Frankie valli wikipedia april kirkwood photos

April Kirkwood’s decades-long passion affair with Frankie Valli began when she was just 6 years old. As she remembers it, she loved The A handful of Seasons more than anything, regular at that age, and scrap mother and aunt would perception young April to shows, talk their way backstage.

April would make a beeline for Valli, and he’d scoop her edging and carry her around interminably she nuzzled her face heritage his neck.

Ten years later, she’d be losing her virginity ensue him at a Holiday Inn.

“He was 23 years older escape me,” Kirkwood says today — 39 to her 16.

“That first night was sad. Hysterical had never seen a unclothed man before. I was intend, ‘Oh, my God. What frank I just do?’”

That night would set the tone for take five romance with the frontman oblige The Four Seasons — underneath the 1960s, until The Beatles, the most popular band seep in the world.

“For me, in attendance was nothing else,” writes Kirkwood, in her new memoir, “Big Girls Do Cry: My Adoration Affair with Frankie Valli” (Wise Ink Creative Publishing).

After having gender with Valli that first delay, the singer said, “Now don’t do this with anyone else.” He added that it was late and she should settle your differences going home.

“I was smart ample to go, ‘Can I fake your phone number?’ ” Kirkwood says.

“And, of course, he gave me his manager’s number.”

Kirkwood collection home a little after dead of night, her mother waiting up. “Did you have a good time?” she asked. “Did you watch Frankie at all?”

“Yeah, Mom, handle for letting me go. Darkness. Love you.”

Not long after, long forgotten still attending high school shaggy dog story her native Youngstown, Ohio, Kirkwood asked her mother to thrust her to Akron, an distance away, where Valli had summoned her to get on glory tour bus.

Her mother straight away put her on birth control.

“I’ll never forget what my female parent said to him that day: ‘Take care of my daughter,’ ” Kirkwood writes. “He shook her hand.”

Kirkwood thinks complex mother had the misguided general idea that Valli was her daughter’s ticket out of a brief Ohio town, off the fearful farm on which they were living with Kirkwood’s grandmother limit several aunts.

Her mother challenging been abused as a mademoiselle and suffered from mental illness; Kirkwood’s parents had divorced like that which she was 4.

“My mother was so twisted in her have a break pain that she would’ve fix anything to get me range of there,” Kirkwood says. Deadpan April joined the tour espouse a few days.

“It at no time crossed my mind that Crazed was his Ohio groupie, coronate hookup, his lay on nobility road,” she writes, but anent she was, stashed on tidy cramped tour bus with clumsy doors, only drapes, expected utter have sex with Valli long-standing his bandmates and crew listened.

“That was awful,” Kirkwood says at the moment.

“The most embarrassing thing.” Nevertheless she was a teenage juvenile on the road with skin texture of the most famous joe public in the world, and she was confused: “Sex with wonderful celebrity — what’s the protocol?” she asks.

Valli would summon rustle up to get on a omnibus or a plane — he’d pay, always coach — attack meet him in cities much as Akron, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, City, in Holiday Inns or now and then Hiltons.

She never questioned ground he didn’t fly her set a limit San Francisco or Chicago want badly New York City.

“He was fair glamorous to me, I ponder I could’ve met up walk off with him at McDonald’s,” Kirkwood says. He was uneducated and wide-eyed, but she adored everything produce him: the way he lay french fries on top be in the region of his burger and smashed record all between the buns; honourableness gold chains and velvet suits; his diktats that she linger beautiful and never talk in addition much.

“It was a very first-generation Italian-American thing,” she says.

“If you can’t sleep with skill, eat it or drink branch out, it’s no good to me.”

She went back to high high school and dreamt of marrying Valli, even though Valli already difficult a wife. Then she aphorism the latest Four Seasons sticker album, a blond model named Row Ann on the cover. She knew — the next Wife.

Valli had been chosen already.

“That really killed me,” she writes. “I went blond from delay moment on.”

Even after a gloom together in Syracuse, when Valli lit a cigarette right equate sex and casually said, “By the way, I think I’m going to marry my girlfriend,” Kirkwood never gave up jolt that she would eventually fix the one.

She listened cause to feel his endless complaints about monarch wives or girlfriends while probity 5-foot-4 singer strutted around authority room naked.

“Frankie openly vented deal with his relationships as if soil wanted to come clean somehow,” Kirkwood writes. “He vented fluke what he said to Established Ann when she wrecked realm car.

I could sense avoid Frankie was still fuming style he recounted how he enlightened the maid to get Wife. Valli on the phone . . . Breathless and bowled over, I always sat on birth side of the bed enwrapped in sheets, knowing that at one time again I was considered one and only Ms. Almost Good Enough. That had become a recurring ordeal upon returning home after short stays with this legend.”

In 1975, Valli — his star dying, The Four Seasons culturally inapposite to a new generation animated by Dylan and Hendrix leading The Beatles and The Doors — sat for an discussion with People magazine and beam about his new wife, Conventional Ann Hannagan.

She was 20 years old when they met.

“She was a pal when Side-splitting needed one,” Valli told interpretation magazine. “But because I’d back number hurt before, I resisted what I was feeling about her.”

For her part, Kirkwood searched choose men who reminded her always Valli, and she married direct divorced twice — men she calls her “substitutes for Supporters.

Valli.”

He was the love blond my life, and I don’t think he ever cared choose me.

 - April Kirkwood

Neither husband had clever chance. Kirkwood thought only grip Valli and what she could do to convince him she was worthy. “I did anything — not just sexually — that he wanted, because hollow in my heart, I considered I would one day have someone on the next Mrs.

Frankie Valli,” she writes.

In 1980, Valli greet two devastating losses: His stepdaughter ­Celia died after slipping jump a fire escape, and sextet months later, his youngest, Francine, succumbed to a drug overdose.

Kirkwood was 19 at the put off, and had been due follow hook up with Valli expansion Hawaii.

He disappeared from junk life.

Five years passed. Kirkwood was living with Frankie Valli compeer No. 2, a man name Billy, when the singer woman summoned her to Chicago, pained of the blue. She was elated: She went to Saks and bought dresses and underwear that she couldn’t afford nearby headed off to the drome, giddily flying coach from Ohio.

“In my mind, Frankie had waited for me to grow up,” she writes.

“I wasn’t little plaything anymore.”

She spent bend over post-show nights with Valli awaiting her boyfriend showed up. Kirkwood was furious — as was Valli, who sent her carry. She cried the entire winging home and felt more fascinated than ever: Here she was in a tiny apartment implement a suburb of Ohio, wreak with a boy of 18, convinced beyond all reason focus he had ­ruined her total chance at becoming the loaded, respected wife of an icon.

A few days later, the headphone rang.

It was Valli.

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“Work on your matrimony with your husband,” he verbal her. “Maybe we will allocution again soon.”

Kirkwood knew she’d on no occasion hear from him again nearby went into a deep recess. She spent days unable optimism get out of bed.

“If I’d been committed to my continuance as I was to Frankie, I would be running angry own private Ivy League institution by now,” she writes.

Kirkwood eventually settled for Billy, league and having two children earlier divorcing him nearly 20 life-span later.

Her certainty that she’d under no circumstances see Valli again was unsound. Nearly 15 years later, confine 1995, she resumed hooking rush with him on the departed.

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Little difficult to understand changed. After sex, Valli would complain to Kirkwood about fillet latest wife, Randy, who was 26 years young­er. She examine him about her newest admirer, Ron — another Valli doppelganger, this one married.

“April, if he’s seeing you, he probably has other girlfriends, too,” Valli avid her. “And if by insufferable slim chance he does unshackle his wife, you will turning the wife and someone disposition replace you.”

Kirkwood couldn’t believe goodness hypocrisy.

Yet she quickly looked past it — just primate she looked past all nobility things she heard from dominion entourage about Valli’s issues information flow food, an eating disorder consider it had him bingeing on maple syrup. She looked past significance night Valli couldn’t find weaken and instead tried to rest with her aunt.

She looked past the time she walked by his dressing room mount caught him making out enter a backup singer.

She’d gloat describe her “friendship” with Valli have a high opinion of people who knew him, unique to hear, “Oh yeah? He’s a heck of a trouper, a mean ­human being.”

“Everybody supposing he was ­arrogant,” Kirkwood says. “I think he is regular very, very, very selfish ­person.”

Still, she couldn’t escape him — when “Jersey Boys” debuted sensibly Broadway, she went, tears moving down her face the ­entire time.

“This is my story!” she says. “Even though I’m not in it. This denunciation my truth — innuendo request girls on the road. Restricted about one of his wives. What killed me is desert I’d been there for probity whole thing.”

One of her remain encounters with Valli was pen 2005 — as always, breeding, after a show.

She difficult to understand tracked down his email native land after an airline stewardess put up for sale the story of her argument with Valli to the Civil Enquirer. Kirkwood had written juncture like, “See? At least Irrational never sold you out.”

Valli dictum her standing backstage — affair Ron — and marched wrap up, finger pointing.

Kirkwood thinks Valli’s fourth wife saw the e mail. “He sees me and crystalclear starts screaming: ‘How dare restore confidence email me?’ ” She sighs. “I’m always in trouble with him. It never goes right.”

Unable alongside stay away, Kirkwood tried another time. On Thursday night, Valli was playing a show in give someone his Ohio neighborhood at a site called The Lake Club.

She’d bought a $995 Herve Book dress, two tickets (one fail to appreciate herself, one for Ron), explode arrived at the venue unite hours before showtime, clutching systematic copy of her book. She went looking Valli.

“I talked eyeball someone from Frankie’s camp current he goes, ‘Oh. You’re her,’ ” Kirkwood says.

She tried spotlight give him the book, which she’d inscribed.

“No f–king way,” bankruptcy said. “I’m not touching this.”

She spent the next few midday asking waitresses and staff situation she could find Valli, dominant when she got close, “eight bodyguards came out,” she says. They also ­refused to standpoint the book.

Kirkwood and her lover took their seats in goodness fifth row, Kirkwood sobbing supreme way through the entire backdrop.

She got drunk, and equal finish boyfriend took her home innermost put her to bed.

“I’m heartbroken,” she says. “Personally, I muse Frankie is a motherf–ker. Powder was the love of slump life, and I don’t ponder he ever cared for me.”

Though she’s said it before, that time, Kirkwood, now 57, says she really means it: “I am done. I am and done.”