F for fortitude and fiery falsetto

“Frankie my dear, we all give a damn,” must be what the well-heeled audience were saying as they filled up the Resorts World Newport Performing Arts Theatre to see Frankie Valli perform for the first time in Manila. The show opened with a video pastiche of the Four Season’s more than four decades saga in the music scene, after which Frankie entered all dapper in a formal suit with turquoise necktie, auspicious of the gemstone that is believed to bring good fortune. Indeed, dame fortune has been smiling on this feisty Jersey boy who has turned 80, and with the multi-octave range of his voice, has scaled life’s adversities with a dash of fortitude, with his well-known falsetto still afire.

Reviewing Frankie’s discography, I came to realize that my college years were book ended by his hits: My Eyes Adored You in 1974 and the theme song from Grease in 1978. This was the song that Frankie chose for his opening number, and it seems that time has stood still for this icon, as his tenor is still as pure as when he sang it for the monster hit period movie that further clinched song-and-dance superstardom for John Travolta after Saturday Night Fever. From the composition of Bee Gee’s Barry Gibbs, that theme song was frowned upon at first by the film director Randal Kleiser along with You’re The One That I Want because they were anachronistic, i.e. they did not fit the ’50s style musically or lyrically.

But the theme song that accompanied the opening animation of the movie became a No. 1 single in the US in 1978 and also reached No. 40 on the R&B charts in the same year — a boon for Frankie, who had to contend with the new kid on the block drowning the airwaves during this epoch — disco. The signature guitar riff and crashing percussion of this number transported us back to the good old days when boys asked girls out in real time, as in the song Sherry: Can you come out tonight, not on Facebook or Twitter. My husband and I remembered the twist parties of our youth long gone with the line: I’m gonna make you mi-yi-yine!

What is wonderful with Frankie is that he has stuck it out with his band, the Four Seasons, through the highs and lows of his career. The group was the most popular rock band before the quartet from Liverpool, the Beatles, broke all record in the mid-’60s. First known as the Four Lovers with lead singer Bob Gaudio on keyboards, Tommy de Vito, lead guitar and Nick Massi, bass guitar, the Four Seasons has evolved through time and still performs with Frankie all over the world. The quartet that came to Manila seems just a quarter of Frankie’s age, with uniform height dwarfing the diminutive idol who gamely steps into their choreography and clap-stomp routine like a truant school boy with his posse.

Frankie  and Robert “Bob”  Gaudio, the music prodigy from New York, formed the Four Seasons Partnership (each owning 50 percent of the acts and its assets) which has been the constant in the singing group. Bob has retired from playing in gigs in the early ’70s, and concentrates on song compositions with another Bob, Crew — with whom he has produced such monster hits as Big Girls Don’t Cry and Walk Like a Man. When Frankie  and his Four Seasons sang these favorites with his 12-man orchestra, the house was titillated. Frankie asked for the loudest ay-yay-yay and hoo-wo-hoo, which the audience gave him with total abandon.

When he remarked: “I think the best music came from the ’60s,” the Manila audience hooted and howled in agreement, and he dished out the songs that filled the air waves in my grade school years, including a favorite,  My Girl, which my fourth grade classmates and I were supposed to dance to during a program. But Ate Toring, my cousin, who was the teacher-in-charge of the program at F. Mendoza Memorial Elementary School, dropped the 45 vinyl record, and it broke in two. Alas, we had to dance impromptu to Winchester Cathedral, and our production number went all awry. But we had a swell time because we were wearing fishnets with our brand-new shoes and a few missed steps did not a total failure make. Spanish Harlem by Ben E. King was next, and the saxophonist had his moment as Frankie moved the sentimental love song to cross over bee-bop calypso beat.

Also from this era was the song Rag Doll, which in 2010, radio station WCBS-FM in New York City ranked as the No. 1 song of all time, as voted on by its listeners. A clarinet solo made Silence is Golden special, as well as the four-part harmony from the four young back-up singers. Frankie told the audience that 1967 for him was an incredible year, as this was when his first solo recording became a hit — Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You, which has been rendered in hundreds of cover versions, used in television and film soundtracks, even as part of the plot of some films.

Jersey Boys, a musical play based on the lives of Frankie and the Four Seasons and directed by Des McAnuff, has won multiple Tony Awards, and is now being made into a film by the veteran actor-director, Clint Eastwood, scheduled for release this year.

Opus 17 (Don’t You Worry ‘bout Me), composed by Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell and recorded  for the album Working My Way Back to You should have been the finale, as this song, which ties with Bobby Darin’s Mack the Knife for the most chromatic key changes in a pop song, may well be the anthem of Frankie’s life as the lyrics rally his motto: I’ll be strong, I’ll carry on…somehow I’ll get through so don’t you worry ‘bout me.

And along with another Crewe-Gaudio gem, Bye, Bye, Baby (Baby Goodbye) which became a hit in 1965, My Mother’s Eyes should have been the encore, as Frankie’s fortitude is obviously from the well spring of a loving mother who started his dream of show business when she took him to see the show of another Francis (Frank Sinatra) when he was a wee lad. Though his real name Francis Castelluccio was too cumbersome for the marquee, he still made it —  short in height but long on fortitude with fire in his falsetto.

Personal tragedies and his battle with otosclerosis, which commonly leads to conductive hearing loss (theorized to be the cause of Beethoven’s deafness) has not dimmed the sparkle in his eyes. And this might have been a reflection of his own mother’s, as the first recorded song of Frankie confesses:

I found in my mother’s eyes

Just like a wandering sparrow

One lonely soul.

I walked the straight and narrow,

To reach my goal.

God’s gift sent from above,

A real unselfish love

I found in my mother’s eyes.