VIDEO FLASHBACK: How JERSEY BOYS Changed The Jukebox Musical
By: Michael Dale Nov. 07, 2015
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While Webster's has yet to officially define the phrase "jukebox musical," Broadway fans have plenty of opinions about them. Creating stage entertainments centered on existing popular songs sure sounds like a dependable way to keep the box office humming, but without a strong story and good writing even the greatest hits of Elvis Presley and John Lennon haven't proved enough to ensure healthy runs.
Which is why Jersey Boys, which celebrated its tenth anniversary on Broadway last night, can be considered a true landmark in the genre. The songs of The Four Seasons may be the main attraction but a huge amount of credit for the musical's success must be given to bookwriters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, who, for the most part, shunned the traps that keep jukebox musicals from succeeding as formidable dramas and created a documentary-like text that provides musical montages that offer the quartet's hits as a soundtrack to their story.
For the record, this overview of how Jersey Boys changed the jukebox musical and influenced its future will regard the term as a traditional book musical, with characters and dialogue, that uses previously recorded songs not written for the stage to advance a newly written story.
This excludes musical revues like AIN'T MISBEHAVIN', full-length ballets like MOVIN' OUT, stage adaptations of films using songs primarily taken from the movie soundtrack (SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, XANADU), plays that include songs exclusively presented in a realistic setting (LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR AND GRILL, MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET) and anything that might be advertised as "The New Gershwin Musical!"
Good musicals require dramatically strong songs that advance the plot and define the characters, which becomes problematic when dealing with preexisting songs that may not express exactly what's needed (The main couple of GOOD VIBRATIONS singing The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You," after being apart for ten years) or, if written by the same person/people, has all the characters expressing themselves in the same voice. (HOLLER IF YA HEAR ME, using the Tupac Shakur catalogue)
LEADER OF THE PACK (1985), the first show to hit Broadway that could truly be called a jukebox musical, used the songs of Ellie Greenwich to tell the story of the pop composer/lyricist's rise to fame. While praised for its energy and nostalgic entertainment value, the story was truly a bubble-gum affair.
Next came BUDDY - THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY (1990), a London import that played on the West End for twelve years and is still enormously popular in Britain. Short-lived on Broadway, the show excited audiences with its musical scenes, especially a recreation of the Clear Lake, Iowa concert before the tragic plane crash that killed Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, but the book scenes dragged the evening down.
RETURN TO THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, a jukebox adaptation of the 1950s sci-fi flick that loosely set Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST in outer space, won the 1989 Olivier for Best New Musical over MISS SAIGON. The score was made up of an assortment of unrelated 1950s and 60s hits. The mindlessly fun spoof never reached Broadway, but had a brief run at Off-Broadway's Variety Arts Theater in 1991.
And then came MAMMA MIA. A surprise West End hit that fit the ABBA catalogue into a story of a mother unsure which of three men is her daughter's biological father, it was devoured by New Yorkers in need of comforting junk food while still trying to get though the aftermath of 9/11, which occurred just a month earlier.
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The phenomenal success of MAMMA MIA, which recently closed nearing its 14th year on Broadway, sent producers scrambling for popular song catalogues to whip into shows. But with word of mouth greatly accelerated by the Internet and the popularity of Broadway chat boards, there was no place to hide when previews would be publicly reviewed by audience members. GOOD VIBRATIONS (2005), which used The Beach Boys' hits in a nostalgic 1960s seaside romance, certainly had its fans, especially when the talented company strutted their stuff, but the show couldn't shake off the bad preview buzz.
When JERSEY BOYS arrived on Broadway in November of 2005, there had not been a successful jukebox musical that attempted to tell a full dramatic story of musical artists, utilizing their own hits. But director Des McAnuff's knack for creating cinematic visuals that give broad meaning to intimate stories, and a book that presented the songs in both realistic situations and as a background for the excitement being generated by The Four Season's rise to the top, made JERSEY BOYS Broadway's first jukebox musical where the importance of the story equaled the importance of the songs.
On the surface, ROCK OF AGES, which transferred from Off-Broadway to on in 2009 may not seem like it was influenced by JERSEY BOYS (and perhaps it wasn't) but the aggressively loud and hard rocking musical featuring a goofy plot with songs made famous by 1980s hair bands was a clear mockery of the jukebox musical genre, with song cues acting as punch lines and a campy narrator, played by Mitchell Jarvis, continually commenting on the ridiculousness of the whole venture.
More indicative of the influence of JERSEY BOYS would be the drop in the number of jukebox musicals satisfied with just being just fun, nostalgic entertainments and the emergence of more bio-musicals that attempt to seriously tell an important behind the scenes story. The fizzy girl group songs of The Shirelles were used in 2011's BABY, IT'S YOU!, telling a story of sexism and racism centered around the group's manager, Florence Greenberg.
Iconic record producer Berry Gordy wrote his own book for MOTOWN (2013), and while his dialogue may have been a bit clunky, the story of his discovery of legendary talents like Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye was so stuffed full of hit songs that audiences experienced the remarkable evolution of soul and R&B music through its chronological presentation.
But the influence of JERSEY BOYS can be felt most strongly in BEAUTIFUL, where the intimate story of songwriter Carole King is set against the enormous backdrop of the competitive world of 1960s pop music. The audience not only hears familiar songs, but learns the stories behind them, sees them being created and then given to the world.
Every art form needs to evolve and mature. And while the earliest of jukebox musicals certainly entertained audiences, JERSEY BOYS and musicals that followed it, found artistically satisfying ways to help us hear new songs in exciting new ways.
Tony, Olivier and Grammy Award-winning Best Musical Jersey Boys is the 12th longest-running show in Broadway history. Jersey Boys opened on Broadway to critical acclaim on November 6, 2005 at the August Wilson Theatre. The show has been seen by over 23 million people worldwide (as of August, 2015) and is currently playing in New York, Las Vegas, London, in cities across NORTH AMERICA on national tour and across the UK on national tour.
The Broadway company stars Richard H. Blake (Tommy Devito), Matt Bogart (Nick Massi), Joseph Leo Bwarie(Frankie Valli) and Quinn VanAntwerp (Bob Gaudio) with Peter Gregus and Mark Lotito, and Candi Boyd, Jared Bradshaw, Cara Cooper, John Edwards, Frankie J. Galasso, Leo Huppert,Rory Max Kaplan, Katie O'Toole, Joe Payne, Mauricio Pérez, John Rochette, Jessica Rush, Dominic Scaglione Jr., Nathan Scherich, Sara Schmidt
JERSEY BOYS is written by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crewe, and is directed by two-time Tony Award-winner Des McAnuff and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo.
Jersey Boys is the behind-the-music story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. They were just four guys from Jersey, until they sang their very first note. They had a sound nobody had ever heard... and the radio just couldn't get enough of. But while their harmonies were perfect on stage, off stage it was a very different story -- a story that has made them an international sensation all over again. The show features all their hits including "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Oh What A Night," "Walk Like A Man," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and "Working My Way Back To You."
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