Frankie Valli

I grew up beyond proud - we didn't have much, but we had a lot of love. ”

Jazz was my first love. ”

Jersey Boys' has been the most amazing experience ever and has exposed an entire new audience to the music. It's great to see people of all ages coming to the show. ”

With 'Sherry,' we were looking for a sound. We wanted to make the kind of mark that, if the radio was playing one of our songs, you knew who it was immediately. But I didn't want to sing like that my whole life. ”

Where I grew up, in New Jersey, there was a lot of organised crime activity. It was a part of life. ”

I learned by listening to other people sing and doing impressions of them. And there are things no one can ever teach you, like phrasing. By listening to Sinatra, for instance - you felt that everything he sang had happened in his life. ”

When somebody is making a movie about your life, that's different. A show is a live performance. Things are going to go wrong. You are going to get away with things. A movie is indelible. A movie is through a microscope. ”

One day, when I was still living at home, a friend told 'Texas' Jean Valli about me. She was originally from Syracuse, N.Y., and lived in New Jersey but sang country. One night, she had me come up on stage where she was performing. I sang 'My Mother's Eyes,' and she was knocked out. ”

When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds. ”

It was very important to establish a sound, so that people heard a record on the radio and knew immediately that it was you. ”