December 2, 2006

Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio: Forever the Jersey Boys

December 2nd, 2006

San Francisco Chronicle’s Joel Selvin has an amazingly in-depth interview with the legendary Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio, the original Four Seasons who have been business partners for more than 45 years. The two men talk about their lives; their phenomenal success in the music business; and the Tony Award-winning Broadway smash hit Jersey Boys that chronicles the group’s rags to riches story.

The Broadway cast of the musical Jersey Boys makes its first road show stop this week in San Francisco, and the two musicians are major players in the play’s success, not just characters in the script. This is their second round of personal appearances in town to promote the forthcoming opening. The men practically finish each other’s sentences. Below is just a preview of the interview:

Gaudio: “It’s a lot about stuff that nobody knows about us. Some of it I hesitate to spell out because, hey, why bother going? There are a lot of darker moments throughout our career because we weren’t glamour boys. We weren’t the Beatles. We weren’t the Beach Boys. We weren’t anybody but people who made hit records, really, and we were really only as good as our last hit. We couldn’t ride a wave on anything. And the good news for us is because no one knew anything about us, because we never had that kind of publicity, there is an element of surprise and shock that is quite the opposite of what our music portrays.”

Valli: “And to take it further from all that confusion, it’s from four points of view. By the time you walk out, you’ve heard four different guys tell their story of what their take on what it was, and you say, ‘Hey, which one of these was it?’ ”

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