Preview of Robin Leach’s Interview with Frankie Valli & Bob Gaudio!
April 28th, 2010
Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio at the Second Year Jersey Boys Las Vegas Anniversary Party (Photo Credit: Erik Kabik/Retna)
Robin Leach has posted his interview with superstar singer Frankie Valli and hit songwriter Bob Gaudio, who joined the cast and crew of Las Vegas Jersey Boys to celebrate the second anniversary of the award-winning musical at the Palazzo. They marked the two smash-hit years with a platinum record commemoration by joining the cast onstage at the conclusion of a performance, and a platinum record cake was presented to the group.
It turns out that Leach goes way back with Gaudio and Valli–when he ran GO Magazine in the late 1960s on Tin Pan Alley on Broadway in New York City at the world famous Brill Building. That’s recording industry history, where all the hits, top groups and producers worked way back then.
Here’s a preview of the interview:
Robin Leach: Could Jersey Boys last as long as the Four Seasons has?
Frankie Valli: It wouldn’t shock me, and one of the reasons why is I think the way the show was put together, especially because it comes from four different points of view, makes it an incredibly interesting show. The other part about it is, because of all the dark sides that went on in our lives, before there was any success, and the secret that we kept for all that time, we were very careful in interviews, we were very careful not to get in trouble on the road, because we felt like if anyone had found out that we had had these problems, that would have been the end of our career. Nowadays the way things work, in order to be successful, you need to get arrested. It’s made a complete turnaround.
RL: Two years on, and it’s still going strong. Does that still amaze you?
Bob Gaudio:Yes, it truly does, and I’ve seen the show about 150 times. But when you see a different cast, there’s a new person playing me or Frankie, it takes a different angle, a different approach and perspective. I’m amazed that it’s stayed that fresh and that it stayed that good. We have a wonderful cast not only onstage, but also offstage.
It would be great for my kids’ sake if the show could run longer than the group did. We have six companies from London to Las Vegas now still running strong. There will be another road company, and then we’ll open in Holland, Germany and Asia at some point within the next couple of years. The music will stay the same, but the dialogue will probably be a hybrid of their native languages.
What’s really amazing is that each of these companies is really strong. To put a cast together for each company that’s as strong as these are is the really amazing thing, and they all sound just like we did!
Visit VegasDeluxe.com to read the full interview.