A gentle, grown-up goodbye sung with a steady hand — “Go Now” is the sound of a young star choosing honesty over drama, and finding grace in letting go.
First, the facts older ears like to have straight. “Go Now”—written by Larry Banks and Milton Bennett—was recorded by Bessie Banks in 1964 and made an international splash a year later when The Moody Blues took their version to No. 1 in the U.K. and No. 10 on the U.S. Hot 100. David Cassidy cut his reading in 1972 and placed it on side two of his second solo LP, Rock Me Baby (Bell Records). The track runs a lean 3:08, and though it wasn’t issued as a standalone single, the album itself performed handsomely—No. 41 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S., No. 2 in the U.K.—so Cassidy’s version reached a very large audience at the moment of release.
Knowing that lineage changes how you hear him. Cassidy isn’t trying to out-sing Bessie’s R&B ache or out-punch the Moody Blues’ dramatic, piano-led surge. He trims the song back to its original posture: a quiet, necessary parting. On Rock Me Baby, producer Wes Farrell surrounds him with first-call Los Angeles players—Hal Blaine on drums, Joe Osborn on bass, Mike Melvoin on keys, and guitar greats Larry Carlton, Dean Parks, and Louie Shelton—and then keeps the arrangement as transparent as glass. A soft organ bed, considerate guitars, and an unfussy rhythm let Cassidy’s phrasing do the talking. When he hits the title line—go now—he doesn’t thunder; he exhales. The restraint is the point.
If you remember flipping that LP in 1972, this cut likely felt like a private corridor off a bustling house. Rock Me Baby carries radio-forward moments—“How Can I Be Sure,” a fresh title track—yet “Go Now” stands there at mid-sequence like a good friend taking your arm, speaking plain. Cassidy was just twenty-two, but he sings with an older man’s manners: no recrimination, no grand gesture, just the dignified admission that love sometimes asks you to step aside so both of you can breathe. The vocal sits close to the mic; the consonants are soft, the vibrato held in check; the effect is of someone choosing mercy over possession.
Part of the pleasure is hearing how deliberately he honors the song’s American R&B roots even as he nods to the British-beat version most listeners knew. Banks and Bennett wrote a melody that turns on small inflections—where you place a breath, which word you warm for an instant, how long you hold now. Cassidy follows that map. He leans into conversational rhythm—almost speaking the first phrase—then lets the chorus bloom only as much as the lyric allows. Where the Moody Blues made the farewell cinematic, Cassidy makes it domestic. It’s the difference between a tearful train-station scene and a quiet talk in the doorway before the rain starts.
Because accuracy matters: “Go Now” was not a Cassidy single, so there’s no individual chart peak to report for the track itself. But context tells the truth the numbers can’t say. As Rock Me Baby climbed the album charts—U.S. No. 41, U.K. No. 2—tens of thousands first heard Cassidy’s cover tucked between hits and future favorites. For many, this was their introduction to the song’s older lineage; for others, it was a reminder that beneath the magazine covers was a singer drawn to classic material and capable of real interpretive tact.
Meaning, in Cassidy’s hands, is simple and adult. The lyric isn’t about winning; it’s about telling the truth without cruelty. He doesn’t beg her to stay; he gives her permission to leave—and finds a measure of self-respect inside that loss. Listened to now, with years on the odometer, the performance feels less like teen-idol repertoire and more like a note you keep in a drawer for the gray afternoons: If love cannot be saved without breaking both of us, go now. I’ll be okay. That’s why this cut lingers in memory. It refuses the spectacle youth usually demands and speaks in the register older hearts trust.
There’s craft in that gentleness. Farrell’s mix resists every early-’70s temptation to gild the goodbye; the Wrecking Crew-heavy band keeps the pocket warm and the colors pale; the background voices are placed like shadows at the edge of the room. And Cassidy—often under-credited as a musician amid the noise of his fame—lands every syllable like a grown man who has learned the cost of holding on too hard.
So file David Cassidy’s “Go Now” where it belongs: as a quietly luminous album cut on Rock Me Baby, a respectful bridge between Bessie Banks’ soul original and the Moody Blues’ British-beat landmark, and a reminder that sometimes the most moving thing a singer can do is let go beautifully. On the day you need that particular courage, this three-minute farewell still knows the way.