Jersey Boys press night & belief in one’s art

I am very lucky I get to see a lot of great films and theatre and sometimes they really resonate with me past the initial excitement.
I went to the musical Jersey Boys press night a couple weeks ago as they had a cast change to celebrate (and yes the champagne managed to find it’s way to me.. (again)) but the story of the song ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ has really stayed with me. Back in 1967 Bob Gaudio, the songwriter and 4th member of the group had written a standard sounding song for Frankie Valli that was in the style that had been working for them for years and also a new song that no-one wanted to play, understood and knew what to do with. He could not get the local radio stations to play it but he persisted, he believed in this new style of song. When he finally managed to get lift off with it it sold over 3 million copies and has had dozens of covers.

In the week after Prince has sadly left us, this story just reminded me how all great art, music, paintings and films are made through complete conviction 😉 I actually saw Prince jam a few years ago in a small club in Los Angeles, I was literally  an inch away  from his keyboards. He was just there to jam, try out some new stuff in a very understated way although Stevie Wonder and John Altman were both, pretty amazing musicians themselves, plus various LA based actors.

The new cast of Jersey Boys are really good and the falsetto of Nathaniel Morrison was amazing (and I made sure I told him!). I also had no idea that Joe Pesci (the actor) had such a part to play in putting the group together, I do love it when I learn something new 😉 I gather the film/documentary version of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons is great too if you have not seen it or Jersey Boys, London too far to travel to 😉

I do write a blog on creativity, mine and others www.loveyourcreativity.com So if you are interested on my musing on making stuff and learning from others on how to keep going then that is the place I talk about that 😉