The Four Seasons’ song December 1963 (Oh, What A Night) holds great memories for me. I’ve written about it in my forthcoming non-awaited memoir which will hopefully be available in all good charity shops just in time for Christmas. The song is about – and how can I avoid this blog sinking into crudity? – a man losing his virginity, although the lyrics more imply the cherry-losing aspect than directly say it. As a young man during the year of our Lord 1976 let’s just say I can relate to parts of the song and not all of it because, a mere 50 years on, I now realise that there’s more than a suggestion that it’s actually about premature ejaculation.
You cannot read the song lyrics without coming (sorry) to the same conclusion. One of the narrators, Don Ciccone, helpfully describes his feelings with references to the “rush” he felt from the “rolling bolt of thunder” before another narrator, the great Frankie Valli concludes “it ended much too soon.” Now, it’s possible that he was simply wishing that the experience could have lasted forever. I prefer to think, and this probably says a lot about my crude seaside postcard sense of humour, that actually things unintentionally got out of hand … no, wait … out of control.
I was in Weston Super Mare in early 1976 and let’s just say that December 1963 (Oh, What A Night) was on in every pub jukebox we visited. I was in love, you see, and it was our song. Suffice to say that beyond the song title, I did not even consider the actual meaning of the song, nor the premature you know what aspect. I probably wouldn’t have known what it meant, anyway. And I must say, for the record, that such a thing has never happened to me, oh no.
Most of us rarely or never talk about ‘intimate’ matters and I do not intend to start now, but I have, just once or twice, explained to close friends the significance of this song to my life. What now makes me cringe is the possibility that they knew exactly what Frankie Valli meant in his section of the song and they think that this is why I remember it so well.
Still, it’s bloody great song, premature ejaculation or not. I just can’t listen to it in the same way now.
