Q&A: (Frankie Valli)

The musical life of the 1950s pop group The Four Seasons, and later Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, sounds like a story for a New York City stage. With a singer from a jazz background with impressive range, an introverted keyboardist who was the co-writer of many hits, and with the help of a talented producer and childhood friends as band mates, The Four Seasons were very popular during the heyday of doo-wop and Motown acts. The quartet created a musical career of so much worth that it will now be played out on a Broadway stage in the near future.

The story began in a rough and tough blue collar Newark neighborhood where Valli, born in 1937 with the name Francis Castelluccio, formed the band that later became The Four Seasons. Valli's father worked as a barber and later for a train company while his mother, also of Italian descent, exposed him to music at an early age. Mother and son were thought to make the drive into the city to listen to big bands and jazz artists performing at Manhattan theaters like the Paramount. Valli taught himself how to sing by copying the styling of singers Dinah Washington and Rose Murphy. He conceived of the Varietones with neighborhood pals Nick and Tommy DeVito and bassist Hank Majewski around 1954. The group changed its name to The Four Lovers in 1956.

By 1960, Bob Guadio and Nick Massi had replaced Nick DeVito and Majewski. In 1961, the group changed its name to The Four Seasons after a bowling alley in Union, N.J., where they were turned down for a cocktail-lounge job.

The group later signed with Vee-Jay Records with the assistance of writer and producer Bob Crewe who acted as one of the principal songwriters with member Guadio.

The group gained widespread popularity with Guadio's hit song "Sherry" in the summer of 1962. Crewe and Guadio's co-writing chemistry flowered in the form of hits that many generations have come to know like "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man," "Candy Girl," "Stay" and "Alone."

According to one account, the recording of the song "Sherry" was actually a piece offering from Crewe who incensed Valli by allowing Elvis Presley to record the subsequent smash "Don't Be Cruel."

In 1964, contractual disputes at Vee-Jay records prompted The Four Seasons' decision to sign with Philips Records where they enjoyed a pop song Renaissance with six songs - including "Dawn," "Rag Doll" and "Big Man in Town" - that ranked in the Top 20.

In 1965, Massi left the group but Valli continued with the rest of the band members through 1968.

Its 1966 arrangement of Cole Porter's "I've Got You Under My Skin" became a hit for Frank Sinatra, a friend of Valli's, and the 1967 hit "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" made it to No. 2 on the charts.

The Four Seasons faced a hard year in 1968 with "Genuine Imitation Life Gazette" that was considered to be a commercial failure and it was also around this time that Crewe ended his longstanding collaborative efforts with the group.

The Four Seasons did not record together again until 1975 but prior to that Valli had experienced success as a solo artist with several hit singles including the No. 1 hit "My Eyes Adored You."

The Four Seasons returned with their first No. 1 hit in more than a decade in 1976 with "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)," which was co-written by Guadio.
The Four Seasons broke up in 1977 and the group's achievements were recognized in 1990 as an inductee into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame with The Who and the Four Tops.

The Beach Reporter this week sat down with Valli to talk about the new production "Jersey Boys" heading to Broadway with an expected start date of September that ran for a record-setting world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse, along with his life's work.

Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons will perform at the Greek Theater July 9 with Three Dog Night, The Spinners and The Turtles.

The Beach Reporter: From what I understand, a musical story of your life has come to fruition in the production 'Jersey Boys' which first premiered in San Diego and is now headed off to Broadway. Did you have a chance to see it down south?

Frankie Valli: Yes, I did. I saw it a couple of times. I thought it was terrific. The first time I saw it, it was a little strange - you know watching someone portray you is not always easy but then I saw it the second time and I liked it better. I don't know what I was expecting the first time, it could have been that I was looking for an exactness - the way I saw my life which everybody sees everyone else from their own point of view. So, there is no such thing as a specific way of playing anyone. It is a believable performance? That is what I go by.

You grew up in a tough working class neighborhood. How do you think those experiences affected the songs and the emotion behind them?

Well, I think it was kind of street music, is what it was. It was trying to see everything from the point of view of those who weren't as fortunate in life, who didn't have a college education waiting for them, and trying to say things in a way that they would say them.

In watching 'Jersey Boys,' I was very surprised as to how many songs I actually know, being a child of the 1970s. Are you surprised at how your songs have kind of survived through the generations?

I am. We've had somewhere in the vicinity of 60 or 65 chart records, anything from No. 1 to No. 20, and we actually had a lot of hits that aren't shown in that particular show. It always amazed me that we had as many hits as we did. I guess it was a lot of things - the chemistry of the group, a lot of luck, great writers when we needed them - and they were probably the reasons we had so many hits. Another thing is that we continuously changed direction without changing the sounds. We went from being self-contained with "Sherry" and "Big Girls" and "Walk Like A Man," and then we started using orchestras in some cases with "Dawn," "Let's Hang On" and "Working My Way Back to You." Then I had the opportunity to do "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and they were all different, and maybe that was one of the reasons. But I was always a firm believer that if you were a singer, limitations as far as songs were concerned - there weren't any.

Do you think people were pretty accepting of those different directions?

Yeah, I mean because not everything that anybody releases is a No. 1. But if you're still hitting the charts there is something to what you're doing, and you shouldn't be making music and trying to figure out what the audience wants to hear. From a creative place, you should go where you need to go and do what you need to do, and hopefully the audience will like what you do. That's the best or the worst that you can do.

The song 'Can't Take My Eyes Off You' was one that those involved in the music industry were somewhat weary of putting out there. Is that true?

Well, it was in the can for a couple of years at Phillips Records, which was the record company we were with at the time. I don't know if it was because they didn't believe in it or if they were afraid I was going to leave the group, which was never the plan. It was just an extension, something I wanted to do. We played around with different things and in a period of time we did an album that had six Bob Dylan songs and Burt Bacharach - how different are they? Out of that album came a hit, we did a version of a song that Bob Dylan wrote called "Don't Think Twice" and we had a smash with it.

In looking back at your career, what are some of your own favorite songs?

Well, I started out not really wanting to be a pop singer was the way this whole thing began for me. My big thrust was, I was very early on into jazz, and that's what I wanted to do. I had the total opportunity so I did versions of what I liked and some of the people I was into. Very early on in my career, I was emulating a lot of Dinah Washington, Little Jimmy Scott, Billy Eckstine - it was just a number of people I was into. My favorite singing group at that particular time was the Four Freshmen. I also liked the Hi-Lows and The Modernaires. I've had a taste for all of it and as I've said I never really wanted to be a pop singer. I wasn't doing incredibly well as a jazz singer and listening to the radio one day I heard some music that was being played. I said to myself, 'I can do this stuff.' I started doing it and not long after that we started to have hits.

Do you think listening to jazz music at an early age really helped you to hone your voice and musical sensibilities?

Oh, there is no doubt. There is absolutely no doubt at all. It taught me to hear intervals when you're singing, stretch my voice a little bit more and that everything I recorded didn't have to be two or three chords. We were looking for modern chords; "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" is a combination of what was my favorite band at the time, which was Stan Kenton's. I used to go to Bird Land and sit in the bleachers for a buck and saw every important jazz artist there ever was.

You're so lucky.

Kids today really don't know what they've missed. They don't get it. It's not that everything that they are doing is so terrible but early rock 'n' roll, the stimulation as far as writers were concerned, came from theater and people came from that background. Tin Pan Alley was listening to what was happening in the theater. Great writers like Carol King, Barry Mann, Cynthia Wild, and Guadio and Crewe, all had that background. I think that is why a lot of that music still survives today. I think "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" is probably in more films than anything I've ever heard. We call them standards - Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, and Rodgers and Hart - that music will live on forever. It's clear to me in my mind, unless I'm just totally so far off I don't know what's happening, but great is great, and it's not just great for six minutes, it's great forever. There is a lot of music that is being done today that will just be totally lost.

How do you think the music scene changed for you with the British invasion?

I'm not sure whether it did or didn't because we continued to have hits through it. The music business has certainly changed in the last 20 or 30 years. Everything is different about it - radio stations just play one kind of music and when I was a kid growing up, it was top 40 radio and DJs played 40 records. A lot of conglomerates have come along and bought up radio, and they make all the decisions and it's not on a local level anymore the way it used to be - DJs don't have the autonomy they once had as far as playing records and listening to music. I think it's a lot harder to get a hit today or for a guy or a gal to get started today. Every disc jockey had the autonomy to play what they wanted to play, and some people have violated that privilege and created a lot of problems. I think that's why today we have program directors who actually program music for the station. But who has a better feel for what radio plays than the person who's playing the music? They are the ones who are speaking to an audience on a daily basis and are getting feedback. I think everything that's going on with music in the record business is way off.

Do you think that kind of grass-roots, independent mindset within the industry and with DJs helped in launching your career?

Yes, it was more creative. Records broke in certain parts of the country, caught on and went right across the country. How can the public like anything if they don't hear it? You have to start from hearing or seeing something.

Is Sherry from the song 'Sherry' a real person?

A real person? I don't know, I think Sherry is everybody. I think that is what the intent was from the very beginning. I think a lot of it had to do with the sound of the name. I don't think it would have worked if the name were Angelina or Barbara or Lillian or Ruthie. It was something about the sound of the name that was really special.