Frankie Valli Reflects on Jersey Boys and the Music Business
November 16th, 2007Jersey Boys was a big hit with both the critics and the crowds the minute it hit Broadway; however, the legendary Frankie Valli admits that he wasn’t overly thrilled with the play at first.
“It wasn’t love at first sight,” Valli said during an interview with LiveDaily. “I was looking at it from a different perspective: ‘Do I talk like that? Do I sing like that?’ After about three times, I got used to it. It just proved to be enormously successful.”
Here’s a preview of Valli’s Q&A with LiveDaily:
LiveDaily: How has Jersey Boys impacted your career?
Frankie Valli: Well, one of the things that very few people are really aware of is we’ve always had an underlying success here. There is plenty of work out there. I’ve been working for my entire career. It wasn’t like I didn’t have a job. I did a lot of Atlantic City and casinos and a lot of summer dates. I think [Jersey Boys has] brought a new awareness to the public. I think there are a lot of people out there who really didn’t know we recorded all of those songs.
Really? That’s kind of surprising.
It is surprising in a way. But in another way, we were never an act that was embraced by the industry. We were kind of a renegade act. We were not with a record company that owned us lock, stock and barrel. And, in all situations, we leased our records to record companies. When our time was over, they came back to us, so we own all our masters. So record companies didn’t look at that in such a terrific way.
These are some very astute comments on the current state of the radio and record business.
Many markets have oldies stations that are trying to change to more current offerings. In New York City, WCBS-FM’s changes created much negative reaction. There have been similar attempts in other markets such as Chicago (WJMK) and Detroit (WOMC). These have met with a lot of discord with listeners, but only small suburban radio stations with weaker signals are picking up the lack, if that.
Many of us are forced by these moves to other music delivery systems (Satellite, MP3s, etc.) to hear deep artist tracks and our favorite tracks.
I could see this coming a few years ago when “Adult Standards” (Music Of Your Life, Stardust, etc.) radio stations began cutting out even standards from the 1960s. I really miss the instrumentals they used to play by such artists as Bert Kaempfert, Billy Vaughn, Percy Faith, Henry Mancini, etc. in particular. And this doesn’t bode well for 1960s pop music either. Many oldies stations have already relegated eraly 1960s pop music to weekend 60s specials.
I hope radio reverses this trend.
Comment by Ted Hammond — November 16, 2007 @ 9:21 am