even the biggest deal of the night, Sean. Your date, Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher. It's 1970, it's 1978, baby. Star Wars is on the big screen. And you're opening up the Grammys. Tell me about the limo ride, the whole Hollywood moment. I got to know how, how was it with Princess Leia? It was a great night with Princess Leia. She was a friend, Carrie was a friend and neighbor. She was a few years older than me too. And we weren't like dating or anything, but she, yeah, I had just opened in this little movie called Star Wars. I had the number one record in the country. I'm on a big hit TV show and both of us are looking at each other like, aren't you the same dork you were two months ago in high school? Yeah. So we thought, well, why don't we go to this? Why don't we go to the Grammys together and cause some trouble. And on the limo ride there, we got a little frisky. Surprisingly, again, that was not our relationship. We were just pals, but whatever, fun night. And we got there and yeah, I opened the show. I was like, you know, Beyonce that year. It was crazy. And afterwards we ended up at a restaurant in Hollywood with Ringo and Alice Cooper and Bernie Taupen, who remains a great friend. And again, looking at each other, looking around going, how did we get here? How did that happen? Was there any do do run Ron? Was there any of that do do run Ron? I'm still trying to figure out what that exactly means. Can you give me the history? I saw my buddy. If you can figure out, let me know. Were you? Okay. It was the number one hit. I know Phil Spector, Jeff Barry, I think Ellie, what would they call them? The Brill building trio were the ones that wrote that big hit record for you. Do do run Ron. I want to know more about Phil Spector and his touch on music. I know he's a kind of a crazy guy, but he had that crazy wall of sound that he would turn records into these cinematic orchestras. What was that magic that Phil Spector had in the studio? You worked with him. Yeah, he was crazy, but he was a brilliant producer. He made some of my favorite records as a little boy. I mean, the records that he made in the sixties, what I'd listened to on the school bus on my way to second grade, you know, everything from you've lost that love and feeling with the righteous brothers to Riverdeep Mountain High, when I continued to turn her to be my baby, arguably one of the best pop records ever made by the Ronettes and the original do do run run with the crystals. So I'd listen to these songs. And when I started making records in the seventies, disco was like the big thing. And I wasn't a huge disco fan. I didn't feel like disco was something that I could do with any kind of authenticity. So I kind of did throwback. Let's mix records that sound like wall of sound records, which is what spring scene was doing. Born to run is a throwback to a Phil Spector record, big or castrol, multi-layered drum tracks. And that's what we were out to kind of have hit with the do run run. And that's rock and roll. And Hey, Dini, which were both big hits written by Eric Carmen, who also came from a power pop band, the raspberries. So, you know, those power pop records were kind of what we were after. And yeah, Phil was nuts. So Phil was in a commercial of mine. We did a little 32nd pre MTV spot for the do run run. And I asked Phil to be in it. And the record company said, that's a terrible idea. I said, why? They said, because he's insane. Oh, it'll be fun. And I ended up being held at gunpoint by Phil for like eight hours in his house. He wouldn't come out to do the video with us. He wanted to play me every record in his jukebox, which were all Phil Spector records, of course. And I love the records, but I'd like to be held at gunpoint to listen to them. I heard he did something similar. He ended up killing someone. He went to prison for killing a young woman. So it's always a very tragic story. And it's a, it's not a fun segue into the do run. So I don't tell that story in the show, but yeah, that was my soul specter experience. You can hear a lot of these stories on the road to us North American tour. A lot of nostalgia. Get your tickets and tour dates right now at Sean Cassidy.com. Now your mother, Shirley, if you ask me, is the matriarch of the Cassidy dynasty? And what a beautiful soul. And she makes TV history back in 1970 when you're just a kid, the very first working mother on television up until then you had leave it to be very had the Brady bunch, father knows best, all the moms were stay at home moms, but your mom, a working mom, did you realize what was really happening and how groundbreaking that was at that time? Or did nobody really realize what was happening in real time? I didn't know that. So just now you just told me something I didn't know. Wow. Yes. I didn't know she played the first working mom on TV while she drove the bus. Didn't she? She sure did. My mom, my mom was a widow on that show, widow, mother of four kids, five kids and a singing family kind of loosely based on the cows sales, which were an actual singing family. And my brother, my half brother, David Cassidy auditioned and the producer didn't know that she, he was related to my mom or had been, you know, the son of my mother's husband. So I remember they called her and said, Hey, this David Cassidy, your stepson, would it be weird if he played your son on the show? And she said, no, I love David. So he ended up on it too, but I didn't do it. Danny Bonaducci got my part. Oh yeah. I heard a wild story from Danny Bonaducci one time where he's the obviously the former costar with your bro on the partridge family, but he says he was at your brother's dressing room as a 13 year old boy and some 22 year old beautiful woman was trying to hunt down David and he happened to be in the right place at the right time, I guess for him, because he says it was the greatest 30 seconds of his life and he gave a hundred. He gave a hundred credit. He gave a hundred percent credit to the spillover of your brother. And from your vantage point, as his brother, what was that world really like during that time with David Cassidy? Did you experience any of that? Well, sure, because all of the girls that were my age were in love with him. So I didn't get spillover. I got rejection. It was, that was a weird time for me. I mean, here's the crazy full circle. I mean, David and I ended up working together in a show in Broadway called Blood Brothers for a year and a half, but that was when I was in my 30s and he was in his early 40s, much later. But when I'm 13 and he's starring on The Partish Family with my mom, every girl I knew was in love with him. And I'm a zit faced kid with braces. Like I'm lucky to get across the street. So I saw him at Madison Square Garden then. I sat in the audience with all those kids and like, this is surreal. And then seven years later, I'm selling out Madison Square Garden. And that was a quick seven years. And then all the kids there, you know, are now adults who come to my show and they bring their own kids. And the whole thing, it's called the road to us for a reason. It's not the road to me. It's the road to us, our shared experience across a lifetime. You also had another wild story. I heard you tell that you're in Germany and you're doing some kind of special event and AC DC, like Bon Scott Angus Young, they're opening up for you. That's incredible. That's a hell of a story. Well, neither of us, none of us were known. I don't know that they opened for me, but they were on before me on this sort of like, you know, cavalcade of stars show. And I just first time I'd seen or heard of AC DC and there's this kid in short pants is my age, maybe younger than me, but I don't know. But like, and then I go on and I'm singing these little pop songs and they're out there doing what AC DC does. It was kind of a crazy booking, but I think we were both on Warner Brothers or we were on we, which was one or left or Atlantic, the overseas hybrid of all the labels. And that happened a lot. And we got in Europe, you get packaged with other people. I was on a show with the spinners. I was on a show with God, with some of the Eagles actually. It's just funny and weird. You got all kinds of great stories. I mean, we're running out of time, but he went to high school with Jamie Lee Curtis, Heath Ledger. How about that story? He becomes one of the greatest actors of his generation. And from what I understand, you bought him his first plane ticket to America so he could audition for your show, Roar. Is that true? Yeah, we found Heath in Australia and Perth Australia. He'd done a little television there, but he'd never been to America. And I was casting a show I'd written called Roar, which was like a Braveheart kind of show and on Fox. And we flew Heath to America and we screen tested him and everybody just fell in love with him. And we knew, I mean, we knew he was going to be a big deal and the show didn't last long, but I spent a lot of time with Heath and what a lovely man he was and what a tragedy that he's not here. So great. Yeah, exactly. I'm really fortunate. I've worked with a lot of actors like Sarah Paulson's first job was on my first show called American Gothic. I had Austin Butler on a show I created for David Patrick. My brother's called Ruby in the Rockets. Austin played Patrick's son. He went on to play Elvis, of course. So, you know, I'm grateful. We could talk all day, Sean, but I know that you got a big tour to get ready for. We're talking with Sean Cassidy. He's hitting cities all over the country. Road to us tour. If you want to experience the songs, the stories, if you want to see it live, grab your tickets today at Sean Cassidy. Thank you so much for sharing some stories with us and go get that full experience. God bless you and keep rocking, Sean. Keep it up, brother. Thanks man. Thanks for having me.
