Touring with Grease isn't the only thing that keeps Frankie Avalon a '50s kind of guy. "You have to stick with your time," says the man who helped define that generation.
By MARTY CLEAR
Published September 18, 2003
[Photos: Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center]
New talent fills the roles that gave many careers a boost.
Grease visits Tampa with new, young talent.
Frankie Avalon
If Dick Clark didn't have a lock on the title, Frankie Avalon might be the one people call "The World's Oldest Teenager."
Avalon, who turns 64 today, still looks and sounds almost as youthful as he did in the early '60s, when his series of teen-oriented beach movies began.
By that time, Avalon was an established star, past the peak of his career as a singer of smooth, insipid pop ballads. Though he still takes to the stage regularly, he's fixed in the public mind as the epitome of the clean-cut '50s teen idol.
And that's fine with him.
"You have to stick with your time," he said in a phone interview from his Los Angeles home. "There's an audience that relates to my generation. Maybe they don't like or can't relate to today's music, to hip-hop or whatever. That's who I perform for, and the music of the '50s still makes them smile."
So, unlike some of his contemporaries, Avalon has never attempted to change with the times. You'll never see a Frankie Avalon heavy metal album.
For the past 25 years, some of Avalon's most visible work has been in various incarnations of Grease, the amazingly popular musical that helped define later generations' impressions of the 1950s.
Avalon will reprise his role as the Teen Angel (which he played in the 1978 film version) whenGrease comes to the Tampa Bay Performing Arts center this weekend.
Even though Grease is set in the 1950s, Avalon said he doesn't consider it a '50s show.
"Grease is different," he said. "I look out at the audience now, and I see three generations. There are people from the '50s, there are people who remember the movie that came out 25 years ago, and now there are those people's children. It's an absolute phenomenon."
Avalon's association with Grease started with the movie, in which his character sang one of the flick's most memorable numbers, Beauty School Dropout. He has played the role on several Grease tours.
"I'm not out on the road with the tour the whole time," he said. "I do it about 12 to 14 times a year. It keeps it fresh."
The movie brought Avalon into the Grease family, but the stage show was well-established by that time.
The tale of romance and rivalry at Rydell High originally was a five-hour amateur production at a small Chicago theater in 1971. The next year, the now-familiar two-hour version was an off-Broadway hit with Barry Bostwick and Adrienne Barbeau. It moved to Broadway in 1972 and became one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history. A successful London production starring Richard Gere opened in 1973.
The movie version, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, spawned several hit singles, including Grease and You're the One That I Want. (Neither song was in the original stage musical, but both have been added.)
Previous road shows that have passed through Tampa have had several big stars. This time around, Avalon is the only familiar name.
"It's all new, young talent, but it's a great cast, very energetic," he said.
After the show, Avalon fans can stick around for a 20-minute concert. He'll perform most of his biggest hits, probably including Venus and Bobby Sox to Stockings.
He probably won't perform his first million-seller, Dede Dinah, which is not among his favorites.
Avalon had recorded a few singles with limited success before a producer insisted he record Dede Dinah. It was a bit of teen, or even preteen fluff, a bubble-gum song before that term was coined.
In protest, Avalon held his nose as he sang. The resulting nasal sound helped make the song a hit.
"The producers back then were always looking for anything that made a song sound different," he said. "None of my earlier records had done anything, and that one was a million-seller."
PREVIEW: Grease is Friday through Sunday at Morsani Hall at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N MacInnes Place, Tampa. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. $19.50-$56.50. 813 229-7827, toll-free 1-800-955-1045 or www.tbpac.org
