Going through 'The Partridge Family,' I looked up to people like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and all those guys. But as an actor playing a part, I had to sing what was right for the character and the show.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Everything in my life was about performance when I was doing 'The Partridge Family.'
I was a kid, 12 or something, when the Partridge Family was big on TV. I liked the curly cord running from the bass to the amps, which were real fancy. That cord looked so cool. I said, 'Wow! I gotta play something like that!'
I decided early on that I wanted to be Michael Bloomfield, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton - not George Harrison.
I loved rock and roll when that came in, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, all those great records. So I begged my mom and dad for a guitar, which eventually they did get me for Christmas, but it went out of tune very quickly, and it hurt my fingers.
I was mainly influenced by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and others like Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash.
I wanted some family structure and stability, and that's what The Partridge Family afforded me, not only financially but in the fact that I could be at home with my kids.
When I was a kid, I took 'The Brady Bunch' and 'The Partridge Family' very seriously. It was a world to me in the same way that the Greek myths would have been had I read them. You know, Marcia is Athena and Mr. Brady is Zeus.
Just coming from a musical family, I was always surrounded by it. On the car rides to school, my mom loved playing A Tribe Called Quest and the Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,' and then my dad was listening to a lot of Bill Withers and Stevie Wonder.
I had wanted to be a regular character on a series for a while. 'The Brady Bunch' was an answer to a prayer.
I wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.