My longtime pal Marc Wielage has much to tell us about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons…
What happened was the group kind of split up in the 1970s and wanted to perform different kinds of music. (Valli did the theme for Grease and other songs and had a decent solo career.)
Eventually, by the mid-1980s Valli and business partner Bob Gaudio controlled "The Four Seasons Partnership" and they bought out the old members. They hired new, younger singers to perform with Valli and did oldies shows for the next few decades. I saw Valli perform at a benefit for the Hurricane Katrina victims in late 2005 at the Greek Theater, and it was just Valli (71 at that time) and 3 new guys about 30 or 40. They had a backup singer/keyboard player way off to the side that hit all the falsetto notes that were a bit out of Mr. Valli's range — but it was still a great performance and the highlight of the show. He had genuine charisma and clearly enjoyed the crowd.
Valli and Gaudio own all the rights to the group's name and most of the master tapes and publishing for their hits, so they've profited handsomely from sales, radio broadcasts, and of course the Jersey Boys Broadway show and film. A guy I know who knew Valli while at KRTH-FM says that Valli made more money from that show than he did in his entire performing career.
That sure wouldn't surprise me. A lot of folks in the entertainment field manage to hang around long enough to wide a wave — and it's sometimes a huge, gnarly one — of nostalgia. There was something about Frankie Valli and his repertoire that set him and the Four Seasons apart from eighty-seven thousand groups like that you haven't much about since Lyndon Johnson stepped down.
And I doubt anyone who goes to see him perform in the last few decades cares a lot about which three or four other guys are on the stage with him as long as they sound more or less like the records.
Here's Valli in God-knows-what-year singing what I think was his best song…