Bobby Sherman back on the road
By Randy Cordova
The Arizona Republic
August 7, 1998
Bobby Sherman
After setting up a phone interview for 12:30 in the afternoon, Bobby Sherman's publicist offers a friendly warning: "He'll call you at 12:30 on the nose. He's very prompt."
Punctuality in pop stars is about as common as facial hair among the Hanson brothers. But Sherman never was your typical pop star.
In the late '60s, most chart toppers were tuning in and turning on. Not the "Shermanator." He parlayed a boyishly handsome face and a likable singing voice into a string of hits that left prepubescent girls screaming.
"I had a tremendous responsibility," says Sherman, calling from his Los Angeles home. "I could have advocated sex and drugs and all kinds of stupid stuff, but I knew better. The fans would emulate everything you did, so I knew I had to be as clean-cut as I possibly could."
For Sherman, this was no stretch. He wasn't David Cassidy, who felt stifled by being sugary Keith Partridge. This was a mature man who wasn't into trashing hotel rooms or baring it all for Rolling Stone.
"I was brought up in a fairly strict family," he says. "Law and order were important. Respect your fellow neighbor, remember other people's feelings. I was the kind of boy who didn't do things just to be mischievous."
It may seem cavity-inducing in print, but the friendly Sherman sounds totally sincere. A classic nice guy, it's probably one reason he enjoyed such monstrous success.
He played sweet, stuttering Jeremy Bolt on the sitcom Here Come the Brides. His off-screen exploits, carefully detailed in Tiger Beat, Fave and 16 magazines, were equally cuddly. And since he was a grand old man in his late 20s during his run as a teen idol, he was mature enough to carry the mantle with dignity.
"I was very much responsible in helping to bring up these kids," he says. "My life was kind of what they figured it to be. There were never any skeletons or unpleasant surprises. I think it became, "This guy's all right.' That's why I think it's nice for them to go back to that era."
His concerts were marked by pandemonium in the late '60s and early '70s. But once the hits stopped, he stopped touring. The current "Teen Idols Tour" unites him with sometime Monkee Davy Jones and Peter Noone, the geeky leader of Herman's Hermits. The nationwide tour marks Sherman's first go-round on the road in more than 25 years.
"I'm having the best time," he says. "It's absolutely like going back to the '70s. The fans are acting the same way they did back then. It's like a proverbial love-in."
Twenty-five years on, the voice is still holding up, he says. More importantly for some longtime fans out there, so is the body: Middle-age fans squeal with delight when he comes out sporting black leather trousers.
"They're still screaming," he says, not sounding boastful. "They're singing right along. And I'm doing everything without any difficulty. The songs are still in the same key and everything."
Actually, the image of Sherman - a choker on his neck, hair over his eyes as he gazed into the camera - is probably stronger than the songs themselves. He admits that simple sing-alongs, such as Little Woman and Julie, Do Ya' Love Me never will get him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but that's all right.
"The first hits, like La La La (If I Had You), Little Woman - that was for a young audience. But we got a little more upgraded as we went along. Easy Come, Easy Go, Cried Like a Baby - those were really good songs. And all the fans want to hear is the old stuff."
If Sherman seems remarkably well-adjusted about his place in the entertainment world, maybe it's because he doesn't live his life in the show-biz bubble.
Once the career slowed, he pursued other interests. After being an emergency medical technician, he recently was sworn in as a full-fledged member of the Los Angeles Police Department, serving as a medical training officer. Obviously, he's no Danny Bonaduce if he survived the LAPD background check.
"I didn't have any delusions of grandeur about wanting to be in the limelight," says Sherman, who discusses the importance of CPR from the concert stage. "This business is all peaks and valleys. I knew to secure my money and do other things I wanted. I had a knack for first aid, and from that, it just snowballed."
At age 55, Sherman is simply a good guy. That's still his charm. He never was the greatest singer or the best actor, but he was someone people trusted. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine a better man to carry those young girls through their first taste of adolescent love.
"If you see some of the stuff on MTV now, it's bordering on hard-core," says the divorced father of two grown sons. "It's kind of scary. We didn't have that back then. Now, the kids have the Internet; then, they had Tiger Beat.
"That's why I don't think teen idols last so much anymore. There's so much stuff going on, the kids' attention is diverted. I think I lucked out. I wasn't born too late to enjoy that kind of success."
Sherman is never too late. He called at 12:30, on the nose.