Devolution. The American entertainment industry started off with The Monkees, a quartet of cheeky actors and musicians who had a sitcom as a vehicle for their pop careers. Then, they staged a coup and won and the cash cow imploded. Next, there was The Archies, comic book characters adapted to the small screen who had suddenly become a band. They had their hits but the public could never fully embrace them as a cartoon and it all went tits up. Finally, there was The Partridge Family: another sitcom, this time based on a family band trying to make it. In spite of the premise, the music was a total afterthought.
Matriarch Shirley Jones, the painfully stereotypical All-American post-War housewife. David Cassidy, all charming cockiness and the air of someone who's convinced he's cooler than anyone watching him on TV. (He may have had a point) Susan Dey, doe-eyed girl-next-door who made looking bored out of her mind sexy. (Supermodels really ought to acknowledge the influence she had on their profession) Danny Bonaduce, smart alec kid and dirty bag waiting to happen. The other two little twerps whose names escape me, as poor at acting as they were at pretending to be musically proficient. Ladies and gentlemen, The Partridge Family. I'd say you can't make this shit up but that's exactly what a TV network exec did.
Of course, the idea wasn't just conjured out of thin air. It was the unlikely pop stardom of The Cowsills in the late sixties that inspired the concept. At first, it was proposed that Billy, Bobby and the rest would star in the show themselves but their acting wasn't considered good enough. (I also have to wonder if they were hamstrung by their waning popularity coupled with the older boys growing up and leaving their wholesome image behind) Too lazy to consider rising family acts in, say, Gary, Indiana or Ogden, Utah, it was decided just to cast a bunch of actors instead. Jones and Cassidy could sing and that was all that was needed. Studio vocalists would handle the rest and the music itself would be played by The Wrecking Crew because it was evidently against the law to utilize anyone else. Oh, the promise of an exciting and fresh venture.
Critics and pop fans would eventually re-evaluate The Monkees and even The Archies. They may have been misguided in doing so — especially when it came to the latter — but they had their reasons. A similar reconsideration has never been granted The Partridge Family (at least not on a wide scale) and with good reason. Manufactured pop acts always had artifice dialed up to the max but at least there was some effort to be contemporary. The best of the hits of The Monkees are poor cousins to the extraordinary work of The Beatles; The Archies had a young pop craftsman in Andy Kim to give the project some currency. They may not have always succeeded but you can at least respect the attempt.
Sadly, nothing even close is going on with the first Partridge Family hit "I Think I Love You". It is pure old fashioned establishment pop cheese. Tony Romeo had been a pretty successful songwriter since the early sixties but it sounds like he had spent the past several years in isolation since there's nothing of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Motown or psychedelic rock in his most famous work. To do a throwback to simpler times is one thing but to do so with something so forgettable and lifeless makes it even worse. Cassidy's Keith Partridge is doing his best to add some life to his lead vocal but it's too little too late. The people behind The Partridge Family may have had ambitions for the show but it's clear that the desire to craft great pop along the way was never a priority.
A seldom — if ever — discussed 'what if' surrounds The Partridge Family following its first season in which the sextet travel around in their bus on tour. The show's subsequent seasons are centred around the family home in LA with less of an emphasis on the band itself. But imagine a scenario in which they gradually have Keith Partridge branch out to become a folky singer-songwriter not unlike James Taylor and Cat Stevens. It would have made for some interesting storylines in which the young heartthrob becomes more mature. (They could have also had stories at the same time revolving around the musical ambitions of Laurie — either as a singer or a keyboardist — and even Danny jamming with his friends from school) The family band concept would have evolved as the three oldest children became more independent. What, then, does this have to do with "I Think I Love You"? Not a whole lot but it says an awful lot that a blogger more than fifty-five years after the fact has better ideas for a show he never thought much of and their music which is somehow even worse.
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