Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons: Real-Life Jersey Boys Still at It

Being a Jersey Boy myself I’ve loved our local boys, The Four Seasons since those early Sixties days. Yes, they were always on the AM airwaves, but my father loved them too, which was an exciting and rare bonus when you were a kid, as most adults weren’t yet able to take those long-haired “Beetles” seriously, so the Seasons’ appeal, even back then, was a really rare cross-generational one. Their records have continued have a special place in my heart all my life, especially the early ones. And I’ve come to believe, as a musician myself, that the reason I have continued to love their records so much, aside from their tie my childhood, is because the innovative sonic quality and musicianship on their records was always so strong and, in my opinion, different from other records of their time. And that was all down to their producer, Bob Crewe, who also had a hand in writing many of their biggest hits. Crewe went on to have a huge career producing many hit records and top acts for a slew of artists, but his work with the Seasons is what I most admire him for as I continue to listen into their Sixties hits to this day. While the focus of the Seasons was obviously on the vocals on their records, you rarely heard drums and percussion used in such an up-front way on many records of that era. I don’t know who these anonymous NYC studio personnel were on these records, but the quality of the drumming and the resonance of their tuning really stands out on some of these old singles. Likewise, with many of the other instruments you’ll hear on their records beyond the Season’s gorgeous vocals. I can’t be certain, but I don’t know if I ever heard a fuzz box being used on a guitar before the rocking intro of their 1965 hit: “Let’s Hang On,” which was co-written by Crewe and two other non-Seasons. Coincidently, it was that same year in June of 1965 that the fuzz-box really burned into our collective consciousness with the Rolling Stones blockbuster hit “Satisfaction” blared non-stop on the airwaves. So while there’s no way to really know which record was done first, or if the use of the fuzz on a record followed the other, it’s pretty obvious that Crewe was right at the forefront of using musical sounds and techniques to make the Season’s records stand out as unique, even though he wasn’t necessarily trying to spotlight these musical elements in a way that the newer British Invasion groups were. There are so many other examples of excellent instrumental musicality you’ll hear in their recordings if you listen IN to them, which is hard to do, as you’re meant to be listening to the glorious tones of those sweet Italian lads, which in my opinion never sounded as good as the original guys, once Frankie Valli eventually replaced them with trained vocalists to be his backup singers over time. My point here is that Crewe is every bit as integral to the Four Seasons as George Martin was to The Beatles. More so, because beside producing all their records, Crewe also wrote songs with and for them. So many of those earlier 60s records had a great sound which was recorded using master musicians, even, as is well known, many of the popular groups’ records that found fame in that age were recorded by LA’s famed Wrecking Crew, or their NYC, Detroit, Philadelphia, Memphis, or Muscle Shoals equivalent. It’s really both ironic and sad that The Monkees had to bear so much scrutiny and criticism concerning them “not really playing on their own records’ for a practice that was common and widespread to the hits of most groups, including some of the biggest ones (Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Turtles to name a few), you heard on the radio in those days. I guess there was no one to speak up for the Monkees at the time to “out” all these other groups as being in the same boat. Or more likely, silence about such practices was invoked by a longstanding code, that no one spoke of or was allowed pull back that curtain, and the Monkees just had to take the brunt of it. It was common practice to use studio players on the records of many of the British Invasion groups as well, and I’m convinced that you’re hearing studio players on the records of some even bigger groups that many people absolutely refuse to believe and even get mad at me when I suggest it. So I’m pretty sure there is and has been some kind of non-disclosure code or legal agreement in place for many, many years that some STILL refuse to admit to. But that’s a discussion for another time. All this to say, if you love the Four Seasons, as I certainly do and always have, you’ve got to include largely unheralded writer/producer Bob Crewe in there as part of what made that group as special as they were.