“We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun!”
The high-pitched chant grew insistent.
Greater than 2,000 women and a handful of confused-looking dad and mom crowded Grapevine Data & Tapes in 1979 for a glimpse of pop star Shaun Cassidy throughout an in-store look at Westgate Plaza in Akron.
The occasion was scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Aug. 28, however younger followers started to reach earlier than 6:30 a.m. at 1688 W. Market St. in Wallhaven. When the doorways opened at 10, the group stuffed the 9,000-square-foot retailer after which fashioned a line that stretched the size of the purchasing heart.
“We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun!”
Cassidy, 20, was an actor, singer and teenage idol who had graced the covers of Tiger Beat, 16 Journal, Folks and Dynamite within the Seventies. With a lean physique, hazel eyes and feathered-back, shoulder-length hair, he was thought-about by schoolgirls to be, within the lingo of the day, “a complete fox” to not point out “a complete babe.”
As a singer, he had bought greater than 7 million information and launched such hits as “That’s Rock ’n’ Roll,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Hey Deanie” and “Do You Consider in Magic.” As an actor, he starred reverse Parker Stevenson in “The Hardy Boys” from 1977 to 1979 on ABC-TV.
Leisure was his household enterprise. A son of Oscar winner Shirley Jones and Tony winner Jack Cassidy, Shaun was the half brother of one other teen icon, David Cassidy, who had starred with Jones in “The Partridge Household” on ABC within the early Seventies.
Shaun Cassidy visited Grapevine in 1979
The Grapevine look was scheduled to advertise Shaun Cassidy’s fourth Warner Bros. album, “Room Service,” earlier than he headlined a live performance that evening at Blossom Music Middle.
Akron cops valiantly maintained order on the crowded retailer. Women wore Cassidy T-shirts, purchased Cassidy albums, sang Cassidy songs and held Cassidy posters.
“We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun!”
Packed like sardines, the followers groaned in unison when a retailer official made an announcement at 3:20 p.m. over the loudspeakers: “Shaun has simply referred to as and instructed us he will probably be right here in 20 minutes.”
Anticipation stuffed the air. Our bodies pressed collectively uncomfortably. Gee, it was heat. The women groaned once more at 4 p.m. when an official introduced one other 20-minute delay. Oh, noooooo!
“We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun!”
Some children had been ready for 10 hours. How for much longer would it not be?
“Then about 4:30 and with none obvious indication, there was frantic stirring within the crowd, the ‘We would like Shaun!’ chant reached a deafening crescendo and the eyes of the younger individuals grew to become extensive and moist with panicky anticipation,” Beacon Journal reporter Mark Faris wrote.
“They knew he was there. No person needed to say something, they may sense it.
“All of them might. They usually had been proper.”
Women shrieked on the high of their lungs when Cassidy arrived together with his entourage behind the room. The teenager idol smiled and waved because the younger followers misplaced their minds.
Carrying a leather-based jacket, blue-striped shirt, blue denims and cowboy boots, Cassidy climbed over a file rack to achieve the lengthy desk the place he would signal autographs. Flashbulbs exploded whereas quivering women took photos with Kodak Instamatic cameras.
When Cassidy doffed his jacket to disclose a tank high, the group practically spontaneously combusted. He placed on a Grapevine T-shirt, took a seat in a folding chair and started to greet followers.
Even when he had arrived on time, he most likely couldn’t have accommodated everybody. Cassidy signed autographs for practically an hour, scribbling his title for about 1,000 individuals. Whereas some women had been disenchanted to not go away with a private memento, most appeared giddy simply to have glimpsed the golden god in individual.
Wet present at Blossom Music Middle
The chanting resumed just a few hours later
“We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun!”
You-know-who headlined an 8 p.m. present at Blossom with Fandango because the opening act. Tickets price $9 for pavilion and $7 for garden — roughly $37 and $29 right now. Whole attendance was estimated at 5,000 with the pavilion bought out. Sadly, it rained cats and canines that evening.
Followers screamed as Cassidy took the stage at 9:30 p.m., sporting a windbreaker over skintight pants.
“Shaun was evoking absolute shrieking delirium from his legion of awkward-age disciples by performing such comparatively undemanding acts as smiling, respiration [and] waving an arm,” Faris wrote.
When the singer eliminated his jacket to disclose a blue-striped tank high, the pavilion quaked.
Cassidy’s 75-minute set included “That’s Rock ’n’ Roll” and “Hey Deanie,” each written by Cleveland’s Eric Carmen, in addition to covers of “Da Doo Ron Ron” by The Crystals, “You’ve Misplaced That Loving Feeling” by The Righteous Brothers and “Gradual Down” by The Beatles. He additionally sang his personal compositions, together with “Stroll Away,” “She’s Proper” and “Are You Afraid of Me?”
Regardless of the persistent rain, the viewers went house in a sunny temper. As Faris famous, the Grapevine look and Blossom live performance had been like “massive slumber events gone wild.”
A variety of younger hearts had been damaged, although, when Cassidy, 21, married his longtime girlfriend, Ann Pennington, a mannequin, on Dec. 1, 1979.
With the faint echo of women screaming, Cassidy launched his ultimate studio album, “Wasp,” in 1980. It didn’t make the charts.
Live performance is bought out at Kent Stage
That was a while in the past.
Cassidy is now 64 years outdated, thrice married, the daddy of eight.
Within the Eighties and Nineties, he targeted on stay theater, showing on Broadway together with his brother David in “Blood Brothers.”
He has since reinvented himself as a tv author and producer, creating such works as “American Gothic,” “Roar,” “Cowl Me,” “Chilly Case,” “Invasion,” “Ruby & The Rockits” and “New Amsterdam.”
And he nonetheless headlines live shows, strumming a guitar, enjoying piano, telling tales and singing songs. Da doo ron ron ron. Da doo ron ron.
Guess who’s coming again to Ohio?
Shaun Cassidy will carry out a sold-out live performance June 11 on the Kent Stage. These women from 1979 are of their 50s and 60s now, and so they have snapped up each single ticket within the 640-seat theater.
Let the chanting start.
“We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun! We would like Shaun!”
Mark J. Value will be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com
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