DON'T FORGET TO REMEMBER: The Official ILM Track-By-Track BEE GEES 1968-1981 Listening Thread

I do like the drum break where the bass drops out

Track No. 82: Tell Me Why (2 Years On, 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xG0Jz8ZUfs

Barry shakes things up every so slightly by going with a 6/8 time signature for his latest breathy R&B ballad, which tbh seems like something of a precursor to a certain much superior hit single that appears on their next record. The elementary rhyme schemes don't do the song any favors, and this is yet another instance where there's no chorus per se (much less a bridge or intro or pre-chorus or anything really), just the lead vocal melody that repeats a few times. Barry's delivery, though, does put me in mind of other, different and primarily black R&B singers that might have turned this song into something more substantial or interesting, just with a more powerful range or degree of emotive power. As it is, this is just yet another fairly uninteresting bit of glop.

Seems as much country as R&B tbh, could have been on the last album. Barry going through an uncharacteristically fallow period, his songs on this album just don't lodge in yr brain.

agree that Barry's lack of memorable melodies on this one is pretty unusual

With Robin you can at least use the excuse that he'd used up about two albums worth of good material on his solo projects, from what I've heard of Barry's unreleased solo album it's as unmemorable as his work on this album.

yeah that like 60-track box set of Robin's solo backlog from this period makes it abundantly clear that he was firing on all cylinders, whereas Barry's songs from the same time seem aimless. Needed his bros, perhaps.

Track No. 83: Lay It On Me (2 Years On, 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsey6yk6NUc

Just in case you thought it was Robin and Barry that had been stockpiling second-rate solo material, we get this tossed off country-funk ditty from Maurice. Singing and playing everything on the track himself, with the exception of the drums, courtesy of Bridgford, I have to admit that it sounds relatively together, and you can hear Maurice trying to inject some levity and life to the proceedings with the chuckling asides and goofy interjections that he resorted to on "Suddenly" (from "Odessa"). But the lyrics are muddled (he's so proud of being a loser that he doesn't want people to drink with him? okaaaayy), the melody is practically non-existent, his bros aren't around to fill up the sonic space with harmonies, and the underlying structure is rote and boring as hell. Essentially the track seems to exist as an exercise in isolated instrumental versatility and little else.

Sounds like Neil Innes. But not very good Neil Innes.

Track No. 84: Every Second, Every Minute (2 Years On, 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDzCWPMb1rQ

While this song doesn't fully break Barry's string of underwhelming and half-formed tunes on this record, it does at least have a few distinguishing characteristics. As with the comparatively dreadful "Back Home", we can hear the band again trying out a relatively traditional "rock n roll band" format and sound, reverting to the Beatle-isms of previous years. Interestingly - and this was driving me crazy trying to figure out what specific Beatles song this reminded me of - the opening bars bear more than a passing resemblance to the Ringo/Lennon/Harrison collaboration "I'm The Greatest", which was still several years down the road. Thanks to Bridgford locking in with Maurice's distorted rhythm guitar part and thumping bass, the track actually kind of rocks a bit, especially on the coda after the seesawing strings and horn accents have come in. This augmentation of a more rocking track with the orchestral flourishes is a little unusual in their catalog, and it's a nice blend of sounds. Lyrically and structurally the song is weak, we are again stuck with a single melody line repeated throughout, but the overall delivery and sound go a fair way to redeeming it.

for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ4EmA5X-PQ

I doubt this is a case of the master stealing from the disciple (and the riff isn't really *that* unique) but who knows

Track No. 85: I'm Weeping (2 Years On, 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfy4Po3gw7Y

Well, at least this album ends on an unexpectedly bizarre note, and with the most Robin-esque of Robin song titles to boot. Sounding very much like a Robin solo track, I can't detect the presence of either of the other Gibb brothers; even Maurice's bass is absent. Sonically there's no question this is the most unusual and interesting song on the album, from the opening trudge of the drum and tambourine, followed by the twinkly organ riff, through to where Robin's voice triggers a pronounced reverb effect and the strings come in. It's bleak and ethereal and almost creepy in its evocation of poor, bombed-out post-war Britain - at least until the horns come in at the end, striking a more elegiac note, but even that is almost immediately cut off by the switch back to the intro rhythm and organ riff.

Robin skirting self-parody with this song, but I agree it's interesting. The lyrics are awkward but still affecting - I don't think the song refers to a post-war bombed out Britain so much as it does to slum areas being demolished, which would certainly have happened in Manchester, whether it happened to the Gibb family's old neighbourhood, I don't know. As a whole, this album is sloppy, lazy and half-baked, and almost certainly the worst album they ever put out - what a comeback! Plus I don't what was going on with Barry, but the best parts are almost entirely down to Robin, Maurice meanwhile does his thing as reliably as usual.

lol yeah why does he emphasize the "drivinG a car" line, for example? definitely awkward

Also agree this album is definitely sloppy, lazy and half-baked and that it's mystifying that this was a "comeback" effort. Very possible it's their worst album, the only one that might conceivably give it a run for its money on that score is "Life in a Tin Can", which I don't know as well. Pretty much every other album at least has some redeeming, standout tracks and this one just... doesn't.

As it is, we have a non-album track to get to tomorrow, before we move on to the far superior "Trafalgar".

The "drivinG a car" thing is dialect tbf. Robin not being one for putting on an American accent.

ah. well pronunciation aside it's not exactly such a emotionally resonant a line that it requires being repeated

It doesn't make too much sense as hardly any working class people were driving a car in the 1950s - if this song is really about Robin's own experience, which it probably isn't as he was in Australia by the time he was 10.

Track No. 86: In the Morning/Morning of My Life (Melody soundtrack, 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev6ESHJlqkM

During the sessions for "2 Years On" the boys dusted off this old nugget, originally written by Barry in 1965 when the Gibb bros were still in Australia, and subsequently passed the recording on for inclusion in the soundtrack to the movie "Melody" in 1971. While not particularly remarkable, it does display a level of craft and care that was often absent from "2 Years On" - the harmonies throughout are great, the orchestration subtle and effective, and it even has a bridge (albeit one that is mostly a slight rearrangement of the verses). The only real knock against it is that it lacks both a real hook and a chorus. The lyrics are standard issue daydreamy nonsense.

It's a nice song, better than anything on "2 Years On". Had to check when Donovan's "Colours" was released (May 1965), because I'm pretty sure Barry had that song in mind when he wrote this.

huh, I'll grant the lyrical sentiment is similar but I don't really hear a musical similarity...?

I can hear it, the original version could easily have been sung in a coffee house by earnest young men squatting on high chairs.

ah, I hadn't listened to the original - yeah, that rhythm puts it close to Donovan

Track No. 87: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (Trafalgar, single, 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fbOr9q2IBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LmoEv7LwB4

The apex of their soft-rock balladry era. Remarkably recorded just two months after the release of "2 Years On", and apparently written around the same time as some of the material for that album, including "Lonely Days". This song is one of only a handful so far where Barry deploys major 7 chords, and that suspended chord at the beginning and end of each chorus adds a dreamy undercurrent to the melody and the harmonies, a compositional trick they would return to often in subsequent years. The singing here is also top-shelf, with Robin and Barry trading verses and all three brothers chiming in the choruses, as is the orchestration, with every element (a wistful trumpet countermelody, a chiming bell, a harp swirl) deployed just so. Really I just lover everything about this song, every detail feels just right. And apparently I am not alone in this reaction. While the single inexplicably failed in the UK, it was the band's first number one single in the US. Funnily enough, I knew this song well before I knew it was the Bee Gees, I think I probably heard the Al Green version first.

No. 1 in the US, completely bombed in the UK. I suspect most people this side of the pond are more familiar with the Al Green version, so much so that I'm always taken aback when I hear Robin squawking the first line instead of Al.

man that Al Green version has really shown up in a lot of soundtracks

Until this year I imagined that this came quite a few years later in their career. No doubt because the vocals in the chorus kinda sorta presage stuff they were doing in the second half of the seventies. (Though the broader arrangement doesn't really support that.) It was a big hit in the antipodes. The original -- I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone else's rendition broadcast anywhere!

Also: I think I'm going to have to watch Melody now.

Glutton for punishment eh

Track No. 87: Country Woman ("How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" single B-side, 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGEJJQictCQ

Released in May 1971 just a month after it was recorded and 4 months ahead of the album proper. Strictly a Maurice track, Robin and Barry don't bother to appear, although the rest of the band (Bridgford, new guitarist Alan Kendall, and arranger Bill Shepherd) all contributed. Maurice seems to have been the Bee Gee most interested in American country music, but his grasp of the mechanics of the genre seem a bit tenuous and perhaps rooted in second-hand sources such as the Band. Definitely feel like Bridgford's drum part here is going for Levon Helm's surefooted country funk, for example. Maurice's multi-instrumental facility and baseline level of competence keep this from being outright bad. Still, this is b-side material for sure, and not even close to the level of quality of the song that he *did* manage to get on the album.

Well, it's not great but it's not bad, Maurice confident enough to drop the jokiness he'd relied on in his previous solo outings at least.

Yeah, no goofy ad-libbed asides here.

His other songs on the record are p remarkable and show really rapid development as a songwriter.

Man, the original of "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" really doesn't hold a candle to the Al Green version, huh? He really worked some alchemy on that song.

I think they're both excellent to be honest

Track No. 88: Israel ("Trafalgar", 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m04tAiqAM-Qi

Love Maurice's opening bass wobbles as this tune settles into its mid-tempo groove. The inscrutable motivation for the lyric makes Barry's increasingly histrionic vocal all the more baffling as it goes on (and this is definitely among the most unhinged lead vocal he has in their catalog). Head-scratching lyrics aside, the arrangement is very effective, particularly when the harmonies split on the 7th chord in the chorus, with Robin and Maurice's backing vocals nestled in with the strings as the song sails into the second chorus. Things get even more dramatic as the song draws to a close - more timpani! more ascending string lines! more harp swoops! more howling! A fine ballad, but really why did they feel compelled to write a song on this subject?

er

as the song sails into the second chorus verse

fixed

The lyrics occasionally threaten to mean something but mostly don't make much sense. Great song though, very stirring!

I went back and forth about whether this song is actually about the country or if it's about a person named Israel but yeah it doesn't really make much sense in either scenario. It does make me wonder what prompted it. There was also a reference to Tel Aviv on the previous album.

He does mention sand, I believe they have quite a lot of that in Israel.

where there's sand, yeah
YEAH

Track No. 89: The Greatest Man in the World ("Trafalgar", 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTifVVj76n8

Internet guitar tabs for this song are (not surprisingly) all wrong, completely ignoring all the weird major 7th and suspended chords that run through it in favor of simple major chords. Barry's chord structures were becoming more complex at this point, branching out from the more simple folk-based voicings that had characterized a lot of their 60s output, and while he wasn't quite on the level of, say, Joni Mitchell, I do think that during this period Barry often drew on an interesting juxtaposition of clear, major-key melodies and harmonies against underlying chord voicings that don't resolve in a traditional manner. On this one, Barry and Maurice deliver a plaintive, worldless opening, with the strings introducing the first verse. Barry shifts from a quavery, breathy delivery to a more robust vocal as the verse builds to the chorus, but falls back to almost a whisper on the titular refrain. Lyrically not much interesting going on - the usual romantic word-salad mishmash. The song ebbs and flows (Bridgford has a particularly thankless task navigating all the shifts in emphasis, but he acquits himself well), builds and falls back over and over, but always with the melody and harmonies as an anchor. By the time we get to the plagal cadence at the end, with Barry ad-libbing on the title phrase, it's like the song is drifting out to sea.

Track No. 90: It's Just the Way ("Trafalgar", 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0EcriumzZU

Maurice's songs on this album are probably the best he ever did, an opinion perhaps shared by his brothers since they made one of them the title track and constructed a promo campaign around it. But I'm getting ahead of myself, this is Maurice's *other* song on the album, and while it's no staggering masterpiece it is a very skillfully constructed slice of Abbey Road-esque orchestral pop - that ascending 12-string + electric guitar arpeggio before the first verse is straight out of the Beatles' playbook, as are the choppy Lennon-esque chords that constitute the guitar solo when the strings come in. All the little touches here are great: the rich guitar tones, the double-tracked vocal that splits into harmonies towards the end, the unresolved final orchestral chord.

Barry plays in drop D tuning which allows the playing of unusual chords, of course. "The Greatest Man in the World" is nothing special but perfectly fine, something about the verses remind me of Bowie! Maurice's song is nice too - odd that, having ditched trying to sound like the Beatles for the preceding two albums, they went back to it on this album.. Actually this sounds like Neil Innes too!

I can hear the Bowie similarity - Life On Mars maybe?

with the vocal starting out quiet and becoming more strident over the course of the verse

Maybe, I don't know what it is, would have to listen again.

Appropriately BBC4 is currently showing a compilation of Bee Gees performances, not only for the BBC but for European TV too. Almost all with live vocals. A lot of stuff I haven't seen before: Robin singing his solo single "August October"; "Lonely Days"; "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" (from something called 'Whittaker's World of Magic' in front of the most miserable sudience of all time ... and featuring the elusive Geoff Bridgford); "Morning of My Life" (from Mrs Maurice Gibb's show, Maurice and Barry on acoustics, all three singing live). Then jumps forward to "Jive Talking", so I imagine it'll be mostly stuff I've seen before from now.

!! jelly

... acoustic "Too Much Heaven" on Pebble Mill At One!

Track No. 91: Remembering ("Trafalgar", 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=num_jqCFwYU

Robin's first turn in the spotlight and he lays it on thick with a melody that spans his full vocal range and another morbidly morose lyric. The orchestration really does the heavy lifting in the arrangement, with multiple countermelodies from the strings popping in and out, plus some timpani accents for good measure. Barry and Maurice are decidedly in the background, their backing harmonies serving more as a choral compliment to the orchestra. Not a bad song by any means, but I feel like Robin overdoes it with the vibrato, making his vocal cross the line from affecting to silly.

Track No. 92: Somebody Stop the Music ("Trafalgar", 1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGcg9We_TAA

This one *really* feels like a throwback to a few years prior, albeit with a glossier production sheen and more confident performances from the players. Bridgford adeptly handles the rhythmic shift to the B-section in the middle, which feels like it was thrown in as an afterhought to give the song some energy and keep things interesting. The main body's completely inscrutable lyrics are carried off by Barry's committed vocal - he (and Robin too) sure sound like they care a lot, but precisely what it is that they care about is impossible to tell. Great string arrangement on this as well, the cello countermelodies in the verses in particular. Perhaps most importantly, the song is relatively compact and has enough melodic ideas that it doesn't wear out its welcome.

"Remembering" is pretty bad, though there's worse to come. "Somebody Stop the Music" is one of their "Let's stick this bit with this bit and see what happens" portmanteau songs, it's a good one!

I find the chorus for "Remembering" pretty catchy, but Robin's performance on that song is... not good