'Jersey Boys,' Valli pack 'em in

Weeks before "Jersey Boys" Las Vegas opening, Frankie Valli haspacked the Long Island, N.Y., Westbury Music Fair's theater-in-the-round four straight nights. More than a few men come in leatherjackets or high school letter jackets, even if some have canes now,while some of the women have teenage granddaughters in tow.

But how many performers try to get audiences to sing along andnothing happens? Here, they need little prompting to sing out "Ilove you Baaaby!" or that chorus about how big girls, "they don'tcry-i-i," and then Frankie invites them to start another song. Hedoesn't even say what it is - he just has the band launch into theopening notes of "Let's Hang On" and hundreds out there sing inunison, "There ain't no good in our goodbye-in' / True love takes alot of tryin' / Oh, I'm cryin' ... ' And when the show's over, heplunges into the crowd like a politician on the stump, shaking handsand giving one woman a rose before sauntering up the aisle to hisdressing room.

There was a period when Valli resisted doing the old hits. Hedismissed some as "bubble gum" and wished he could do mostlyballads, both the ones he recorded back when and others by ColePorter, say, or Irving Berlin - to do more Sinatra-like crooning, inother words. But he's come to accept that it's a high calling totransport audiences back to their youths, to set off memories ofwhere they were, and who they were, when they first heard yoursongs. Indeed, he has disdain now for performers who won't do theirhits. "It's almost like telling the audience they didn't know whatthey were doing," he says, "when they bought your records."

Valli does a bit in his act in which he recalls how, when hestarted as a teenager singing on street corners, all he dreamed ofwas making enough to buy a car and put a down payment on a house -then he pauses before adding the punch line - "and get a summer homein France."

He can remember when he once went to a used car lot with almostno money and said, "You must have something here you can't sell.I'll take it," and that's how he got a '51 Studebaker for 100 bucksand "drove it for four years without a problem."

The show "Jersey Boys" suggests how the 4 Seasons' run of hitsmay have upgraded such a ride into a Cadillac but did notnecessarily put any of the group on easy street.

But post-"Jersey Boys," Valli is an unquestioned headliner againand could easily buy that retreat in the South of France if hewanted. "Or two," quips his pal and 4 Seasons bandmate Bob Gaudio.And that's not counting what they get for use of their songs inmovies, or the "astronomical amount" - Frankie's description - theywere paid for "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" in a recent commercialfor Planters peanuts.

Frankie has seen the entertainers who think they need a New Yorkapartment and an L.A. home and a weekend place in the Hamptons andnext thing they have an incredible nut to pay, and this at "a timewhere people almost can't wait to see you fall on your face."

Sure he has a pool and paddle ball court and his own studio athis house in the hills of Southern California, and it's "verycomfortable," but it's no Bel-Air mansion. When he hears other mengush about playing golf or tennis or fishing, what he thinks is:"They hate their jobs. ... If you love what you're doing, you don'tneed to do that." About his only side indulgence? Clothes. He has agreat tailor in Manhattan who makes him suits that don't leave abaggy flap of fabric under the armpit. "My whole life is what I do,"Valli says.

Yet he was tired after those four nights singing on Long Island,that on top of a trip overseas to meet the London cast of "JerseyBoys" and attend the West End opening, leaving him amazed howEnglish actors could sound like they came from the Newark projects.But he'd gotten sick there and fretted that there might be somethingwrong with the stents in his chest, so he was seeing doctors inManhattan, and getting second opinions. "I do worry about things,"he said, vowing to get home to California to rest up before thefrenzy of the opening of the show in Vegas.