← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The Nights on Broadway Edition
01:28:46
How did the Bee Gees survive the fall of disco—the falsettos? The white suits? It was the songs—from ’60s British Invasion, to ’70s R&B, to ’80s country, even ’90s hip-hop.
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- [00:00]
Radio Announcer
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Chris Mullen
Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Four decades ago, in September 1978, Billboard's album chart was awash in movie soundtracks. In fact, there were three in the chart's top 10 at the same time, each celebrating a different decade of pop. More improbably than these three soundtracks riding the top 10 together, all three showcased the members of one group and as artists, songwriters, and even in one case, movie stars. The Bee Gees on the Grease soundtrack, the title song and biggest hit right at the start of the movie as the opening credits roll, it was written by the Bee Gees Barry Gibb and sung by former Four Seasons vocalist Frankie Valli. The number one smash Grease.
- [01:19]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Grease is the word that you heard it's gotta prove it's got a mean.
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Chris Mullen
The Bee Gees were also in front of the camera that summer as members of the titular imaginary cinematic pop group sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And finally, of course, the Bee Gees were all over Saturday night features accounting for more than a half dozen tracks and four new number one songs, all of which they either wrote or recorded. If you are the sort of music fan who thinks about the Bee Gees at all, this imperial moment in the late 70s is probably what you think of first. It's certainly the period of the Gibbs career that popular culture has most focused upon, whether it's to celebrate the Bee Gees or to lampoon them. Just Last year in 2017, the Grammy Awards went the celebratory route, devoting an entire televised Bee Gees tribute exclusively to the group's disco peak. Similarly, on the goofy side, Jimmy Fallon's long recurring affectionate Saturday Night Live sketch the Barry Gibb Talk show finds him and pal Justin Timberlake dressed in white polyester and crazy gold medallions, singing and hilariously speaking, entirely in BG disco falsetto.
- [03:18]
Robert Stigwood
I'm your brother Rob.
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Chris Mullen
Look at me Rob.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Look at your brother face.
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Chris Mullen
No I don't wanna. As fun as all this disco nostalgia is, it overemphasizes one rather brief phase in the Bee Gees decades long career. It would be like summarizing Elton John's career with only the music of Captain Fantastic or Prince's career with only Purple Rain as hitmakers. The Bee Gees date back to the British invasion of the 1960s when they recorded an entirely different set of hits, a few of which were considered 60s.
- [04:07]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Pop classics and the lights all went down in Massachusetts.
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Chris Mullen
They also lasted into the 80s, even when it was much harder for them to score hits. And their songs have endured decades past their peak and spanned genres from rb, Tell Me.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Oh sun.
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Chris Mullen
To country music. To eventually even hip hop. So to fully appreciate the story of the Bee Gees, you have to hold several contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time. Yes, the Gibbs were trend hoppers adapters to what they thought the public wanted. And yes, even decades after disco's rehabilitation, it's not unfair to admit that those piercing chipmunk like harmonies of theirs were catchy, but also, well, funny.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Oh my darling, my darling, how I love so hard.
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Chris Mullen
On the other hand, the Bee Gees true legacy is more than white polyester or feathered hair and beards, or even those singular falsettos. Their stellar collection of songs.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
You don't know what it's like, baby. You don't know what it's like.
- [06:10]
Chris Mullen
Today we will consider the rise, fall and rise and fall again of the Bee Gees. How they rode trends into the stratosphere and then into the wilderness. How they rewrote pop's textbook both in our culture and on the charts. Speaking of which, the Bee Gees chart feats at their peak were stunning. Since the 60s, the be gees had idolized the Beatles for a time. In 1978 a on the charts, they became them. And that is where your hit parade marches today. The week ending March 18, 1978, when Gibb Compositions held down four out of the top five songs on the Hot 100. At number one, the song that gave John Travolta's movie its title, the Bee Gees Night Fever. At number two, the Bee Gees again with the iconic former number one, Stayin Alive. At number three, a Bee Gees song in all but name, Samantha Sang's virtual duet with songwriter Barry Gibb, Emotion.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Me over tied up in sorrow, lost in my soul.
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Chris Mullen
And at number five, the bg's brother, andy gibb, with his former number one smash, the barry penned love is thicker than water. In a recent Hit Parade episode, I called Barry Gibb a bearded disco Jesus. And indeed, as a child of the 70s, I thought he and his brothers sprang fully formed from what you might call a night on Disco Mountain. In this, I was no better than most American pop listeners. I had no idea the Gibbs had a hit making history that dated to the mid-60s. Or that when they scored their first ever hit single. It not only didn't sound like disco, it wasn't even really British. It was a hit that could only have come from down under.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
The Spyx and the Spicks on the girls on my man.
- [08:55]
Chris Mullen
That'S spicks and specs or trips or should I say speaks and spics. The Bee Gees first major hit single, which reached the top five in Australia in 1966. This warrants a quick sidebar about these globally beloved, hard to pin down brothers where exactly are the Bee Gees from? Are they British? Are they Australian? The three eldest Gibb brothers were born on the Isle of Man, a British Crown dependency adjacent to the United Kingdom. So the Gibbs, Barry, born in 1946, and fraternal twins Robin and Morris, born in 1949, are by nationality British. Even little brother Andy Gibb, who arrived in 1958 nearly a decade after the twins, is British, born when the Gibb family spent a couple of years in the city of Manchester. But 1958 is also when the Gibbs moved to the Australian seaside town of Redcliffe in Queensland, near Brisbane. They lived there from 1958 to 1966 and formed their vocal group there, Barry as the leader and main songwriter, Robin and Morris providing high and low harmonies respectively. Their inspiration was an American sibling band, the harmonizing Everly Brothers. But the musical entity known as the Bee Gees was founded in Australia, and the Aussie music community has long claimed ownership of the brothers Gib, which, by the way, is another odd bit of etymology. BG happened to be the initials of the two men who discovered the brothers singing for change at a local Red Cliff Speedway in 1960, DJ Bill Gates and promoter Bill Good. BG also happened to be the initials of eldest brother and de facto group leader Barry Gibb. So the former rattlesnake became the Bee Gees, as chronicled by Australian music journalist and Bee Gees biographer Jeff Apter. The Gibbs were frustrated by their slow adoption, but they were patient and determined, appearing regularly on Australian telly and writing and recording scores of songs over a half decade. The Gibbs showed their versatility, or a cynic might say their lack of a sound to call their own. But this rootlessness, a band of brothers who were from several places at once, was their strength. They would try anything a range of pop modes from country Pop Jamboree with lyrics about the American Civil War on the Battle of the Blue and the.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Gray Coaches have passed away.
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Chris Mullen
To the sound of the British Invasion on I Was a lover, a leader.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Of men, I was a lover, a Leader of men. All of the women I knew were my friends. I was so happy.
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Chris Mullen
Accusations of similarity to the Beatles dog the Bee Gees for much of their first decade. At one point in 1966, Australian radio DJs refused to play their new single, Monday's Reign, on the premise that it sounded too derivative of Rubber Soul era Beatles. Which is ironic, because the song that finally made them chart toppers in Australia was, in a way, even more Beatles derived. The aforementioned Spicks and Specs was based around a piano hook Morris Gibb picked out that sounded very much like revolver era Paul McCartney.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Where is the sun that shines?
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Chris Mullen
But after older brother Barry completed Spicks and Specs, it took on its own character. The Bee Gees had finally found their 60s sound British invasion fortified by jaunty brotherly harmonies. When Spicks and Specs finally reach number four on Australia's national go set chart in November 1966, the Bee Gees and their parents and siblings already had tickets for an ocean liner back to England. They were grateful to finally have an Australian hit, but they were convinced that after years of slogging through the Aussie music biz, swinging London would do more for their career. Also, they had caught the attention of of an actual native Australian himself relocated to England, who wanted to make them stars.
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Robert Stigwood
When I signed the Bee Gees, it didn't take a genius to know that one had an incredible new, exciting talent.
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Chris Mullen
Robert Stigwood was a boundlessly energetic, fiercely independent and amazingly successful Australian entertainment impresario. After emigrating to London in the 1950s from his hometown of Adelaide, South Australia, Stigwood eventually landed a job with NEMS Enterprises. Nems, which stood for North End Music Stores, was the music company founded by Beatles manager Brian Epstein. When in late 1966, the Bee Gees father, Hugh Gibb, sent NEMS a copy of the new single Spics and Specs, it was Stigwood who intercepted it. Stigwood was already the manager of the rock supergroup Cream, led by godlike guitarist Eric Clapton.
- [15:28]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
She's a witch of trouble in electric blue in her own mind she's in.
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Chris Mullen
Love with you with you by the time the Gibbs boat landed in London in early 1960, Stigwood was booking their audition. By February, Stigwood signed the Bee Gees to a Transatlantic recording contract. Three months after that, the Bee Gees scored their first hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones? Do you know what it's like on the outside?
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Chris Mullen
Like the battle of the blue and The Gray the song New York Mining Disaster 1941, parentheses have you seen my wife? Mr. Jones was a lyrical flight of fancy for co writers Barry and Robin Gibb. They hadn't set foot foot in New York and there was no mining disaster there in 1941. Although the bee Gees had previously issued a pair of albums in Australia, Stigwood treated them as a brand new group and their international debut was titled Bee Gees First. The tactic worked amazingly. The album generated three immediate hits and at a time when all things British ruled the American charts, all three were top 20 singles on Billboard's Hot 100. New York Mining Disaster reached number 14 and the similarly minor key Holiday reached number 16.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
We Are a holiday every day Such a holiday.
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Chris Mullen
But the best remembered song from the album to this this day. Considered by many critics the best song the Bee Gees ever wrote came from their attempt not to write like a baroque British pop group, but like American soul men. Inspired by Otis Redding, the Gibbs penned a soulful stately ballad. To Love Somebody became a standard.
- [17:58]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Baby, you don't know what it's like to love somebody.
- [18:06]
Chris Mullen
It would later be. Recorded by more than two dozen artists, many of them American. From Nina Simone to Graham Parsons to Billy Corgan, the Bee Gees were an instant sensation, especially in their home base of England. Outfitted in Carnaby street jackets and slacks, bankrolled by Robert Stigwood, they became the top new British group of 1967. And before the year was out, they had their first British number one. Named after a state in America. Massachusetts, subtitled the Lights Went out in Massachusetts was yet another lyrically fanciful but musically sturdy story song.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
And the lights all went down in Massachusetts again.
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Chris Mullen
The Gibbs imagined a homespun version of a place in America, a Massachusetts where the lights had dimmed because all the hippies had left for San Francisco. While Barry was always their primary songwriter on their early singles, the keening Robin often took the lead vocal. In the summer of 68, Robin led the Bee Gees top 10 breakthrough in the United States, a song about a prisoner writing from death row titled I've gotta get a message to you. And Rob Robin led the follow up hit, the mawkish number six single I Started a Joke, practically a Robin Gibb solo single.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
I started a joke, Bitch started the ho. Well crying.
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Chris Mullen
This tension between Barry as the group's leader and primary songwriter and Robin as its emergency emerging star would eventually boil over into the Bee Gees first crisis. It was spawned by their first ever double LP set, the 1969 concept album Odessa, a Barry song first of May, barely scraped the American top 40, peaking at number 30.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
And Christmas trees are small.
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Robert Stigwood
And you.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Don'T dance the time the day.
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Chris Mullen
Robin Gibb was furious, arguing that an Odessa track of his called Lamplight should have been the single. Barry, who had done the bulk of the work on Odessa while his brothers were off partying, overruled him. It was the last straw. Robin pulled away from the Bee Gees and began recording a solo album less than two years after the group's British breakthrough. Barry and Morris, meanwhile, kept the group name alive and recorded a two person Bee Gees album, Cucumber Castle, with their older sister Leslie contributing harmony vocals. As the Gibbs squabbled and traded insults in the British press. Neither Robin's reign nor Cucumber Castle sold well in either the UK or the US. By December 1969, the group was on a full hiatus as even Barry declared himself done with the Bee Gees. Had this been the end of the story, history would have regarded the Bee Gees as akin to the association or the Zombies, beloved but relatively short lived hit makers of the late 1960s with some classic songs. But that's when the Bee Gees story took its first improbable turn.
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Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
And all season.
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Chris Mullen
You might say. The difference between the Beatles, who also broke up in 1970, and the bees was that the Fab Four, while extremely close, were not actually family. The Gibbs, for all their friction, were stuck with each other. They continued to see each other at family events, including Morris's 1969 wedding to pop star Lulu. In the summer of 1970, partially out of boredom, twins Robin and Morris began recording again quietly for an unnamed project. By late summer, word got back to Barry that a rapprochement was on offer. He joined his brothers in the studio and they allowed Robert Stigwood to issue a statement that the trio were reunited for good. Fortunately for them, they introduced their new album with one of their strongest singles ever. Lonely Days was a hybrid. On the verse, the brothers offered more of the moody Beatlesque orchestral pop that had been their stock in trade. But then the song takes a turn, Shifting tempo into a strutting rave up, complete with hand claps and brass. It has the ornateness of I Started a Joke crossed with the soulfulness of To Love Somebody, Everything the Bee Gees did best in a 3 1/2 minute single. By January 1971, Lonely Days became the Bee Gees highest charting hit in America to date, peaking at number three. But that American success was dwarfed six months later by an even bigger hit, How can you mend a broken heart? The lead single off the 1971 album Trafalgar was the softest, most pillowy hit the Bee Gees had ever recorded. They had done heartbreak songs before, but this was their first real slow jam, and its greatest incarnation was recorded by none other than soul king Al Green, who later placed the song on his early 1972 album, let's Stay Together.
- [25:52]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
A broken heart.
- [25:57]
Chris Mullen
The Bee Gees now had the top song in America. In Billboard's year end chart for 1971, How can youn Mend a Broken Heart placed fifth for the whole year, ranked only behind hits by Three Dog Night, Rod Stewart, Carole King and the Osmonds. Unlike all four of those competing pop superstars, however, the Beachies would have a unique problem as 1971 became 1972. Following up their American mega smash, almost immediately, they ran aground.
- [26:45]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
You run to me.
- [26:49]
Chris Mullen
For nearly three years, the Bee Gees recorded a string of ballads, all broadly in the mode of how can you mend a broken heart? And none of them came close to the top of the charts. From 1972 to 1974, their career was once again in the wilderness, and this time it wasn't due to bickering or a breakup. They had made themselves commercially irrelevant. When Even their late 1973 greatest hits album, awash in ballads, barely scraped The Billboard Top 100, the Bee Gees knew they needed a new direction. That's when Atlantic Records, the distributor for their American label, connected them with the man who would reinvent their career, Arif Mardin, a Turkish American producer who had worked with everyone from Aretha Franklin to Stephen Stills to Bette Midler. It was Martin who, in a New York studio with the brothers Gibb, encouraged them to pick up the tempo, said.
- [27:55]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
I'm your friend or on your phone he loved the up and he said, no, but I'd like to come inside.
- [28:13]
Chris Mullen
Mr. Natural was a noble failure, only reaching number 178 on the album chart in 1974 and spawning no hits. But with hindsight, Mr. Natural was the pivot point of the Bee Gees career. Marden gave them confidence to try new sounds and to explore other parts of their voices. Arif Martin would push even farther on the Bee Gees next album. The Gibbs and Martin decamped to Miami's Criteria Studios, and it's where they recorded their 1975 breakthrough main course.
- [28:55]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Am I one shadowy guy One shadow of the man I used to be?
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Chris Mullen
It's worth pausing a moment here to consider just how radical a shift this album would be not just for the Bee Gees, but for the sound of the male voice in popular music. The word falsetto, the term for vocals pitched above a person's natural vocal range, usually a man's, dates back at least as far as the 16th century in Italy. And the vocal technique itself dates back centuries earlier in the rock era of the 20th century. Falsetto was used practically from rock and roll's birth, especially in doo wop and surf music. By the early 60s, falsetto vocals became a trademark of certain chart topping male bands, including two hall of Fame groups that would cross paths with the Bee Gees later, the Four Seasons. And the Beachboards. Besides these 60s rock and roll acts, the early 70s was a great time for falsetto vocals in R and B music, from the Delphonics to Eddie Kendricks. In later interviews, Barry Gibb specifically cited the Philly soul sound of the Stylistics, whose lead singer was Russell Tompkins Jr. Sang in an especially high falsetto, a key model for Barry's new vocal approach.
- [30:47]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Break up to make up that's all we do first you love me, then you hate me that's okay for food.
- [31:07]
Chris Mullen
As for the Gibb brothers themselves, up to now they had used falsetto plenty, but it was closer to a whisper, or what vocalists would call a head voice. What is remarkable about Main Course, the Bee Gees second album with Arif Mardin, was not only how they found a new register. The sound that would make them pop superstars materialized within the space of of one song that would be the album's very first track, Nights on Broadway. From the Jump. The track is built on a hard funk riff, and ironically, it leads off with one of the huskiest lowest vocals Barry had ever used on a track. The song downshifts in tempo to a dreamy bridge in which both Barry and Robin are harmonizing at the very top of their range.
- [32:25]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Never, ever left my side make it like it was before. Even if it takes a lifetime.
- [32:43]
Chris Mullen
And on the final chorus, Barry ad libs a breakdown in an impossibly high male voice, louder and more aggressive than any Bee Gees falsetto had been previously. Producer Arif Martin literally asked the Gibbs in the studio, can any of you scream in tune? BG's biographer Jeff Apter put it best in his book, the Sad Ballad of the Brothers Gibb. For once, the Gibbs were slightly ahead of the musical curve. The danceable nature of these tracks emerged in a year that was otherwise dominated by big ballads, hard rock and country pop Disco was still, for the moment, a gay club phenomenon. But in 1975 that was changing fast as disco went mainstream. Whether it was the adoption of disco production styles by rock acts such as the Eagles themselves singing in falsetto, Or the danceable new hard funk of David Bowie, Or the emergence atop the hit parade of the Miami grooves of KC and the Sunshine Band, All of these songs were number ones on the Hot 100 in 1975. But getting the making the jump on all of them were the Bee Gees, who led off the release of Main Course with an innovative, irresistible single. Hedging its bets, RSO Records, Robert Stigwood's label, sent this song to radio stations in an unmarked white label. They didn't want DJs prejudging the single based on the Bee Gees commercially poisonous name. What those DJs heard was overpoweringly catchy. It was the song that would finally take the Bee Gees back to number one. Jive Talking was serendipitous in more ways than one. Every day when the Gibbs drove to Criteria Studios Cross crossing the causeway that connected Biscayne Bay to Miami, the wheels of their car made a distinctive chicka chicka rhythm. Barry's wife Linda once told her husband, quote, listen to that noise. It's our drive talking. Barry instantly turned that phrase into a song, building the chicka chicka sound into its opening rhythm and collaborating on the melody and harmony harmonies with Morris and Robin. For the finishing touch, a new studio collaborator brought in by Arif Martin. Welsh keyboardist Blue Weaver played a distinctive synthesizer hook that recalled the synclavier playing of Stevie Wonder. It was the breakthrough disco smash of 1975. Jive talked the Hot 100 in August 1975. Four months later, nights on Broadway followed it into the top 10, peaking at number seven by the start of 1976. The Bee Gees even applied this new R B falsetto sound to a love song, the Roman romantic reverie Fanny Be Tender With My love. A number 12 hit. By Christmas 1975, Main Course was Gold, the first ever BG studio album to be certified by the Recording Industry association of America. More important, it had established the template for for the Bee gees in the second half of the 70s. Unfortunately, they would now have to replicate this sound without the help of Arif Mardin, the house producer of Atlantic Records. At the start of 1976, Robert Stigwood's RSO Records switched distributors from Atlantic to Polygram, and Mardin was no longer permitted to work with the Bee Gees. The Gibbs momentarily panicked until they realized that they were allowed to retain the services of two Marden lieutenants who'd been present for the main course sessions, musical supervisor Alby Galutin and engineer Carl Richardson. Starting with their 1976 album Children of the World, the producers of record on Bee Gees albums would be the three Gibb brothers, Galutin and Richardson. And one thing was certain, they were bringing back the piercing falsetto of Nights on Broadway and applying it to all of their material. You Should Be Dancing, the lead off single of Children of the world Top the Hot 100 in September 1976. As piercing as their falsetto vocal style was on the radio, their new sound proved versatile. It worked on a four on the floor dance record like youe Should Be Dancing and it worked equally well on mid tempo tracks like Love so right, a number three hit in November of 1976. The Bee Gees were progenitors of what became known known as the disco ballad. By the end of 1976 Children of the World became the Bee Gees first platinum album. The Gibbs began branching out into other projects such as releasing a Bee Gees live album at the start of 1977 and bringing a new family member into the hit making fold. Andy Gibb was all of 18 years old when he became began working on his debut album in 1976. While his famous brothers were hopscotching the globe in the 60s and early 70s teenage Andy began rehearsing for pop starter. It was while in Australia in 1976 that a single by Andy, Words and Music became a minor chart hit Down Under. This finally convinced Stigwood to sign the Gibbs little brother. It didn't hurt that Andy was the all around best looking Gibb. Like a cross between Barry and such teen idols as David and Sean Cassidy. When Barry took Andy into criteria in late 76 it stood to reason that the material Barry wrote and produced for his little brother sounded like the Bee Gees. A lot like the Bee Gees. I Just Want to Be your Everything was one of two songs Barry Gibb wrote for Andy Gibbs debut album Flowing Rivers. That pair of songs were the album's first two singles and Andy's first two number one hit. They were Bee Gees songs in teen idol drag. The only other noticeable difference was in the instrumentation. Barry recruited Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh to play on both Everything and its follow up Love Is Thicker than Water.
- [41:33]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
You are.
- [41:51]
Chris Mullen
The launch of Andy as a Bee Gees brand extension was a success. But in that intervening six months another album would arrive that changed the Bee Gees lives permanently. It was an album the Gibbs never planned to record in the first place. Robert Stigwolf had purchased purchased the movie rights to a 1976 New York magazine article titled Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night by Nick Cohn. A British journalist and critic. Cohn had visited the nightclubs of Brooklyn, New York and witnessed something he found amazing. Working class Italian Americans, tough minded and hyper masculine, were dancing fiercely to disco music at the local 2001 Odyssey Dance Club. Around the same time, Stigwood had also signed to a three picture movie deal. An up and coming television actor named John Travolta, currently starring as a high school student, a so called sweathog on the hit ABC TV show welcome Back Kotter. Now the first thing you gotta do is Vinnie Barberino. Look. Okay, your hair for instance, very casual. It should look like it's being blown by unseen winds. Stigwood intended for Cohn's article to be the first of those travolta movies. By 1977, the Bee Gees were working in France on their intended follow up to the Children of the World album. Stigwood approached them wondering if they might have any material for his disco Travolta movie. The Gibbs were skeptical, but they did in fact have some new songs and they played them for Stigwood. This is yet another detail that is often lost in the story of Saturday Night Fever. The movie did not revive the bee gees. By 1977 they were already revived. A hit act with back to back gold and platinum albums and and a string of disco hits including two number ones. Indeed, those two prior chart toppers, you Should Be Dancing and Jive Talkin' would wind up on the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. You Should Be Dancing in particular earned a showcase spot in the film when John Travolta does a now immortal solo dance to the song. Oh, forget this.
- [44:41]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Look out. Give the kid some room.
- [44:43]
Brian Wilson
He's taking over again.
- [44:54]
Chris Mullen
In any case, when Stigwood approached the Bee Gees, he needed not only their prior hits, but some new material. When Barry, Robin and Morris played him the the songs they'd been working on, Stigwood was floored and he took the lot. Stigwood did ask the Bee Gees if they could record a song with Saturday Night. Somewhere in the title, the Gibbs demurred the words Saturday night felt played out. Instead they came up with a different three syllable phrase and an immortal backing. In a technique that would later be used on hip hop records, producer Alby Galutin actually created a backing track from a drum segment he borrowed and looped from the already recorded Night Fever. This explains why the backing track of the Bee Gees most famous hit is so consistent and unwavering. The Bee Gees called it Stayin Alive. Finally, the Bee Gees had a ballad to play for Stigwood. Again, this was not a totally new sound for them. Both Fanny on Main Course and Love so Right on Children of the World were plush disco ballads made for slow dancing. But in the sessions that wound up on Saturday Night Fever, the Gibbs, working again with keyboardist Blue Weaver, who'd come up with the irresistible hook of Jive Talkin', perfected the disco ballad with the lush, sumptuous slow dance How Deep Is yous Love.
- [46:39]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
How deep is your love, how deep is your love.
- [46:51]
Chris Mullen
All of these songs made ample use of the Bee Gees 70s trademark, impossibly high skyscraping falsettos. Even the songs they'd written that would not wind up hits for themselves were promising. They played Stigwood versions of songs they would later give away. If I Can't have you, the future Ivan Elliman hit. And the plush yet danceable love song More Than a Woman. Saturday Night Fever the the film would open in December 1977. But in a savvy, confident and then unusual move, Robert Stigwood released the movie soundtrack one month ahead of the film. By December, just one week after Saturday Night Fever hit movie theaters, leadoff single How Deep Is yous Love was number one on the Hot 100. Four weeks later, in January 1978, on the album chart, the Saturday Night Fever LP was also number one. Thus began an unprecedented chart run, not only for the brothers Gibb, but for their record label, Robert Stigwood's RSO Records. From December 1977 through May 1978, five solid months RSO locked down the number one spot on Billboard's Hot 100. Interestingly, only three of the number ones on RSO were Bee Gees recordings. By total coincidence, an unrelated Los Angeles band Player had a smash hit on RSO called Baby Comeback. Then three weeks later, the Bee Gees ejected Player back on top with Stayin Alive. By early March, another andy Gibb Number one written by Barry Gibb, Love is Thicker than Water. Two weeks after that, Night Fever finally reached number one.
- [49:20]
Radio Announcer
And now the brand new number one song in the nation. It's been 14 years since the Beatles held the two top positions in the top 40 during the same week. Until now, no other recording act could match that feat. And the really amazing part of that accomplishment is that three of their number one songs are in the countdown this week. You know of course I'm talking about the Bee Gees, who all together are responsible for or identified with six of the songs in this week's 40. There's no doubt about it, Robin Morris and Barry Gibb have the sound of 78 going for them, maybe even the sound of the decade. So with the most popular song in America this week, here are the Bee Gees with Night Fever.
- [50:06]
Chris Mullen
After Night Fever's eight week run in early May, Yvonne Elliman's version of if I Can't have youe took over for a single week, one last Gibson ejecting another. But RSO wasn't finished scoring number ones. You might guess that one of the Saturday Night Fever chart toppers would wind up the top song of 1978. Maybe stayin alive or Night Fever. But it was actually a third single from kid brother Andy Gibb, the title track from his brand new second album, Shadow Dancing, that did the trick. Billboard's top hit of the year, Saturday Night Fever, finally let up at number one in July after 24 weeks commanding the Billboard album chart. It hung around the the album chart top 10 most of the rest of the year. Saturday Night Fever, having sold some 10 million copies in the US alone, was now the top selling album of all time, a record it would hold until Michael Jackson's thriller topped it five years later. By the summer of 78, the Bee Gees were at their imperial apex, which would have seemed laughable just three years earlier before Main Course reinvented their career. Pop acts at this level of world conquering fame are often prone to making a wrong move, an act of hubris so massive it knocks them permanently off their pedestal. It didn't take long for the Bee Gees to make that wrong move. They survived it, but it was a really, really bad call.
- [52:08]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Slow fans sit back and let.
- [52:23]
Chris Mullen
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the 1978 movie musical based on the 1967 Beatles album, routinely appears on lists of the biggest pop culture flops of all time. In addition to the Bee Geese, it starred another rock performer who would never be quite that popular again. British guitarist Peter Frampton, whose double live album Frampton Comes Alive had been the number one album of 1976. The Gibbs and frampton star in this 70s artifact as the members of a fictional Sgt. Pepper's band, the Bee Gees playing the Hendersons and Frampton playing Billy Shears. And these names are among the film's less ridiculous flights of fancy. It takes place in a town called Heartland, involves a girlfriend named Strawberry Fields and a villain named Mr. Mustard. And there are cameos by everyone. One from Steve Martin Maxwell Edison, majoring in medicine, calls her to the 81 year old George Burns. I'm fixing a hole where the rain.
- [53:45]
Radio Announcer
Gets in and stops my mind from wandering.
- [53:51]
Chris Mullen
Your humble podcast host watched this movie, which feels like it was scripted by a pile of cocaine so you wouldn't have to. For the record, the bee Gees in 1978 did have some on screen charisma, but they are not called upon to act much. And why were the Bee Gees involved in the first place? This debacle was the brainchild of, you guessed it, Robert Stigwood, who by the mid-70s had already produced hit screen adaptations of New Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy. Now feeling bulletproof, Stigwood acquired the screen rights to a small off Broadway show called sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the road. Using his old 60s connections, Stigwood even persuaded legendary Beatles producer George Martin to oversee the soundtrack. Surely a film celebrating the Beatles most acclaimed album, with songs performed by some of the biggest stars of the decade, would be a can't lose proposition, right? But lose it did piles of money Even beyond its savage reviews from critics, Sgt. Pepper was a disaster at the box office. The soundtrack was a similar story. RSO Records shipped the double LP to music retailers in massive quantities at the height of the BG's mania, and for a couple of months it did better than expected, reaching number five on the album chart. That was due in part to some truly excellent singles. Covers of Beatles songs by Earth, Wind and Fire, whose sizzling Got to get you into my Life reached number nine on the Hot 100. And Aerosmith, whose sinister come together reached number 23. Even the Gibbs managed to generate a modest hit with Robin Gibbs cover of the torchabout oh Darling, which reached number 15. But mostly, the film was awash for the Bee Gees. After more than a decade of idolizing the Beatles, the film found the Gibbs and Frampton playing third rate pretenders to the Fab Four. Retailers sent back thousands of unsold Sgt. Pepper 2 LP sets. The album is credited with coining the music industry term shipped gold, returned platinum. As all music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine would later write, while the soundtrack has attained cult status among curiosity seekers, there's no erasing the fact that this is an absolute, absolutely atrocious record.
- [57:30]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Woke up, fell out of bed, drank a comb across my head.
- [57:37]
Robert Stigwood
Found My.
- [57:38]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Way Downstairs and drank a cup.
- [57:41]
Chris Mullen
Perhaps because it was out of theaters before anyone noticed, sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band did not permanently derail the bee Gees historic 1970. Even Robert Stigwood survived the debacle. That's largely because Stigwood released another movie musical that did better at the box office than Saturday Night Fever and sergeant Pepper combined. Like sergeant Pepper, Grease was a movie adaptation of a nostalgic stage musical from the early 70s. But that's where the similarities ended. And like Saturday Night Fever, Grease starred John Travolta, this time as Danny Zuko, the big man on campus at fictional Rydell high school in 1959 and the once and future boyfriend of Olivia Newton John's Sandy Olsen. And the opening song of this movie about the 50s, it was pure 70s, written in an Erzatz disco style by Barry Gibb. When the song Grease topped the Hot 100 in September 1978, it instantly erased the failure of Sgt. Pepper off Barry Gibbs and Robert Stigwood's resumes. And it helped power the Grease soundtrack to number one on the album chart. It capped off the Bee Gees most unbelievable year. The following winter, Barry Robin and Morris Gibb took the stage at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to accept the Album of the Year award for Saturday Night Fever. It defeated heavy contenders from the Rolling Stones and Jackson Brown and even the Grease soundtrack.
- [59:32]
Brian Wilson
Oh, incredible.
- [59:37]
Robert Stigwood
Thank you very, very much. We'd like to thank our record company, RSO Records, our manager, Robert Stigwood, Al Curry, Bob Edson, Rich Fitzgerald, our band, Dennis Bryan, Alan Kendall, Blue Weaver. We're bringing it home. Thank you.
- [59:52]
Chris Mullen
Literally the week before the 1979 Grammy show, the Bee Gees issued their official Fever follow up, Spirits Having Flown, their first traditional studio album in two and a half years. And it cemented their status as songwriters, hitmakers and falsetto balladeers. Too Much Heaven was the Bee Gees most virtuosic vocal performance and studio recording. It was built built from nine layers of three part harmony, essentially an all gib choir. And as dated as it sounds now, the public of 1979 loved it. Across radio formats, Too Much Heaven not only hit number one on the pop chart that winter, it reached number 10 on Billboard's R B chart. Now the Gibbs were not only imitating falsetto soul acts like the Stylistics or Earth Wind and Fox Fire, they were adding their own compositions to the 70s slow jam canon. Spirits having Flown topped the Billboard album chart in just three weeks, faster even than the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. The year before and like Fever, it generated three Bee Gees number one hits back to back to back. Just two months after Too Much Heaven fell out the of the top spot, the Gibbs were back on top with Tragedy. Finally, less than three months after tragedy, the Bee Gees took one more week at number one with the funk infused lounge disco track Love you Inside Out.
- [61:50]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Inside and Out.
- [61:59]
Chris Mullen
As if dominating the pop chart and crossing to the R B chart wasn't enough, by 1979 the Gibbs were even making forays into country. Barry Gibb, who had written Nashville style songs as far back as his days in Australia in the 60s, wrote and recorded the unabashedly country Rest your Love on Me. It was so incongruous with their current pop and BE sound, the Bee Gees left it off, spirits having flown. But when they placed Rest yout Love on Me on the B side of the Too Much Heavens single, country DJs picked up on it and it peaked on Billboard's Hot Country Singles chart at an impressive number 39. Two years later, a cover by Conway Twitty would actually go all the way to number one on Hot country singles, giving Barry Gibb his first cover country chart topping single. It wouldn't be his last.
- [63:12]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
Lay your troubles on my shoulder Put your worries in my pocket Rest your love on me a while.
- [63:25]
Chris Mullen
As 1979 drew to a close, the Disco Sucks movement, which we talked about in our Donna Summer episode of Hit Parade, was in full force. And like Donna Summer, the Bee Gees were inextricably linked to a music that was about to go from culturally dominant to terminally uncool. Summer addressed that issue by switching her sound to a hybrid of dance and new wave. But the Bee Gees entered the 80s with their lush disco sound intact. Their double LP compilation Be Gee's Greatest, a summary of their late 70s disco years topped the album chart at the start of 1980. And brother Andy Gibb was still scoring. Barry penned and produced hits in the early months of the decade, such as the number four Smash D Desire. You might surmise where this story is headed. The thing is, it's not quite that simple. Yes, after the hits from Spirits having flown, the Bee Gees stopped scoring chart topping singles as recording artists. But as producers and especially songwriters, the Bee Gees had an enviable 1980s. And the big hits they spawned for others started almost immediately. Barbra Streisand, the most potent vocalist in America, didn't just get some help from the bee gees. Her 1980 album Guilty led off by the number One smash, Woman in Love, was a Bee Gees album in Barbra Streisand clothing. Streisand didn't even hide their involvement. She is photographed on the COVID of the LP nestled in the arms of her friend Barry Gibbs, both of them clad in disco white. Although Gibb is not formally credited on the album cover, Barry was presented as Barbara's artistic equal on the album. All nine tracks were written or co written by Barry and produced by his team of Albie Galutin and Carl Richardson. And more than half the songs feature writing credits by Robin or Maurice Gibb. On the album's title track, Barbara duetted with Barry, giving him equal billing on a number three hit. His biggest solo credit on the Hot 100 ever. Guilty remains Barbra Streisand's best selling studio album, Quintuple Play. Platinum in the US and over 15 million in global sales, it generated three top 10 hits and reinforced the Gibbs Midas touch as hitmakers, at least for others. Once 1980 turned to 81 and disco was fully passe, the question was how the Bee Gees would come back under their own name. Say this for the Gibbs, they gave the sound of the 80s a serious trot. He's a Liar, the first single from the Bee Gees 1981 album Living Eyes was an awkward attempt to bring their brotherly harmonies into the Reagan and Thatcher decade. It was a flop virtually everywhere, including including number 30 in America, number 82 in the UK. It cemented the narrative that the Bee Gees sell by date was in 1979. The classic 1980 comedy film Airplane, which ragged on the Bee Gees in an extended dance sequence, summed up all of western culture's attitude toward both disco and the Gibbs in a five second throwaway joke.
- [67:53]
Robert Stigwood
WZAZ in Chicago, where disco lives forever.
- [68:01]
Chris Mullen
The headline story was that the Bee Gees were now an embarrassment. The truth was that the sound of the Bee Gees voices, that choir of falsettos, was what 80s pop listeners shunned. But if the Gibbs themselves weren't singing lead, the public didn't mind that at all. Just consider this pattern.
- [68:23]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
I hear you have to be a heartbreaker Is it a lesson that I never knew?
- [68:31]
Chris Mullen
Heartbreaker was a 1982 single written by the brothers Gibb for Dionne Warwick. Barry's backing vocals are clearly audible on the chorus, peaking at number 10 on the Hot 100. It became Warwick's biggest hit in America in more than three years and her biggest hit ever in the uk, where it reached number two. But six Months later, The Woman in youn was the Bee Gees lead single to the soundtrack of Staying Alive, the critically reviled 1983 sequel to Saturday Night Festival Fever. For all its horrible reviews, Staying Alive was actually a sizable box office hit, trading on affection for John Travolta's Tony Monero character and the original title song by the Bee Gees. But that didn't rub off on the Bee Gees new single. The Woman in youn stalled at number 24 and was out of the top 40 before the movie even opened. But then just a few weeks after.
- [69:42]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
That, Islands in the stream that is what we are no one in between how can we be wrong?
- [69:53]
Chris Mullen
Sail away country megastar Kenny Rogers asked Barry Gibb to produce his 1983 album, Impressed not only by Gibbs prior country single that became became a smash for Conway Twitty, but also his success with Barbra Streisand. As with Streisand's Guilty album, Barry Robin and Maurice Gibb wrote and produced the entirety of Rogers album Eyes that See in the Dark, including the song Islands in the Stream, named after a novel by Ernest Hemingway. Kenny heard the song as a duet and he brought in Dolly Parton, who was coming off her own early 80s smash 9 to 5. Together, Rodgers and Parton turned the Gibbs composition into a global smash, topping America's pop, country and adult contemporary charts, hitting the top 10 in a dozen other countries and winning the BMI Publishing award as the most Performed song of 1983, another songwriting triumph for the Gibbs. But they were still cold as artists. Even solo singles couldn't break the curse. In 1984, both Robin and Barry issued albums away from the Bee Gees. Trying again to toughen up and and modernized their sound, Robin offered Boys Do Fall in Love while Barry released the single Shine Shine, Shine Shine. Coincidentally, both Robin's single and Barry's peaked on the Hot 100 at the same position. Number 37. Even without BJ Harmonies, pop fans of 1984 weren't interested. Meanwhile, back in their homeland, 1985 found Diana Ross working with the Gibb brothers on Chain Reaction. As with Dionne Warwick's hit Heartbreaker, the the Bee Gees vocals are audible on the chorus. Though not a big hit In America, where Ross's popularity was on the wane in the UK, Chain Reaction was a number one smash and it was a top 40 hit across Europe, Australia and New Zealand. By the middle of the 1980s, the beachies hadn't had a serious hit under their own name for more than half a decade. As if the Gibbs hadn't had enough challenges, they spent much of the first half of the 80s suing former manager Robert Stigwood for unpaid royalties and demanding to be released from his RSO Records label. When they settled with Stigwood and won their freedom, the Beachies signed with a new label, Warner Brothers, and were reunited for the first time in a dozen years with producer Arif Martin. All they needed to do now was prove they could still score a hit. And in 1987, in virtually every country around the world except America, the freeze out of the Bee Gees finally began to crack. You Win Again, punctuated by loud stomps, was the most sonically radical Bee Gees single in more than a decade. It was also a global smash, spending a month at number one in their native UK and topping the charts in a half dozen other countries across Europe. You Win Again earned the Gibb Brothers the British Academy's 1987 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song and the ESP album they recorded with Arif Marden went gold or platinum across Europe. As the 80s drew to a close, all that remained for the Be Gees was to break their log jam in America. It would take until the final year of the decade for them to scale the Billboard charts again. Unfortunately, it would also mean getting past an unimaginable family tragedy. Little brother Andy Gibb had had a rough 1980s. He hadn't scored a Hot 100 hit since his 1981 duet with TV actress Victoria, Victoria Principle, a cover of the Everly Brothers, All I have To Do Is Dream that missed the top 40 and lasted about as long on the charts as his relationship with Principal did. Worse, Andy was the Gib who fell hardest for drugs. At his 70s peak, Andy developed an addiction to cocaine that lasted all of the next decade, ruined his personal relationships and lost him multiple jobs, including hosting TV's Solid Gold and a Broadway role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor dreamcoat. In early 1988, just five days after his 30th birthday, Andy Gibb died of a heart inflammation, a natural cause that was nonetheless a side effect of his years of drug abuse. The Gibb family was in shock and despair, and the Bee Gees took most of the rest of 1988 off to mourn their kid brother. The first, but not the last time they would mourn a premature family loss. When they returned to the studio, inspired in part by Andy's death, they titled their next album simply One. Its title track, which on the surface was a catchy mid Tempo Love Song song included the refrain we are one, A quiet reference to their family bond in the wake of their brother's death. One was a solid 80s technopop hit with subtle hints of their 70s disco sound. It was a savvy record that alluded to what the public once loved about the bees without going full disco. And 1989 was at last a hospitable environment for a Bee Gees comeback after a successful return by their disco peer Donna Summer. And even the return of male falsetto vocals to the hit parade. But mostly One was just a catchy record. That reached number seven on the hot one. The Bee Gees would never score a top 10 pop hit again, but as they entered their 40s and 50s, the extent of their influence only grew more unmistakable. With their post disco curse largely broken and as 70s nostalgia swung from a joke in the 80s to a trend in the 90s, the Gibbs could enter middle age. More confident of their legacy, they recorded singles that unabashedly recalled their disco heyday, such as 1993's Paying the Price of Love. They were also called up by younger pop luminaries to record chord once again, most prominently Quebecois megastar Celine Dion. Her 1997 smash let's Talk About Love, an album that sold 25 million copies worldwide on the strength of its titanic single My Heart Will Go on, also featured a song immortality penned by and containing vocals from the Brothers Gibson people. On their own albums, the Bee Gees continued adapting to the sound of modern pop. They scored one more top 40 hit in 1997 with the single alone, a number 28 hit off a double platinum album Still Waters remarkable chart feats a year past Barry's 50th birthday. By decade's end, the Gibbs even became touchstones in hip hop, or at least with former Fugees. After the breakup of his troupe the Fugees, rapper Wyclef Jean led off his debut solo album the Carnival with We Trying to Stay Alive, a rap interpolation of the Bee Gees Stayin Alive. While Barry Gibb told interviewers he was not a fan of sampling, he and his brothers were compensated for Wyclef's hit, which made the top three of Billboard's rap chart. One year later, Wyclef's fellow former Fuji proz Michel went even further. He borrowed the Gibbs smash 80s composition Islands in the Stream, the hit Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton took to number one. And turned it into a hip hop anthem taken from the soundtrack of the Warren Beatty movie Bullworth Ghetto Superstar teamed pros with singer Maya and Wu Tang Clan rapper Ol Dirty Bastard for an irresistible single. It was history repeating itself once again. That alluring island villains in the stream melody topped charts around the world. Ghetto Supastar hit the top 20 on the Hot 100, top 10 on the R B chart, and reached number one or number two in a dozen other countries before the 90s were over. The Bee Gees had their legacy affirmed when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. Best of all, the man inducting them was an inarguable legend, Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson. As with the Four Seasons, Frankie Valli, who decades earlier had seen in the Gibbs a falsetto singing kindred spirit, Brian Wilson revealed live at the Rock hall podium in Cleveland that he and his brothers had also regarded the Bee Gees as peers. Please welcome Brian Wilson.
- [81:49]
Brian Wilson
Back in the 1950s, when my brothers Carl, Dennis and I were singing Three Part Harmony in our bedroom in Hawthorne, California, there were three other brothers in England learning how to do the same thing. Those brothers, Barry, Robin and Morris GIBB, became the BG's, one of the greatest vocal groups ever assembled. But the real secret is they're a family. They're brothers. I guess that's why I wanted to be here tonight when they received this honor, because there's nothing more important than spiritual loving music. And the Bee Gees have been giving us that love for music for 30 years.
- [82:21]
Chris Mullen
Accepting the honor, Barry Gibb addressed the elephant in the room, the mystery of both their popularity and their curse.
- [82:30]
Robert Stigwood
We are, we are, in fact, the enigma with the stigma. We know this, we're aware of it, we hear it every day. We live with it, we have suffered. But tonight, I think, I hope I don't sound too corny when I say no, tonight I think we've come home and we thank you very much for this honor.
- [82:55]
Chris Mullen
In the 20 years since the Bee Gees Rock and Roll hall of Fame induction, they have seen more than their share of tragedy. In 2003, very unexpectedly, Morris Gibb died at the age of 50, 53 from a heart attack while preparing for surgery on a blocked intestine. Morris had spent much of his life battling alcoholism, including multiple stints in rehab. But at the time of his death, he had been sober nearly a decade. Barry and Robin at first pledged to soldier on and keep the Bee Gees name alive. But in fact, the two remaining Gibb brothers performed together only two more times after Morris's death, both times for charity. A February 2006 fundraiser for Diabetes research at the University of Miami and a much bigger event three months later, the UK's nationally televised Prince's Trust concert. Live from the Tower of One.
- [84:01]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
You don't know, you don't know what it's like you don't know what it's like, baby, you don't know what it's.
- [84:12]
Chris Mullen
Like to love somebody Singing for Prince Charles and his sons Harry And William in May 2006, Robin and Barry shared one final, final poignant moment. In late 2010, Robin Gibb was diagnosed with liver cancer and after a six month battle, he died of liver and kidney failure in May 2012. Six years to the day after his Prince's Trust performance with Barry, he was 62. Now the last living brother, Barry Gibb has spent the years since Andy's, Morris's and Robin's departures continuing to perform and tending to his family legacy. He has a healthy sense of humor about that legacy after watching Jimmy Fallon poke gentle fun at him in a half dozen Saturday Night Live sketches over the years, Barry actually showed up for the final Barry Gibb Talk show in 2013, singing along with their parody of his nights on Broadway Melody. Described even by B.E. scholars and biographers as buttoned up and controlling, Barry has allowed himself to be more unguarded, speaking reverently on stage about how he misses his brothers. While it is sad to picture Barry, a songwriter who always wrote with his brother's natural harmonies in mind, now performing alone, he is a faithful keeper of the Bee Gees flame. He has seen everything. Periods when his brothers drifted from him and resented his leadership and when they came back. Periods when the Bee Gees were considered over and times when they were almost too popular, and moments when the public got over their own guilty pleasure and allowed themselves to just enjoy the Bee geese. Times like last year when Barry Gibb performed a full set for thousands at England's 2017 Glastonbury Festival Just shy of his 71st birthday, he sang heartily and yes, in falsetto. With the help of a troupe of instrumentalists and singers, he recreated the hits that brought the Bee Gees back from the wilderness. Still singing above his natural range and still jive talking.
- [87:13]
Bee Gees (Barry, Robin, Maurice Gibb) - Singing
You may know.
- [87:15]
Chris Mullen
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. My producer is Chris Berubic and we had help this episode from Danielle Hewitt and Dan Barubic. The managing producer of Slate Podcasts is June Thomas, our senior producer is TJ Raphael, and Steve Lichtai is the executive producer of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows and slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Mullen, Just.