At 66, Shaun Cassidy Tells All

What’s your new show The Road to Us like?

Personal stories about my family and the audience, then and now. I could have had a career playing Vegas, recycling old hits. But I’m grateful I didn’t have to do that, and now I can come at it, really, as a storyteller. It was going to be purely a storytelling show. I wasn’t going to sing anything, but people said, “They’re going to get pissed and yell ‘Do “Da Doo Ron Ron!” ’ while you’re trying to tell some funny or emotional story.” So I found a way to weave pop songs and theater songs into a narrative. My dirty little secret is, this thing is more like a Broadway show than I would ever advertise it to be.

Is this tour as big as your teen-idol tours?

This is the biggest tour I’ve ever done. I never did 50 cities when I was 20, I was doing a TV show. I have three TV pilots [scripts] I’m working on in the middle of this tour. But I’m telling you, it’s really invigorating. I know I’m talking to AARP, and if I’m not an advertisement for, like, “Get off your butt and do something in your 60s!” I don't know who is. I do way more now than in my 20s.

Your mom starred as a sitcom pop singer, and in some of the greatest musicals: Oklahoma!, Carousel and The Music Man. What’s your musical identity?

The first two albums I ever owned were With The Beatles and The Music Man soundtrack. What they had in common is one song, “Till There Was You,” sung by Paul McCartney. My mother sang it in The Music Man. And that song is the intersection of everything that ever inspired me: theater and movie musicals on one side, pop music and rock on the other. And that led me to soul music and country music, because country music is storytelling, even rap — you know, “You got trouble my friends, right here in River City, with a capital T!”

How did fame affect your dad and brother?

My father was always frustrated: married to a woman much more famous, then his son became more famous than he was. Instead of just being proud — “That’s my boy, that’s my wife” — he had resentment, which tortured him and us. And David had this chip on his shoulder. We had similar early careers, yet I looked at it as, “Oh, I won the lottery. Now what will I do?” Whereas he was like, “No, no, no, I’m not Keith Partridge. I'm Jimi Hendrix!” And I was like, “Dude, you're a character on a television show. It's a big hit. America loves you. There could be worse fates. Why don’t you just enjoy it and trust that you will have the talent and fortitude to do other things?” And he did, later in life.

You share an experience with a lot of people our age: caregiving, for your mother. What does the experience offer for the caregiver?

Everything. I have read about people who say, “We're taking care of our kids still, and now we’re taking care of our parents because they’re living longer — oh, what a burden!” And I have not found that to be the case at all. In fact, actually the opposite. What a gift that this woman who took such great care of me under extraordinary circumstances, often I’m now in the position to be able to take care of her. And make no mistake, my mother only needs a modicum of caretaking. Even at 91, she’s in very good health. Memory is a little dodgy — like, you know, so is mine — but in great health. More important, she’s so positive all the time and so optimistic, she’s such like a little joy balloon to be around, that it’s only a win for me. So I’m not sure who's caring for who.

Some people actually seem to get happier and less worried in later life.

I think the upside of being aware of your own mortality is you start taking all of this less for granted and hopefully enjoy it more. Things that were big dramas in your 20s, you realize aren't really big dramas. They’re, well, manageable. I’m the luckiest guy you’ve ever talked to. I have seven kids. It took me a couple practice rounds, but I’m married over 20 years, and I live in a beautiful place, and I get to do a job I love. I don’t have any complaints!

Shaun Cassidy in "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries," 1977.

ABC Photo Archives/Getty Images

So aging hasn’t been a bad thing for you.

Dude, I only am reminded that I’m older when people tell me. I read my age and it’s like, ‘What?” I don’t live any differently than I did at 25. I probably exercise more and eat better. I’m more productive. I have way more responsibility, but it feels like less because I can manage my time better. The only issue I think I would have with AARP is the retirement word, because I don’t know that I really believe in that.

Oh, AARP no longer stands for “Retired Persons,” it’s “Real Possibilities” now. Fewer members are retired.

Either they can’t afford it or they don’t want to, and I don’t blame them. I think this retirement thing was an industrial revolution idea to get younger people in the assembly line. Bad idea. Maybe you’re not playing second base for the Yankees when you’re 60, but you could certainly do other things.

Are there new tunes in the show?

I wrote two new songs, one called “My First Crush.” It’s not about wine — even though I have the My First Crush Wine Club, which benefits No Kid Hungry, an organization that feeds kids all over the world. The song is about my first crush. People have told me I was their first concert or first album, or — no accounting for taste — their first crush. And crushes tend to be viewed as trivial and temporary, and yet I feel like the feeling is timeless. If I see Julie Newmar on Batman, I get that feeling I had when I was seven. That feeling doesn’t go away, I think it’s a gateway drug to real love. I wrote the song about that, and I realized my first crush is the woman I’m in love with, who is my wife.

Do you feel like you’ve got new opportunities at your age?

I’m working on a Broadway musical and a TV musical. You just say yes to things, because you don’t know what will happen. On Broadway at 23, I did Mass Appeal, directed by Geraldine Fitzgerald, Bette Davis’s roommate and costar. I was offered things like a portal on The Love Boat, and I was being snobby. She said, “Why aren’t you taking these jobs? You must.” She told me about her friend Humphrey Bogart. He’s miserable doing this movie, he bitches and moans to Geraldine that the script sucks, every new page is worse than the last, it will ruin his career. Six months later Casablanca was the biggest thing on the planet. That’s where I am now — a job might suck, but you might meet someone who remembers you and says, “Hey, why don’t we do that thing we talked about on that terrible job we were on?”  You want to put out a wine? OK, I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll learn. You want to go on the road at 66? I know Mick Jagger, he can do it. The older I get, the more I think that getting old is a choice.