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"I'm just a girl who likes old hippie clothes and likes to sing. I'm not going to have a light show or set my hair on fire."
Susan Cowsill sat in the living room of her Burbank home, bracelets rising halfway to her elbows, peace symbol earrings dangling, and discussed plans for her latest comeback.
"I've been in and out of retirement so many times I feel like Frank Sinatra," she said.
But this time it's different. This time she is not part of a revival of the Cowsills, the family rock 'n' roll group that earned three gold records in the late 1960s. This time she has formed a band of her own, Susan Cowsill and Friends.
During performances Wednesday at Sasch in Studio City and Thursday at Madame Wong's West in Santa Monica, she will perform pop standards as well as songs by band members and by rock artist and boyfriend Dwight Twilley.
"There won't be any Cowsills songs," she said. "What I'm trying to do is combine the music of now, the U2 motif-Euro-rock, I think they call it-and pull from my roots, '60s pop rock."
Encouraged by Brother
Cowsill said she has been encouraged to try a comeback by her brother Bob, who still performs; by friends such as Vicki and Debbi Peterson of The Bangles, and by Twilley.
But Cowsill, 28, said she is a champion procrastinator, someone who still hasn't taken down last year's Christmas decorations. The decision to begin anew wasn't made until one Saturday when she woke up from a nap on the couch. The television was blaring as usual, the self-described couch potato said, and on the screen was a picture of a 7-year-old girl. The girl was Susan Cowsill.
"It was Kasey Casem's show," Cowsill remembered. "Someone had asked who the youngest people were to have a hit. The boy was Michael Jackson, and the girl was me."
Cowsill realized that she wanted to be in the spotlight again.
"I'm a ham," she said. "It's in my blood. If I don't try this, I'll be kicking myself forever."
It has been 21 years since the Cowsills' first hit, "The Rain, the Park and Other Things," with its catchy refrain, "I love the flower girl." Their biggest hit, "Hair," followed two years later. It has been 10 years since the last of several abortive attempts to bring back the group.
Barbara Cowsill, mother of the clan and one of the singers, died in 1985. Susan's five performing brothers have scattered and started families. Bud, the father who launched the group after a 25-year Navy career, lives in Mexico.
"He didn't play," Susan said of the group's beginnings. "He just had these children who didn't look like they were going to get jobs, so he took our hobby and made it our work."
Kept Singing
But while most of the other Cowsills found new careers, Susan never stopped singing.
"I just disappeared into Twilleyland," she said.
She has sung background in Twilley's bands for 10 years, appearing on "Girls," his 1984 hit with Tom Petty. For two years she also has sung with her brother, Bob, who performs rock on weekends at Pickwick's Pub in Woodland Hills.
And she believes the time has come to launch a solo career.
"There's a lot of girl things going on these days," she said. "I see what Vicki and Debbi are doing with The Bangles, and it just seems like there's opportunity. But the key to me is it's got to be fun. I can take all the pressure in the world, as long as I'm enjoying myself."
Cowsill thinks her music, which she calls "fun rock" reminiscent of the '60s, will find an audience.
"In art, all is accepted in different time spaces," she explained and giggled at the ponderous-sounding words. "It's never obsolete, thank God. They made a CD of the Cowsills' greatest hits. That tells me it always comes back around."
She received no money from the compact disc, however.
"I don't know who owns the rights, and I don't care," she said.
Cowsill still is the girl next door. She has pink cheeks, creamy skin and a turned-up nose. She moves with the coltish exuberance of a ninth-grade girl, which happens to be the point at which she dropped out of school.
"I have a recurring nightmare where I go to school, and I'm in the hallways trying to find my classes," she said. "Other than that, it doesn't bother me that I didn't finish. I had too much fun. What I was doing beat the hell out of going to school."
In their heyday, the Cowsills toured Europe, appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and had a television special.
`Rock's First Family'
"We were rock's first family group," Susan said. "The Partridges made it after us. The producers of the Partridge TV show wanted to do it first with us, but they wanted to cast a different mom, so we said no."
Originally from Rhode Island, the Cowsill family is scattered across the country. Susan has lived in the San Fernando Valley off and on for 15 years and finds the pace more relaxed than elsewhere in Los Angeles.
"I wouldn't move over the hill if they paid me," she said.
The house she shares with Twilley is nondescript, the furnishings plain. They have a cat and a view of the Golden State Freeway.
Cowsill hopes to land a recording contract and has cut demo records with producer Noah Shark, who has worked with both Twilley and Petty.
"Making it is important to me," she said. "It's like a race. Doing it well is important, but you want that medal at the end."
And also that money. Cowsill needs it to complete her comeback wardrobe.
"I figure the perfect image for me is ripped jeans and a mink coat," she said.
She already has the jeans.
[Illustration]
PHOTO: Susan Cowsill discusses career and comeback at her home in Burbank. / JOE VITTI / Los Angeles Times
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