Amadeus Meets Goodfellas: Street Punks of Jersey Create the Defining Pop Sound Prior to the Beatles

Rating: 10/10 (3 December 2016)

In 1959, the music died: Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens died in the most infamous plane crash in the history of Rock 'N' Roll, and Elvis Presley was drafted into the army. In music a number of one-hit wonders entered and left the pop-culture music stage until a bunch of street hoodlums formed a singing group which would become the defining sound of the early 1960's prior to the Beatles. They went under a host of different names, until they settled on the Four Seasons and eventually Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
John Lloyd Young as Frankie Valli and Erich Bergen as Bob Gaudio lead a tremendous cast of superb actors in this thoroughly enjoyable and intricate behind-the-scenes exposÃ© of one of the biggest pop music phenomena prior to the Beatles. Some of the story techniques are similar to Amadeus and Goodfellas in which voice overs of the different characters tell the story at different times. The very beginning of the story is somewhat confusing. Eventually we learn that Valli's older friend Tommy DeVito (Vincent Piazza) is a kind of Jersey equivalent of Santino "Sonny" Corleone of "The Godfather". He gets into trouble in the streets, convincing Valli and a few other friends to hijack a safe from a local business. Eventually he decides to form a singing group and he asks Frankie and Nick Massi (Michael Lomenda) to join.
For a time they are a trio with different drummers. Their sound isn't bad but their songs are a bit "derivative" of other songs already on the radio. Then they solicit the help of Bob Gaudio, a song-writer who had one hit under his belt as co-writer of "Short Shorts". They become studio back-up singers under Bob Crewe but they can't land a recording of one of their own songs. Crewe claims their songs still aren't unique enough, until Gaudio presents the group with "Sherry" which becomes the group's first hit single which will define most of the group's sound during the early 1960's with Valli's falsetto the trademark voice occasionally punctuated with the bass voice of Massi.
Simultaneously, a sub-plot is developing in which Tommy has gotten in with loan sharks and the meter keeps running high. Eventually, it's time to pay the piper and the group is left holding the tab. The group disbands leaving just Valli and Gaudio. Gaudio writes a song which would become a kind of farewell anthem of the sound of the early 1960's but in a way looks forward to some of the music of the 1970's. Unlike the sound of "Sargent Pepper" of the Beatles, the song becomes an unlikely hit. Initially the records producers and executives felt the song would bomb because it wasn't Rock but wasn't really Pop/Easy Listening either. It's not Rock per se but a pop sound which would become part of the pop sound of music which appealed to a slightly older audience apart from the sound of Rock which was taking over the teenage Baby Boom audience. It would become Frankie Valli's biggest hit up until that time.
With the rise of the Beatles, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, and the Rolling Stones, the Four Seasons became somewhat eclipsed. Music enthusiasts sometimes forget the Four Seasons were the Beatles of their day, producing a string of hits some of which have withstood more or less: "Sherry", "Walk Like a Man", "Ragdoll". I would certainly not crown the Four Seasons as the best group of the 1960's but they certainly had something to say in music. And Frankie Valli became the most popular falsetto singer of the late 20th century until Michael Jackson.