Song of the Day 6/25: Bobby Sherman, “Easy Come Easy Go”

It seems like most child stars have a hard time adjusting to adult life – Justin Bieber is the latest example – but maybe that’s because we don’t hear much about the well-adjusted ones.

Bobby Sherman, who died at age 81 yesterday, was in his mid-20s when he became a pin-up heartthrob for the Tiger Beat set, but he was still a teenage college student when Sal Mineo, who dabbled in pop music, took an interest in the young singer and wrote and helped record two songs for him. They didn’t go anywhere, but the connection paid off when Sherman, as a guest at a Hollywood party, joined the band for a couple of numbers, leading Jane Fonda and Natalie Wood to put him in touch with an agent. Soon he was hosting ABC’s music program “Shindig!”

That gig didn’t last, but the network liked him enough to cast him in a lighthearted Western, “Here Come the Brides.” The TV exposure and the teen-idol industry made his subsequent records bubblegum-pop hits, though it made for a grueling lifestyle. “I’d film five days a week, get on a plane on a Friday night and go someplace for matinee and evening shows Saturday and Sunday, then get on a plane and go back to the studio to start filming again,” he told the Washington Post. “It was so hectic for three years that I didn’t know what home was.”

Sherman had seven Top 40 singles, four of them in the Top 10, between 1969 and 1971, including “Easy Come Easy Go,” which reached No. 9 in 1970, before he walked away from the recording industry in 1975.

What’s most interesting about Bobby Sherman is what he did once the spotlight dimmed: He moved on to what most of us would consider a real job as an EMT and deputy sheriff in Los Angeles. He came back to music briefly in the ’90s, when did a Teen Idols tour with Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits an Davy Jones of the Monkees. After three years Sherman had had enough and went back to working as an EMT instructor. Justin Bieber might want to take note.