Sound Engineer: “Frankie Valli wouldn’t shut up about having sex.”

(I recently told a writer friend that I’m frustrated with my writing of late and can’t seem to finish anything.  I was lamenting this last week when “December, 1963” came on the radio.  I thought about what The Onion writers could do with the song, and decided to see what fun I could have with some parody.  I took inspiration from one of my favorite Onion pieces, Jamie Crying.     ~ Jeff)

Sound Engineer:  “Frankie Valli wouldn’t shut up about having sex.”

A long-time Curb Records sound engineer spoke recently about a recording studio incident with famed singer Frankie Valli and his backup vocalists The Four Seasons.  The episode dates to November, 1975 when the vocalists were between takes while recording the Who Loves You album.  The engineer recalled, “Valli starts in with this dirty story about some broad he bagged in December, 1963.”

“I have to give him credit,” he continued.  “He described her as hypnotizing and mesmerizing, which is kind of normal.  Once he got into feeling a rush like a rolling bolt of thunder, and how she strained his head around and took his body under, we were all like, ‘Wow, man!’  But then he screeches ‘Oh what a night!’ fifty times.  Why’s he got to hammer the point home like that?  We get it.  Let it go.  We had work to do.  But no, we had to wait for Mr. Big Shot to finish his story.”

When asked how he managed to mix the mega-hit, the engineer elaborated.  “The tape was running while Valli was yakking.  We had a guy on a Minimoog synthesizer, and after a minute and a half, he started playing around with some subtextual background sounds while Valli was going on about all the salty details.  Pretty soon, the guitarist was using his wah pedal to make some porn riffs.  That’s why you hear the ‘bow-chica-bow-bow.’  I looked over at the drummer, and he was rolling his eyes waiting for Valli to get over himself.  He started tapping his sticks, and that’s where the chorus came from, the ‘doo dit doo dit dit doo dit doo dit dit.’  We were supposed to have some disco soul sound, so we mixed some horns in there, too.  It was pretty simple stuff.”

A source close to Valli said there has been no end to the embarrassment caused by the singers’ description of the encounter and the attention it has garnered over the last 35 years.  That attention has included three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976, a 1994 remix that spent 27 weeks in the Hot 100, and a continual cycle of retellings every time the musical Jersey Boys has been performed on Broadway, during its North American National Tour, and in Canada, England, and Australia over the past six years.  “Frankie values his privacy,” the source claimed.  “Here he’s sitting on top of the pop charts, and this woman brings a paternity suit against him, saying he’s the father of her twelve-year old son.  He was completely embarrassed.”  The source went on, “Frankie knew he was never gonna be the same, which was foreshadowed in the song.”  When reached for comment, the paternity suit plaintiff explained that it took some time to pin the charges on Valli because at the time of the encounter he didn’t even know her name.  The jilted woman also noted the length of the song, claiming that 3 1/2 minutes was a lot longer than the illicit tryst lasted.  She then made several smug references to Valli’s falsetto proclamation, ‘I recall it ended much too soon,’ which occurs, ironically, only a minute into the track.