Bobby Rydell:
Teen Idol on the Rocks
A Tale of Second Chances
With Allan Slutsky
266 pages
Doctor Licks Publishing
Bobby Rydell’s autobiography is filled with success, glamour and rock and roll history. But there is darker side to this one-time squeaky-clean teen idol of so long ago.
It’s a story of a man who had a turbulent and fractured relationship with his mother. It’s also about a battle with booze. And finally, it’s the inspiring and heart-wrenching tale of an aging man who lost his wife and a few years later got a second chance at life thanks to a double-organ transplant.
Through it all, Bobby Rydell, 74, survives. He performs Tuesday and Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center – and autographed copies of his book will be available.
For his fans, the book is a story about hope, redemption and mortality. And more than that, it’s about a guy who found new way to live after a remarkable gift of life.
“Bobby is eternally grateful to be alive,” Allan Slutsky, who co-wrote Rydell’s new book, said in a recent phone interview.
“But Bobby still has a daily fight with his demons, and it’s a struggle” added Slutsky, a musician/author who has performed and recorded with Rydell. “A lot of things that happened to him in his life have left scars.”
The book goes into deep, personal detail. It details his rise to teen idol stardom in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, — with such hits as “Wild One,” “Swinging School,” “We Got Love” “Forget Him” and “Volare” — to his personal descent in later years.
Rydell poured out intimate details of his personal journey and held nothing back, Slutsky said. “If anything, I held some stuff back,” he said.
The darkest and most challenging times came during the late ‘90s and early in 2000 when his wife, Camille, was in the final stages of cancer.
“I began drinking heavily, particularly after my shows,” Rydell writes. “I was enjoying my new, alcohol-fueled lifestyle.”
Rydell was trying to cope with what was happening. “I had no answers for the way I was living my life,” he writes. His father died early in 2000, and Camille was battling cancer.
“Outwardly, I was loving and supportive to my wife…but I was still doing things that hurt her deeply,” he writes. “She knew I was still drinking…”
In 2003, Camille died. And Rydell’s career, “descended into a haze of boozy, distracted performances,” he writes.
A turnaround started when he met Linda Hoffman. They were married in 2009. Even that caused problems because Rydell’s two grown children – Robert Jr. and Jennifer – were upset he remarried, Rydell writes. Eventually, nearly three years later, they reconciled.
Rydell was still drinking, hiding it from his new wife. Finally, in 2012, with help from Linda and his friends, Rydell quit drinking.
But it was too late for his liver. Rydell needed a transplant for his liver and kidneys. He writes he was told in the summer of 2012, he had only a week or two to live. In July of that year, he got a call that a transplant was available.
“The first person I called before leaving for the hospital was Frankie Avalon,” Rydell writes. “He cried and then immediately headed to church to pray for me.”
On July 9, he received a double-organ transplant. The organs were donated by a 21-year old woman named Julia, who was killed when hit by a car.
“When I first met her family, there were a lot of tears and hugging,” Rydell writes. “We all mourned her loss… My deepest feelings about Julia took a while to sort out.” He now calls her, “my special angel.”
Rydell’s story starts in South Philadelphia where Robert was born to Jennie and Adrio Ridarelli. His father was a factory worker and his mom stayed at home with the kids.
“My father was the most influential figure in my life,” Rydell writes. It was his father who gave Bobby the stage name Rydell. While dad encouraged and nurtured Bobby’s blossoming musical career as a drummer and singer, mom was another story.
“My mother? She just didn’t get it. She was completely unsupportive of both of us,” Rydell writes. He adds she was “bipolar” and “manic depressive.”
Philadelphia was a cradle of singing talent and the center of the teen music universe with Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.”
Bobby, along with Philly neighbors such as Fabian, Frankie Avalon, James Darren and Chubby Checker would all find their way to rock stardom.
In 1959, Bobby was 16 and recorded a song, “Kissin’ Time.” Dick Clark gave the song “his blessing” and Bobby Rydell, 17, was an instant teen idol and regular performer on Bandstand.
At 19, he headlined the famed Copa in New York City. Then came TV shows and a big role with Ann Margret in “Bye Bye Birdie.” His last big single, “Forget Him,” came out in 1963, then the Beatles came along a year later and the hits stopped.
As the book details, Rydell always finds a way to survive professional and personal setbacks. It’s the essence of the Bobby Rydell story and it hasn’t changed.
“He has his problems, but Bobby’s a tough kid from South Philly,” Allan Slutsky said. Then he gave the best three-word description of Bobby Rydell.
“He’s a fighter.”
