Bee Gees: Classic or Dud

I was also disappointed they rushed through the pre-disco years, a huge & interesting part of their career, was looking forward to getting a little more time to hear about that stuff, maybe a bit less Justin Timberlake saying "their voices were cool" or w/e, but oh well. Pretty boilerplate but still a fun watch. They were such a weird, interesting band. Always amazed to hear about how little effort they put into lyrics, writing them pretty much on the spot in the studio. So many of the lyrics on those pre-disco albums are just so incredibly odd.

Also I had no idea Maurice and Lulu were married at one point!

i was also surprised by how fast it moves through their early career. literally five minutes in and they're already a singing group on TV. i don't need a ton of background but i wouldn't have minded a little more detail on them being actual kids in a successful band.

Haven't seen this one but, having seen other Bee Gees documentaries, I'm surprised that the fact that their father was a musician and bandleader is rarely mentioned, if at all.

Is it as good as this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIVUl8-wvwQ

Lol Timberlake wouldn't let go of that "their voices are trumpets" things

seems like it's a case of the less you know about them the better it is, they were always a blind spot for me, notwithstanding the inescapable disco hits

I thought Andy got squeezed into the movie as a compulsory afterthought, and they definitely skipped super fast through the early stuff. In fact when they were playing bits of (the gorgeous and haunting) "Holiday" over the death montage end cards I wondered how many people might not realize that was them, too, since it doesn't show up elsewhere.

Maybe there's a darker side to it that got ignored, but I was shocked at how their lives diverged from the Beach Boys/Jackson Five family model, in that mom and dad seemed super cool and supportive. Though we barely get to know them, either. I might have missed why they even ended up in Australia.

The (well rehearsed) story of them moving to Australia is that Barry was getting in trouble with the law and on the verge of becoming a juvenile delinquent.

Might have been nice to stick that in the doc. That also seems like an ... extreme overreaction!

Well, it's a good story.

Is it as good as this one?

having only just watched the first 15 mins of it^ the BBC doc moves just as fast but seems to have a narrative coherence the HBO one doesn't, at least gives a much clearer sense of their origins + more insightful talking-head clips

I didn’t realize this existed but one of the other documentaries did a nice job describing the drama of the band around 1969-70 when they broke up in the wake of Odessa. I believe Robin and Barry are interviewed together in that documentary but don’t really discuss it as I recall.

There are some stories that Robin got his nose bent out of shape when Barry’s First of May was chosen as the single instead of Robin’s Lamplight. But I’d have been fascinated to get the inside scoop on what really led to a group of brothers splintering.

The latest doc implied mostly the usual ego and jealousy stuff, but I think there's also something (addressed in the doc, too, iirc) to having spent practically every waking hour together for their whole lives and then finally having a measure of independence. Same thing took down the Beatles, the Band, probably plenty of acts that didn't start with B and weren't brothers. Anyway, how long did the Bee Gees stay broken up? A year? Less than a year?

per wikipedia it was about a year (mid-1969 to mid-1970)

According to David Meyer's biography, all of the above is true, plus Robin's amphetamine use contributing to both megalomania and a copious number of solo songs. If you listen to Robin's Reign and Cucumber Castle, you can see the different directions they were going.

I wouldn't actually recommend the Meyer book; I don't need to be told that Robin "looked like the world's biggest dork" on one of their TV appearances.

Listening to some Time Crisis podcasts where they would go through the top 5 for a random week in the '70s, it was crazy how often the top few songs would either be performed or written by a Gibbs. It really changed how I think about them, especially since in the '90s they were only referenced as a punch line.

and that continued on into the '80s. i had no idea that they wrote islands in the stream. which means two members of the fugees had solo tracks that interpolated songs written by the gibbs bros.

Oh wow, I did not know that either

I was thinking about "Grease" (not mentioned in the film) and how odd it is that a song written by a singer who recently discovered his falsetto voice, for a singer known for falsetto, contains no falsetto at all.

Also, no mention of the Sgt. Pepper film, but that's not particularly surprising.

Good points all.

Like, even this Barbara Streisand song is pretty tight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVyeNZCENZA

The Streisand/Gibb record got 5 stars ("indispensable") in The New Rolling Stone Record Guide (1983) and I remember thinking, "...really?" But hearing "Guilty" and "Woman In Love" recently I thought, ok, maybe I should check out the rest of the album.

And "Bernard Lupe" is credited as the drummer on three of its songs!

Woman in Love could almost fit on the moody AOR thread.

I was thinking about "Grease" (not mentioned in the film) and how odd it is that a song written by a singer who recently discovered his falsetto voice, for a singer known for falsetto, contains no falsetto at all.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, December 17, 2020 7:42 AM (one hour ago)

Also the incongruity of a contemporary disco song in a retro film about the 50s.

Sure, but you're gonna have a Stigwood-produced, Travolta-starring film in 1978 without a disco song?

There was already a similar time warp thing with "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)"

It's kind of a disco song too, isn't it

Really good points about "Grease." Here you have a guy known for his falsetto ... singing *not* in falsetto, just after the Bee Gees made it fashionable (for white people), and for that matter singing an incongruous if denuded disco song on the soundtrack to a movie about the '50s ... right at peak disco, written by one of disco's prime engines. As Travolta would say, that's like, so weird.

Okay, the fact that it wasn't sung falsetto really is kind of bizarre. It's barely even sung, some Rex Harrison stuff.

I think the major issue with "Grease" (song) is that we live a life of illusion, wrapped up in trouble laced with confusion...

What are we doing here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbeNpqE0Ys4

https://ew.com/movies/2018/04/20/barry-gibb-grease-demo-40th-anniversary-blu-ray/

Okay, always thought it was weird that the title song of Grease was not a doo-wop song and seemed so fixated on the actual word “grease.”

There's a story somewhere of Robert Stigwood telling Barry Gibb he needed to write a new theme song for his upcoming film Grease.

"'Grease'? How the hell do I write a song called 'Grease'?"

"Oh Barry, you know... Grease di di di, Grease da da da..."

Okay, the fact that it wasn't sung falsetto really is kind of bizarre. It's barely even sung, some Rex Harrison stuff.

Some of that stuff (xpost) is covered in the interview I linked to.

Are you excited to have people hear this demo?

No, not particularly.

lmao

I guess it's similar in approach to a George Clinton song about The Funk.

Most of all we need The Grease.

https://theaudiophileman.com/true-falsetto-talking-frankie-valli/

Intriguingly, however, Valli generally only uses the falsetto when singing with the Four Seasons. For most of his solo hits, it’s nowhere to be found, “Falsetto is a great tool to have, if it’s not overdone.”

Valli was going all in on disco at that point, he also recorded the first version of "Native New Yorker" at about that time

He was also having some kind of hearing problems at the time, which is one of the reasons the drummer in the (new) Four Seasons was singing so many of the their material - including their singles.

Here we are:

Valli began suffering from otosclerosis in 1967, forcing him to "sing from memory" in the latter part of the 1970s. Surgery performed by Los Angeles ear specialist Victor Goodhill restored most of his hearing by 1980.

“Falsetto is a great tool to have, if it’s not overdone.”_

Is that a quote from The Sopranos?

Goodfellas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPYDZsXBvw

and that continued on into the '80s. i had no idea that they wrote islands in the stream. which means two members of the fugees had solo tracks that interpolated songs written by the gibbs bros.

wow, that's great, thanks. ethereal, yeah. would have slotted in beautifully next to late yacht stuff, and also "Cruisin'." hard for me to not hear it as a duet after all these years with Dolly and Kenny though!

i note a small instrumental lift from "S.O.S." (the "when you're gone" part) about 2/3 of the way through...

My favorite Gibb brothers tune written for another artist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KBfkDaOxEk

Which I had forgotten about until the doc, and then the second I heard the second of it included in the movie I started humming along.

Another great Barry demo of that one, tho I think I still prefer the final version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnbs3YHkXg

This is another one he did for the Kenny Rogers album he wrote, I love the chorus on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiCnUqjAueY