Jersey Boys: dudes rocked


Something happened. 

It was transcendent. Lorenzo Pugliese as Frankie Valli was singing the big number, Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You. “I love you baby!” he sang. The crowd – and it was a crowd at that point, not a theatrical audience – was in a frenzy.  Time and space were bending. Individual identities became fluid. This was not Mr. Pugliese in front of me. It was the real Frankie Valli. This was not the Village Theater in Everett. This was, like, the Sands Casino in Las Vegas in nineteen-sixty-whatever.  Pugliese/Valli came down the stairs at stage left and worked his way along the front row. I’m not kidding. It was like he was someone else. It was like the crowd were all someone else. I was someone else, somewhere else. We all floated there. Together.  Later in the show, when The Four Seasons are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Tommy DeVito, one of the group, says,  “Listen, fellas. I wanna tell you something. This is the greatest award you can get in the world. This is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. All those other ones – the Oscars, the Emmys, whatever – you can buy that shit. But you can’t buy this. You know why? Because this is from the people!” I think there is truth in that. Music has power like nothing else to move people, to bring them together and take them away, as it did last Saturday night. When that happens, the people will reward you with halls of fame and love. And maybe 60 years later some people in a far off town in a far off state will conjure you for an evening.

 

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