The Perfect Musical Marriage: Frankie Valli’s Voice and Bob Gaudio’s Songs
August 17th, 2008With Jersey Boys making its long-awaited debut in Toronto, TheStar.com’s Theatre Critic Richard Ouzounian, talks to the legendary men behind the music–Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio.
During the Las Vegas JB opening in May, Valli told Ouzounian, “We sold over 175 million records. That’s a lot of memories for a lot of people.”
But what made this group so special? Two things that formed a perfect musical marriage: the voice of Frankie Valli and the songs of Bob Gaudio.
Valli’s sound is what most people still carry inside their head when they think of The Four Seasons. That crystal-clear falsetto with just an edge of innocent carnality to it, like a choirboy who had just discovered that girls were different from boys.
“Whether you love us or hate us,” says Gaudio on the phone from his office in Nashville, “you can’t deny that Frankie’s voice is an extraordinary instrument, like nothing people had ever heard before.”
