Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend

three different trips into the top ten over a three and a half month period. It was a winter soundtrack for the nation and now things were really changing in our lives.
    As the recording started to fade, Jay Silverman, our promotion man in Detroit told me he had never seen anything like it, except for The Beatles. And since I was about to turn twenty-one, Bob Crewe finally gave me a solo contract. As far as I know, no new contracts were offered to the remaining Wheels. In exchange for the signing,I asked for and received a fifteen thousand dollar advance, which I used as a down payment on a home for Susan, Dawn and myself in Southfield, Michigan. I had accomplished something I had never imagined. I had lifted myself up to middle-class.
    But things weren’t quite right because, other than the signing advance, neither the Wheels nor myself ever received any royalties or money, and in fact, never received an accounting the entire length of our relationship with Mr. Crewe. Every penny I had in my pocket was my share of what we earned on the road, and that was only 50 percent of what was being paid. I laugh about it now because it is so unfunny, but I remember Frank Barcelona meeting with me one day and advising me to save my money. Well, at the time, who cared?I already had more than I was used to having and life was wonderful. Another reason to resent my poor working-class roots. Besides, Bob Crewe and Alan Stroh both loved me. They wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.

     
    Susan and I loved our home, but now I was asked to devote more time and energy in New York City.I had just been named Artist of the Year by
Cashbox
magazine, one of three magazines that competed for the top spot as the recording industry’s authority on record sales, chart position, and artists on the American landscape. There were countless interviews and photograph sessions, and even more recording with Bob Crewe. On top of all of that, before the New Year was over, what was left of the Detroit Wheels dissolved completely.
    Jimmy and I had a difference in opinion about the direction of the group from the beginning. First of all, the very day we decided to go professional back in Detroit, the boys wanted to have a singular name for our group and I, remembering what my mother had told me about having your own name so you don’t become part of a faceless, ever-changing cast, hung tough to Billy Lee, and they finally settled for the Rivieras.
    Even though the original band was skilled at playing R&B they wanted to hang around the rock ‘n’ roll flagpole while I set my goals on competing with my R&B heroes and doing the music I loved. Yes, I was aware that our hits had come from the group,as opposed to my solo work, but I was also aware that the group was no longer what we had brought to New York. I wanted to compromise and add an R&B horn section, while Jimmy wanted to keep it “pure.”
    That was not enough reason to break up the group, however, it fit in nicely with Bob Crewe’s plans to create a star who could do a slick, safe show in Las Vegas for six or seven months at a time. Besides, he had much bigger plans for me and those plans didn’t involve nurturing our remaining group into a self-sustaining model, as most of our British competition was doing. There was a divide in the remaining group that Bob Crewe exploited, but there was also a divide and a building resentment on my part about how my career was going. It manifested itself in the area of songwriting.
    My very first recording was a song I wrote and at this point in my stardom with Bob Crewe I had to fight to get a B side for a love song to my daughter, Dawn. He said, “First of all, we can’t call it Dawn because The Four Seasons already had a hit with a song called ‘Dawn.’”
    Not sure where I stood, we compromised and called the song “Joy.”

Chapter 12
     
    M R . C REWE SEEMED TO BE ROLLING in cash, and he came to purchase what he called the “triplex” It was the top three floors of a building on Fifth Avenue and 67 th ––about as high rent as you could get. He said he had purchased it from Tony Bennett for around two and a half million dollars. Every floor had its own balcony that overlooked Fifth Avenue and Central Park East. The interior decorating had to have cost an additional million dollars. It had its own private elevator to the first floor and from that point on I was given a bedroom and access to all areas when I was in New York. My bed had a