Las Vegas Weekly

April 28, 2010 · 7 AM

Jersey Boys, Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio are still in harmony

By Robin Leach

Travis Cloer, Jeff Leibow, Frankie Valli, Deven May, Peter Saide, Rick Faugno, Bob Gaudio and Kevin Gore of Rhino Records celebrate Jersey Boys' second anniversary on The Strip with a platinum record commemoration at the Palazzo on April 24, 2010.

Photo: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com

Superstar singer Frankie Valli and hit songwriter Bob Gaudio -- two of the original members of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons -- joined the cast and crew of 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.

We posted our anniversary coverage of the show, based on the life of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, on Sunday. Platinum status of 1 million albums sold is a rarity for a theatrical cast album nowadays, so the private VIP champagne celebration at Wolfgang Puck’s CUT steakhouse in the Palazzo was extra special.

I talked with Frankie and Bob. We go back together when I 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.

Robin Leach: Frankie, when you started Jersey Boys with Bob, did you want to tell even the hardest parts of your life story, and when you agreed to tell it, were you amazed that so many people loved the tale?

Frankie Valli: The decision came when we both agreed to do this, and that we would have to tell the truth, or as close to the truth as you could possibly get. There were a lot of things to think about, who might you hurt, who should you leave out so they weren’t hurt, and we looked at it again and said, “Do we really want to do this?” We looked at it again and decided we really wanted to do it.

RL: Did you even get hurt yourself ripping back the most private parts of those early days?

FV: Some things were very, very tough to talk about. Losing a child was one of them, and I was probably the most open with my life than anybody was because I got into the marital part of what my life was all about. I was very careful with that, but there were a lot of emotional moments. The fact that the Four Seasons didn’t stay together all the way to the end to me was very sad. That’s not the way I wanted it to be. I had plans to always be part of the Four Seasons. I was treading on having a solo career, too.

I never meant to leave the group. I said why couldn’t you do both? What’s the difference, if I went on my own, people would want me to sing these very same songs. Everybody in the original Four Seasons, with all of the success I was having as a soloist, they all had a piece of it. Unfortunately, it didn’t stay together. For one of the members, being on the road wasn’t for him, and he had great difficulty with it.

He was the type of guy who got up at a certain time of day, he ate breakfast at a certain time of day, lunch at a certain time, etc. He was an incredibly talented guy. He did all of the original vocal arrangements in the beginning: “Sherrie,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man.” Those were his arrangements, and Tommy DeVito (one of the original Four Seasons who now lives here in Las Vegas) was cut from a totally different cloth. We didn’t part because we didn’t like each other. Still today, we love Tommy DeVito.

When you’re riding the crest of success and right in the middle of it you have a low, that’s not the time to give up. What makes me laugh about most things, only in the pop business when you stop having hits, it’s over. … I do miss the Copacabanas and the entire saloon-oriented places we used to play.

RL: Hard to believe after all these years you’re still out doing shows on the road? Will you ever stop?

FV: I’ll only stop when I feel like I can’t do it anymore, or I don’t like it anymore. I flew in today. Last night I worked in Houston, Texas, with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. How could you want to stop doing things like that?

RL: And the voice is the one part of the body that never goes?

FV: Well, if you take care of it. It’s very important. I try to sing at least an hour a day, and I think that’s really important. The things you did when you were young, you know you have to stay away from. Too many women, too many drinks, too many drugs. … Nowadays, you say no thank you more than yes.

RL: Frankie, when you watch the show tonight, and you’ve seen it through the years, are there points you still wince over and feel uncomfortable with?

FV: There are always parts of it that are uncomfortable. I have never watched a show and didn’t have that emotional moment of shedding a tear. There are times where I almost have to block out what’s going on, almost like I can’t even look, put my mindset in a totally different place.

RL: What do you think of the young actors who play you in the show -- and their voices?

FV: There are two kids in this production, the kids who play me, Rick (Faugno) and Travis (Cloer). They are incredibly talented. We’ve had something to do with having some say with the casting, or at least anyone who plays me. I would like to know that they could sing the part. I think that Rick is one of the most consistent that I’ve seen. I saw Travis once, and I was incredibly impressed, but I’ve seen Rick more times, and I’ve spent time with him. He came to me and asked me what I thought about this and that. I have given him little tips on what I think he should do and how he should handle the part and how to not blow out, because you have to be in this business a long time to really understand that.

RL: Could Jersey Boys last as long as the Four Seasons has?

FV: 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.

The three of us reminisced about our early days in the New York record business, and Frankie and Bob told me an incredible story I’d never heard before. Frankie said: “It’s about the Paramount building on Broadway. We had an attorney Marty Bouchette who had an office there, and he came to us one day and asked us if we would be interested in buying the building for $5 million: Broadway and 43rd. Prime space, prime position. And Tommy DeVito says, “What are we going to do with the Paramount building?”

If they’d gone ahead with the deal, they would be real estate moguls today -- but they turned it down!

Frankie added: “Well, our success was so new that we needed each other to do the deal. One guy out meant we were off balance; we needed all four of our monies to do it. Marty did everything in his power to try to convince us to do it. He thought it was an excellent buy. Today it would be worth into the billions let alone the millions! But look at it this way: We would have retired, and there would be no Jersey Boys.”

It was two years ago hours before Jersey Boys opened in the Palazzo that I talked with hit-maker Bob, and then again during the show’s first anniversary last year. Meeting up has become an annual tradition!

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 kid’s 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!

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.

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