Rant #3,175: Easy Come, Easy Go

We are all getting older, and that goes for all the generations, in particular the Baby Boomer generation that I am part of.

Us post-World War II babies are getting up there in age—at the high end of the generation, we are in our 70s and at the low end, we are in our mid-60s—and we are now all moving into Social Security and retirement age.

And while each generation has had their own idols to swoon to, Baby Boomers look at those that our generation put up on a pedestal way back when, and some are growing older with us.

This entire Rant was inspired by the birthday of one of those teen idols … whether you loved him or you hated him, he was there, he was ultra-popular in his time period, and, well, he just turned 80 years of age on this past Saturday.

I am talking about Bobby Sherman, who had a multitude of hits in the early 1970s … and probably the best head of hair on the planet.

Sherman had been toiling as a singer about a decade prior to his teen idol years with little success. He was the house singer on ABC’s “Shindig” music program, and even when that failed to ignite his singing career, ABC knew that they had something there … they just had to match the material with the singer and most importantly, with the right TV show.

So in the late 1960s, Sherman took his talent and his now long hair to the network’s “Here Come the Brides,” and he was on his road to success as one of the top three teen idols of the day—

Davy Jones and later David Cassidy—also products of television exposure and over-exposure—were the other teen idols of the time, but Sherman was a little older than the other two, had been around the block more than Jones and Cassidy, so he easily competed with the two younger upstarts.

During the post-Beatles period, Jones had been the top teen idol while with the Monkees—along with his own two other major stars of the time, Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits—and his solo career never really took off—his “Brady Bunch” period aside--so it was Cassidy versus Sherman in the early 1970s, with no clear-cut winner.

Based on my sister’s wall in her room—where she hung pictures of her faves from all the teenybopper magazines of the time—Cassidy was the clear-cut winner, but personally, I never got into “The Partridge Family” thing … as a young teen growing up during that time, beyond Jimi Hendrix and the other “hip” acts that I liked, if I had to listen to Top 40-geared music and acts, it really had to be Bobby Sherman.

And look at his bevy of hits that he had during that time period:

From 1969 to 1972, he placed 10 Top-40-ready tunes on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, including “Little Woman” (#3); “La La La (If I Had You)” (#9); “Easy Come, Easy Go” (#8); and “Julie Do Ya Love Me” (#5), earning him several gold records with picture sleeves highlighting his good looks, and his hair.

After “Here Come the Brides” was canceled, Sherman was on just about every variety show that there was, and starred in one or two forgettable TV series.

But after 20 years in the business, Sherman had his sights on other mountains to climb and to conquer.

The first time that he put his other talents and interests on display was when People Magazine had a feature on him in the early 1970s that did not concern his musical career, but that he had built by himself a miniature replica of Disneyland, something that took him years to complete.

And then later in the decade, he shocked just about every teenybopper who had his picture on their wall by leaving show business altogether—and becoming a certified emergency medical technician based in Los Angeles.

This was no joke, no try for extra publicity … Sherman simply had had enough,
and left to pursue his dream job.

And since that time, while he has occasionally performed—he was front and center in the “Teen Idols” tour with Davy Jones and Peter Noone in the 1990s—he has pretty much left show business behind.

So now, for him to turn 80—and the only one of the three teen idols he was up against to still be with us—really is an extraordinary accomplishment, and it received a lot of coverage on social media.

We are all growing older, and so are the people that we admired when we were kids, so for Bobby Sherman to turn 80 years of age is certainly a benchmark for all of us, and particularly the Baby Boomer generation.

Yes, somewhere down the line, if she is lucky enough, Taylor Swift will also turn 80 years of age, and that generation that adores her will probably say the same thing that I just did about Sherman, that reaching that life milestone definitely shines on all of us, reflecting that we are all getting older as time goes on.

So happy birthday to Bobby Sherman, a guy with a lot of talent, perseverance and patience who ultimately did exactly what he wanted to do with his life, and is sill with us to grow older in parallel with us.

And yes, I saw a recent picture of him, and while his hair is shorter--and whiter--than it was 50 years ago, he still has THAT hair!