Happy 50th: The Four Seasons, THE GENUINE IMITATION LIFE GAZETTE

50 years ago this month, The Four Seasons released a psychedelic pop album – yes, really – which, although it was arguably way outside their usual musical comfort zone, has nonetheless been regularly cited by critics as being an underrated masterpiece hiding within the group’s back catalog.

Produced by Bob Gaudio, as was quite often the case for The Four Seasons’ albums, THE GENUINE IMITATION LIFE GAZETTE was predominantly co-written by Gaudio with Jake Holmes, a songwriter whose earlier career had included membership in the comedy team Jim, Jake & Joan alongside Jim Connell and Joan Rivers. (Yes, that Joan Rivers.) While the music on the album might’ve been psychedelic, the lyrics for the album were the most overtly political the group had ever gotten, although the topics were tackled in a satirical manner.

The contents of the album were often overshadowed by its packaging, which looked like a newspaper and contained a newspaper-esque insert which offered eight pages of underground comic strips by Skip Williamson and Jay Lynch, artists who between them would eventually contribute to MAD, Cracked, National Lampoon, and various other humor and counterculture publications. John Lennon reportedly told Gaudio that he loved the album, and – as was observed by the website Dangerous Minds – it’s probably no coincidence that Lennon and Yoko Ono’s album SOMETIME IN NEW YORK CITY also used a newspaper motif for its design.

Speaking of Dangerous Minds, their piece on GILG featured a quote from Gaudio wherein he offered his opinion on the less-than-platinum reception for the album:

“One of the disappointments of our career for me on a creative level was the GENUINE IMITATION LIFE GAZETTE album. It was just something that I had to do at that time. It got wonderful reviews, but obviously it was not an acceptable piece from us. Everybody was expecting Top 40.”

In fact, of the three songs released as singles from the album, only two charted – “Idaho” and “Something’s on Her Mind” – and both only barely crawled onto the Hot 100, hitting #95 and #98, respectively. But don’t let that stop you from revisiting THE GENUINE IMITATION LIFE GAZETTE. It may not sound like any other Four Seasons album, but that doesn’t mean it’s not great.