A 50-YEAR HANDSHAKE DEAL BRINGS AN ALL STAR TURNOUT FOR THE JERSEY BOYS VEGAS PREMIERE
There’s an all-star turnout set for Saturday’s gala red carpet opening of the new The Jersey Boys musical at The Palazzo Resort with everybody from Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, Siegfried & Roy, Monty Python great John Cleese, superstar Billy Crystal, whiz record producer Bob Crew, Ugly Betty’s Michael Urie, Strip headliner comedienne Rita Rudner and maybe even disco-queen Donna Summer.
But it’s the poignant reunion of three special guys that will be worth watching. Actor Joe Pesci, who as a young New Jersey teenager, introduced Frankie Valli to record producer and songwriter Bob Gaudio. If that momentous meeting had never happened those decades ago its highly unlikely that Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons would have gone on to become one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. Incidentally the night will be even more special because, as hard as it is to believe, Frankie Valli will be celebrating his 74th birthday, and he’s still going strong, performing shows around the country and selling hit records!
They went onto invent their own special sound, writing their own songs and before they were 30 they’d sold 175 million records worldwide! Incredibly I knew them back in the Brill Music Building on Broadway in the mid 60’s when I published a weekly music newspaper for radio stations across America called GO Magazine. We featured them numerous times and told their Rocky like story of rags to riches rise to stardom from the very wrong side of the tracks.
Over the years their popularity was overtaken by different musical trends but bounced back every now and again and especially when the Jersey Boys first premiered on Broadway. The show brought back to life all those hits such as “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Cant Take My Eyes off of You” and “Oh What a Night.” Today they’re still selling better than most groups even dream of!
And all without a contract! Yes, it’s totally true! To this day the business partnership between Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons is still based on that first New Jersey handshake! Throughout the years they’ve remained close friends and you can now see the elements that propelled them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Display cases have been shipped from the museum and installed at the brand new 1,400 seat Palazzo theater showing their original music, their paper scribblings and even the slab of wet cement that Frank Sinatra signed on a rainy day at an unfinished pool of their New Jersey home.
The Vegas cast is made up of Rick Faugno as Frankie Vallli, Erich Bergen as Bob Gaudio, Jeremy Kushnier as Tommy DeVito and Jeff Leibow as Nick Massi. The show won Best Musical Tony Award and Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album.
On Monday we’ll not only have the full photo coverage of opening night and the red carpet stars but we’ve got a fascinating in-depth interview with Bob Gaudio who has spent the past three months in Vegas getting the show ready. “They are so good there are times I think they sound exactly like us,” he laughed.