A Universe of Stories: Meet Bobby Rydell!

Join Bobby Rydell at the Woodbridge Main Library on Tuesday, June 18 at 7 PM as he signs copies of his autobiography, TEEN IDOL ON THE ROCKS. Copies will be available at the presentation, $20 each – 2 for $35. Book signing to follow presentation.

Registration is required for this free special event. Please register here, call 732-634-4450 or visit any WPL location.

Co-written with award-winning musician-author-filmmaker Allan Slutsky (Standing in the Shadows of Motown), TEEN IDOL ON THE ROCKS not only tells the story of Bobby Rydell, but that of American pop culture through the past six decades. In its pages, Bobby writes of his encounters with such giants of 20th century show business as Frank Sinatra, Ann-Margret, The Beatles, Red Skelton, Jack Benny and Dick Clark, whose Philly-based American Bandstand helped make Rydell the world's biggest teen idol in the years between Elvis Presley's army induction and the advent of Beatlemania. A time when Frank Sinatra called Bobby his "favorite" pop singer.

But TEEN IDOL ON THE ROCKS also is a very personal - and often-painful - story. Bobby delves into the darker and more dramatic aspects of his life, including the death of his beloved first wife, Camille, his decades of alcohol abuse, and the last-ditch transplant surgery that saved his life.

Among other topics covered in the book:

The circumstances of how Bobby lost his virginity in a Hollywood hotel suite at the age of 17.

How a Philadelphia mob boss helped him take a movie acting job.

His becoming, at age 19, the youngest-ever headliner at New York's legendary Copacabana nightclub.

How The Beatles paid homage to Bobby in one of their biggest hits - and how the Fab Four's emergence as a global phenomenon that all but killed his career.

Humorous, tragic, fascinating, inspiring and always entertaining, TEEN IDOL ON THE ROCKS stands as an important look at a life filled with music, stardom, darkness and pain.