What The Critics Say
In 1980, when Frankie Valli released his eighth solo album, Heaven Above Me, the goal he and his longtime creative brain trust of songwriter/producers Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio were pursuing was the same one they had pursued five, ten, even 20 years before, whether on behalf of their group, the Four Seasons, or Valli solo: hit records. Valli, Crewe, and Gaudio would not claim to be musical innovators; on the contrary, their modus operandi always was to examine pop music trends closely and then apply them to Valli's nasal tenor. So, it would be surprising only to die-hard '60s fans of the Four Seasons that Heaven Above Me sounded like a lot of other pop music of the late '70s and early '80s. Specifically, Valli, Crewe, and Gaudio wanted to address two markets. They had their eye on the adult contemporary audience, for which they produced warm ballads such as the leadoff track, "Where Did We Go Wrong," which actually ascended the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart as high as number four. And, recalling their success in the disco field in the '70s with tracks like "Swearin' to God," they wanted to reestablish Valli as a dance-pop artist. To that end, they listened to Chic and Donna Summer and lots of other contemporary dance music, and their findings were presented in such tracks as "Let It Be Whatever It Is" and the ten-minute "Soul/Heaven Above Me," which enabled the album to spend nearly six months on the Disco/Dance chart, peaking at number 11. Curiously, the album never entered the pop chart, however, which may be some indication of a lack of record company support for a disc that was being released through MCA although Valli was directly contracted to Curb. Or it may have been a reflection of Valli's inability to tour due to illness, or, upon his recovery, to his decision to rejoin a reunited Four Seasons for touring purposes. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Frankie Valli...Is the Word'
What The Critics Say
After failing to chart with his albums Valli (1976) and Lady Put the Light Out (1977), Frankie Valli appeared to have squandered the comeback he achieved in 1975, despite having made a formal break with the Four Seasons to pursue his solo career full-time. Then, a surprising thing happened. Valli was brought in to sing the newly written theme song for the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease by Barry Gibb of the red-hot Bee Gees, and suddenly he was on the top of the heap again, as the single went to number one and was certified platinum. Naturally, Valli followed up with a new solo album, Frankie Valli...Is the Word (echoing the chorus of the hit, "Grease is the word"), but it served to demonstrate that "Grease" was more of a phenomenon related to the movie and the Bee Gees than to Valli himself. The album, otherwise produced by Valli's partner, Bob Gaudio, had some of the dance-pop sound of the single and the Bee Gees, and Gibb agreeably provided another tune, "Save Me, Save Me," which made some noise on the easy listening chart. As usual, Valli worked with the cream of session musicians, including flutist Hubert Laws, who contributed a lengthy solo to "A Tear Can Tell." But there really wasn't another "Grease" on the disc, and Valli's latest comeback proved a one-shot event. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Lady Put the Light Out'
What The Critics Say
After the commercial failure of his 1976 album, Valli, Frankie Valli seemed to have gotten the stars aligned for another comeback with his 1977 follow-up, Lady Put the Light Out. He assembled a studio full of high-priced New York session players and chose good songs by such notable songwriters as Eric Carmen, Paul Anka, Carole Bayer Sager, and the team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil for a collection meant to compete in the adult pop market with the likes of Barry Manilow. Private Stock Records, his label, released as singles the Anka song "Second Thoughts," Carmen's apparently specially written "I Need You," and Sager and Albert Hammond's "I Could Have Loved You." And nothing happened. Why? For one thing, Valli was still dividing his time between his solo career and the Four Seasons, touring with them to promote their Helicon album, although this was his farewell outing with them and he would formally announce his separation from the group at its end. Still, he may have taken his eye off the ball when it came to promoting Lady Put the Light Out. Curiously, the hit he needed was right there on the album, but it went to somebody else. The disco-inflected "Native New Yorker," at the end of side one, had been written by longtime Valli associates Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell (who had written hits for the Four Seasons back in the '60s). But Valli's version remained buried on the LP, while Odyssey recorded it and took its version into the Top 30 of the pop charts and the Top Five of the disco charts. So, instead of marking a career resurgence for Valli, Lady Put the Light Out was another flop that unfortunately came just as he was preparing to turn his full attention to his solo career. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Inexplicably, and almost out of nowhere, Frankie Valli reappeared in 1975 on Motown; no doubt a result of the friendship he struck up with the Motown family as they emerged from Detroit to their new palatial digs in Los Angeles. Gone are the teeny bopper, sugar coated songs that made Francis Stephen Castelluccio a teenage sensation with his Four Seasons; and in its place, Inside You finds him a focused lead vocalist determined to escape the trappings of effeminate falsetto wailing. The five-minute lead-off track "Just Look What You Done" builds on the four-on-the-floor classic Motown sound, but layers Philly string arrangements and the fierce songwriting and production of Frank Wilson. There are some predictably soggy, forgettable moments on the record, including a tepid version of the classic "Baby I Need Your Loving." Even "The Mack" maestro Willie Hutch throws a tune to Valli with "Thank You" that doesn't come across as a painful listening experience. All in all, it's an album from a man who was ready and raring to relaunch his career; a feat that would ultimately find him at the upper echelon of the pop charts three years later with the theme song to the movie blockbuster Grease. ~ Rob Theakston, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Closeup is singer Frankie Valli again finding the magic without his Four Seasons, this time in the '70s with two big hits in two different genres. The album is very, very good, and in a roundabout way is a great example of why Clive Davis worked wonders with Bell Records when he turned it into Arista. Former Bell president Larry Uttal had it all in this project, and it should have been much, much bigger -- it should have been the album to firmly establish Private Stock Records as a major player. But for all the incredible cast members and all the artistry here -- Jim Keltner on drums, Bobbye Hall on conga, Clydie King and Patti Austin on backing vocals (seven years before Austin's own number one hit), and the brilliant idea of having Four Season Bob Gaudio producing half the album in Los Angeles with Val Garay engineering while Bob Crewe produced the hits in New York City with Michael Delugg on the boards (and Charles Calelo arranging on both coasts) -- it is all packaged with a cover that looks like it was thought up at the budget label Pickwick International, and with only eight songs it just feels on the surface like less than what it actually is. The ten-minute version of "Swearin' to God" is certainly fun, but the 18 minutes for three songs on side two go by too quickly. They are also the best songs on the album, all produced by Crewe. A couple of additional titles, perhaps a special remake or two, could have made this album so much more for the artist, for the label, for the fans. "My Eyes Adored You" was the first number one solo hit for Valli, and hard to believe it came eight years after "Can't Take My Eyes Off You." That 1967 hit just missed the number one spot, and a new rendition for this album would actually have been a very wise move. All of Valli's first six Top 40 solo hits were produced by Crewe, and hearing the different sounds he and Gaudio came up with for the veteran singer is half the fun of the album. "In My Eyes" is just an excellent album track, unmatched by anything on the first side. Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, producers of the Toys, show up here as songwriters, as does Kenny Nolan, on an album where easy listening ballads meet disco. The song "Why" is producer Gaudio's best moment, followed by "He Sure Blessed You," another decent middle-of-the-road album track. Gaudio should have come up with a couple more. In the crazy business that is the record industry, this important artist, Frankie Valli, put out three albums in 1975 (two on Private Stock and one on Motown), with a seven-year lapse in hits prior to all this new activity -- the same span his group the Four Seasons had in their chart action. Seven long years. Had the team consolidated the hits and positioned the ones to follow -- "Our Day Will Come" and the wonderful minor hit from 1976, "Fallen Angel" -- all on this album, Closeup would have been a monster. It's an important and forgotten catalog item that needs to be expanded and re-released with bonus tracks and liner notes that give it its proper place in music history. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
'Our Day Will Come'
What The Critics Say
Having mounted a surprising comeback with the ballad "My Eyes Adored You" and consolidated it with the disco-ish "Swearin' to God," Frankie Valli made it three hits in a row when his revival of Ruby & the Romantics' 1963 hit "Our Day Will Come," again set to a light disco arrangement, took off for the Top 20 in the fall of 1975, precipitating this tie-in album. Fans of Valli's Four Seasons hits of the '60s or even of his earlier middle-of-the-road pop solo work like "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" may have been confused, but if so, they really hadn't been paying attention. Valli had always wanted to have hits, and he was never averse to adopting contemporary music styles to achieve that success. If in the mid-'70s that meant disco, that was OK with him. For the LP Our Day Will Come, he assembled a session group of New York jazz-pop professionals like keyboard player Don Grolnick and cut some more songs set to a disco beat and some ballads. It was all slickly done, and it might have resulted in yet another hit single and a higher placing for the album than number 107 in the Billboard chart, except that, not satisfied with his renewed solo success, Valli had also wrangled a new recording contract for the Four Seasons and, just as he did in the '60s, he was now competing with himself. Two weeks prior to the release of Our Day Will Come, Warner Bros. Records issued a new Four Seasons album, Who Loves You, itself a tie-in to the group's comeback hit of the same name, and when it proceeded to spawn an even bigger hit, "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)," Valli's solo label Private Stock didn't even bother to release another single from Our Day Will Come. It's too bad. The disco-tinged arrangement of the perennial hit "Walk Away Renee" certainly could have scored, as could one of the ballads, such as "Closest Thing to Heaven." That is, maybe they could have in an alternate universe without Who Loves You. By the spring of 1976, Warner was still pulling singles off that LP, scoring with "Silver Star." As a result, Our Day Will Come garnered less attention than it deserved. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Frankie Valli's Timeless is a superb Adult Contemporary recording with stellar arrangements, great song selection, and Valli's distinctive vocal sound. It came after two minor solo hits in 1966 and 1967, "(You're Gonna) Hurt Yourself" and "I Make A Fool of Myself," as well as 1967's Top 5 smash "Can't Take My Eyes Off You," none included here. "To Give (The Reason I Live)" from this album, did hit the Top 30 in 1968, but it is far from the best track on the record, being an overstated Bob Crewe/Bob Gaudio original flavored by "The Impossible Dream." The cover of Jimmy Webb's "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" is a nice reading, and no doubt appealed to housewives who liked Glen Campbell's original and Valli's voice. While Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck were approaching this market with more uptempo bright pop, Frankie Valli took a more mellow route, performing that lively style with his group, The Four Seasons, whose only appearance here is in a photo (including Valli with Joe Long, Tommy DeVito and Bob Gaudio, looking down at the solo Frankie Valli from a balcony. One of the album's highlights is a big production of Bobby Hebb's "Sunny," Hebb's original also on the Philips label. Valli changes the words a bit "wonderful and great are simple joys...ooh Sunny, you separate the men from little boys/your love was given/from an open hand/as nature intended from woman to man/way down to Earth with you, Sunny I love you". Outside of the last four words, it is highly unlikely the song ever included those other lyrics, it having been written for God or for Hebb's brother, the late Hal Hebb of the Marigolds. "Eleanor Rigby" is interesting, an amalgam of Andy Williams and The Bob Crewe Generation's "Music To Watch Girls By" sound, clearly part of Bob Crewe's formula - here he has Valli singing like Andy Williams and reconstructing the Beatles to his own style of pop. The great Charles Calello conducts most of the arrangements, under Gaudio's supervision, but there are no Four Seasons harmonies here whatsoever, making it a total solo project, with Valli's voice way out in the mix. Artie Schroeck does the only non-Calello arrangement, and that is of the Neil Sedaka / Carole Bayer Sager composition, "Make The Music Play." It is very middle of the road sixties pop, kind of like her Mindbenders hit of 1966 drifting into Tony Bennett territory. Artie Schroeck wrote Stop And Say Hello here, and it is second to Sunny as the top song on this superb outing. "Stop And Say Hello" is really moving, and should have been the hit. It's another big production with something rare to this album - backing vocals - very faint in the background. G. Knight's "Donnybrook" ends the album on a nice mellow note. The band and strings brimming with some delightful and uplifting phrases to bring the program to a close. The cover photos by Bob Golden are included on a wheel which you can turn by hand, an expensive and elaborate package for an important artist from the sixties. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
