Frankie Valli on the Four Seasons’ Legacy and Their Massive New 45-Disc Boxed Set: ‘We Didn’t Want

 to Try to Sound Like Anybody Else’

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Substitute “ears” for “eyes,” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” still applies for much of the world when it comes to the music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. It’s a dozen major hits from the ‘60s and ‘70s that remain foremost in the thoughts of pop fans, but the catalog of group and solo material goes much deeper than almost anyone who’s not a truly seasoned Valli fanatic would guess. How deep? Well, there’s a new Four Seasons boxed set, “Working Our Way Back to You — The Ultimate Collection,” that includes what feels about 400 seasons’ worth of material… 45 discs’ worth, to be precise.

Very few acts in music have gotten a boxed set this comprehensive, but then again, few have the kind of output that started out so prolifically and then went on to span a half-century of releases. What will be at least as valuable for the faithful as having those dozens of hours of music in one thick doorstop of a set will be the accompanying printed material, including a hardback coffee-table book that includes an essay by Paul Sexton and interviews by Ken Sharp, with the musicians and writers involved all providing memories, as well as talks with celebrity fans from Billy Joel to Little Steven. A collection of sleeve art and softcover album-by-album annotation by Ken Charmer also round out the set, not to mention the 44 CDs being supplemented by an LP copy of the cult favorite album “The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette.” Something this extraordinarily comprehensive doesn’t come at a cost that’s accessible to someone who really just wants the basic hits, or in massive quantities — it’s a limited edition of 2,500 and the rock-bottom sale price is around $400. But for anyone who is more than just “a regular Frankie fan,” this is an example of the kind of physical media that dreams are made of.

At 89, Valli remains musically active. He released a jazz album in 2021 (one of the few things he’s recorded that is not part of the new boxed set), and he still tours, with his next shows in the SoCal area being Thousand Oaks and Rancho Mirage gigs coming up in October and November, followed by a Las Vegas residency in 2024. Valli got on the phone with Variety to discuss the lavish “Ultimate Collection” package and some of the issues and memories it brings up.

It’s pointed out in the liner notes for this set that you own your masters and your publishing, which has to be one of the reasons a comprehensive set like this can even happen — the rights aren’t scattered around a million places. Was that just amazing foresight on your part?

We had to make a sacrifice for that. In most cases, we were not dealing with major record companies. Major record companies would never gone for a deal where you lease your records to them, and at the end of the period of time that they’ve been leased to have, they come back to you. So that was a big sacrifice. But in the end, it paid off. It was a sacrifice to be on top of your career and in charge of what happens with your career, knowing that at the end of the day, everything comes back to you [while not getting the push of a major label]. I’m sure that, without that, there are many artists out there that have recorded material that’s still in the can.

The way that whole thing happened was, when we left Vee-Jay Records [in 1963], there were some situations with money that was not coming to us that should have been, and that helped us to make up our mind what we wanted to do. Instead of settling with them for the money, we settled for taking back everything that we recorded and owned it. And we went on to the next record company and leased our records to the next record company, so that they came back to us at the end of the lease.