From Bobby Sherman to Bieber, the mixed fortunes of teen idols
It's very likely that news of Bobby Sherman's death on Tuesday was met with pangs of nostalgia among boomers, particularly women, and blank stares among many whose generation contains one of the last three letters of the alphabet.
Sherman's wife, Brigitte Poublon, announced his death at 81, after it had been revealed last year that he had Stage 4 cancer.
By the late 1980s, the singer-actor was largely absent from the spotlight, but the years that followed included serving as an emergency medical technician. Sherman's second act was by all accounts a positive example for any celebrity who once experienced white-hot fame, including the relatively small number considered teen idols — a list that includes Canadian Justin Bieber.
Bieber, 31, does not appear to be enjoying his fairly extended break from his career. In recent months, there have been health issues, social media posts that have hinted at drug use, and reports of financial issues, which he has denied.
A pop phenomenon
How big was Sherman at one point?
In 1972, he had to call a news conference to explain pesky new details previously unknown to his devoted teen audience — that he had wed his first wife 14 months earlier, who at the time of their marriage was about six months' pregnant with their first child.
Also, the marriage licence said he was — gasp! — 28 years old, not 25 as the public had been told.
Coincidentally or not, Sherman released his final album in 1972 and also saw one of his last big television roles end that year — in a Partridge Family spinoff called Getting Together, which lasted 14 episodes. The very last, the short-lived Sanchez of Bel Air i n 1986, was one of USA Network's first scripted shows.
Fellow former teen idol Donny Osmond pays tribute:
But Sherman burned brightly for at least a half-decade, which is why TV Guide ranked him eighth in its 2005 list of the greatest teen idols of all time.
He burst onto the scene with 42 appearances on the music show Shindig between 1964 and 1966, a time in which Flip, Tiger Beat and Teen Beat magazines also emerged.
16 Magazine, which debuted in 1957 with perhaps the original teen idol — Elvis Presley — on its cover, went all-in on the fresh-faced likes of Sherman, David Cassidy and Donny Osmond in the early 1970s, veering sharply away from late-1960s coverage that included bands like the Doors.
Sherman appeared on lunchboxes, cereal boxes and posters, and other products bearing his name.
"I received my Bobby Sherman Love Beads kit just in time to make two groovy necklaces for birthday presents! It saved my life," one girl gushes in an ad for the keepsake.
It was Flip that revealed Sherman's "secret" marriage, sounding crestfallen in the process.
"Over and over again Bobby has sworn to us and to his fans that he would tell the world if and when he got married," per the unnamed writer for the magazine.
For the record, Sherman said at the 1972 newser that he was shielding his wife, Patti, from the spotlight, as an earlier pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage.
"There was never a time when he wasn't open and gracious and, you know, just so excited about his life," Tiger Beat's editor at the time, Ann Moses, told Remind Magazine in comments published this week. "He was always just the most down-to-earth.... I want to say 'non-star.' He never acted like a star, even though he was on the cover of Tiger Beat magazine for two years straight."
Teen idol pivots to service
The work Sherman produced didn't particularly resonate through the ages. There were two seasons and 52 episodes of Here Come the Brides, and while that comedy-western did make it to syndication, it didn't have the staying power in reruns of The Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch.
As well, if you're listening to an oldies station today, you're more likely to hear David Cassidy singing I Think I Love You for the Partridge Family or Donny Osmond covering Paul Anka's Puppy Love than any of Sherman's four top 10 Billboard hits — Little Woman, Julie, Do Ya Love Me, Easy Come, Easy Go and La La La (If I Had You).
Generally speaking, the music of the teen idols of yesteryear is devalued by programmers and tastemakers.
The late music writer Tom Hibbert, writing somewhat cruelly about Cassidy in 1983, could have just as easily been speaking of Sherman.
"The music had been secondary to swoony looks and hints of sex, and while some might remember those alluring eyes glinting from the LP cover or the TV screen, few were likely to recall the vacuous, bland and essentially worthless records Cassidy left behind," Hibbert wrote in the History of Rock.
Cassidy and fellow Tiger Beat heartthrob Leif Garrett are among those who struggled after their stars dimmed.
Sherman appears to have been a nice guy who didn't finish last in that regard. He became an emergency medical technician in 1988 and later an instructor for the Los Angeles Police Department, teaching police recruits first aid and CPR. By 1998, he had helped five women deliver babies in the back seats of cars or other unplanned locations, he told a reporter.
Sherman also co-founded a children's foundation in Ghana with his second wife.
Bieber, an idle idol
Sherman's death comes amid weeks of what US Weekly has characterized as "undeniably chaotic and cryptic" social media posts from Justin Bieber.
"People keep telling me to heal … don't you think if I could have fixed myself I would have already? I know I'm broken," he said in one of more than 20 posts on Father's Day.
Bieber also appeared on Tiger Beat's cover several times (its newsstand publication stopped in 2018), but the comparisons to Sherman only go so far, even aside from the radically different times.
Sherman, by all accounts, came from a stable family background and had no burning ambition to be in showbiz. He went to college and caught his big break singing at a star-studded private party in Hollywood at the ripe old age of 23.
Bieber was born to teen parents who split up, and while not necessarily groomed for the stage, his path to stardom was supercharged when music executive Scooter Braun discovered some of his singing videos uploaded to YouTube. Bieber was barely 13 when he headed to the U.S. to record.
Anka, famous since 1957, when he was 16, once told CBC he shuddered at what young performers contend with in the 21st century, with gossip websites, camera phones and social media.
"Back then, I learned from my failures more than my successes, and I was allowed to do that in a time where they weren't watching you," he said.
It's not clear if Bieber wants his previous level of fame, to be entirely clear of the spotlight, or something in between.
But Sherman and Anka — who happens to be on tour this coming weekend in Virginia — demonstrate that whichever way, life goes on.
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