By Katie Davis
The Four Seasons lead singer didn’t have life easy…
Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons
Legend is one of those terms all too often overused. There can be little argument it is a word that ought to be reserved to describe very few. When it comes to singers, one who, without doubt, falls into that category is Frankie Valli.
Crammed into his 5ft 4ins frame is a talent so formidable it has given him a career spanning more than six decades, with the veteran singer turning 87 next month on May 3.
Taking a quick flick through his life, it’s easy to think it has been a thing of dreams. But take off those rose-tinted glasses, and you soon realise Frankie has had more than his fair share of tragedy. While international stardom brings its own trials and tribulations, Frankie has carried around the heaviest weight of all on his shoulders – the grief of losing a child.
By 1960, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons were just two years from hitting the big time thanks to his irresistibly unique and unusual falsetto voice. It was the year that he welcomed youngest daughter Francine Castelluccio with his first wife, Mary Mandel. Like her father, she was an exceptional talent, blessed with a strong singing voice and on the brink of breaking into the industry. Sadly, she fell into the dark depths of drug use while pursuing her dream and her tale came to a sharp and tragic end on August 16, 1980. She died from an overdose at the tender age of 20. Frankie has always firmly believed it to have been unintentional.
Speaking to the Telegraph in 2018, his voice cracked when answering how he got through such an unimaginable heartbreak. “To be very honest with you, sometimes I don’t know,” he said, candidly. “It was a very tough period for me. You would think that as time went by it would get easier. But it doesn’t.
“You should never lose a child.”
Frankie Valli
But in a further cruel twist, the devastating blow came just six months after the loss of his step-daughter, Celia, who was from one of Mary’s previous relationships. Celia was just two-years-old when Mary wed Frankie, and he had raised her as one of his own. Early in 1980, locked out of her New York apartment, she had tried to get in via the fire escape but slipped, and fell to her death.
Frankie and Mary parted ways in 1971, and he went on to marry and divorce twice more – but his marital casualties pale against such devastation of losing a child. When watching Frankie on stage – as I’ve been fortunate enough to do four times – it’s easy to forget such stars are really no different from you or I.
As he belts out hits including Sherry, Grease, and My Eyes Adored You, while courting the audience with jokes and anecdotes interspersed between songs, you see a man who you believe could easily have it all, rather than one whose life has been plagued with heartache.
It is no exaggeration that Frankie has had an exceptional career despite personal setbacks, with his and the other original members of The Four Seasons induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 a true testament to their success. And still – in sheer defiance of his age – Frankie powers on and continues to perform to packed-out venues.