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Home » There’s no harmony like close harmony: Part IIA (the Bee Gees)

There’s no harmony like close harmony: Part IIA (the Bee Gees)

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Part I can be found here.]

The Bee Gees came briefly onto my radar screen in the late 70s through the extraordinary popularity of their “Saturday Night Fever” score. Then for me they faded out of sight and hearing, and I never thought of them again until YouTube suddenly decided to recommend a Bee Gees video to me about a month ago. I idly clicked on it and was immediately fascinated. I plan to tell that story in another post, but for now I’ll concentrate on their harmonies.

As I said in Part I, singing siblings have a special ability to perform close harmony, probably a combination of nature and nurture. But as I listened to the Bee Gees again, I found that their particular harmonies had a special resonance and an almost otherwordly uniqueness, even among sibling groups. Over and over I would read comments or articles in which people would say that when they listened to the Bee Gees they felt calmed or soothed or happy or all three, and that they found their music and in particular certain songs to be addictive – a word that came up a great deal. Some even suggested that their harmonies induced some sort of change in brain waves in the listener, or a form of hypnosis. Some people said they had been listening to the Bee Gees every day for fifty years or more.

I have no idea how many people have this reaction to the Bee Gees, but the number seems sizeable. There are also some people who hate them – who find their falsetto period particularly annoying. I’m not sure that any other major rock/pop group causes such stark polarization, such love and such hate. Most of the haters hate the Bee Gees’ disco music in particular, and often are unaware of their vast (and I mean vast, a total of over 1,000 songs they have written) catalogue of other types of music. “Cheesy” and/or “Alvin and the Chipmunks” are two of the criticisms frequently aired.

But those who love them really really love them – and in the last month I have to say I’ve entered their ranks, which has been a big surprise to me.

So, what’s going on here? Darned if I know for sure. But I have some ideas. First, a little relevant background.

The Bee Gees were three brothers starting out at roughly the same time as the Beach Boys. Barry Gibb was three years older than fraternal twins Robin and Maurice, but the brothers always insisted they were more like triplets and no one was the leader, and that they wrote the vast majority of their songs together. Their musical output as a group spanned close to forty-five years, until brother Maurice Gibb died at the age of 53 in 2003. If you do the math, you’ll realize that means they started as children, and indeed they were child performers in Manchester, England and then as the Bee Gees in Australia.

Like the Beach Boys’ three Wilson brothers, the three Gibb brothers shared a bedroom as young kids. But because the Gibb family (drummer and bandleader father, band vocalist mother) was so poor, the three Gibb brothers had to share a bed as well. When Maurice and Robin were five and Barry eight, they discovered that they could harmonize effortlessly and instinctively (with that ESP quality again, like the Boswell sisters I discussed in Part I), all three having perfect pitch, a wide vocal range, and a fascination with music. When their parents overheard them singing, they thought it was the radio, and discovered to their surprise it was the three little boys.

They made a pact at a very early age that they would write their own songs, sing as a trio, and become famous. Unlike most childhood pacts, this one was fulfilled. Even as children they became the family breadwinners, and can be seen performing on Australian TV in the 1950s and early 1960s in many YouTube videos. There are a ton of adult Bee Gee interview videos on YouTube as well; here’s one from 2001 I’ve cued up to show a short segment of them talking about the first time they discovered they could harmonize, and how it made them feel:

Here’s a short video (about four minutes) where they tell their early story, which I find fascinating (it can’t be embedded, so you’ll need to click on this link).

After returning to England the Bee Gees became very famous in the 1960s when the twins were around seventeen and Barry twenty, then broke up for a while and reunited, and then were much less famous for a few years. The falsettos didn’t come into play until 1975 in the song “Nights On Broadway,” only a couple of years before they reached the ultra-mega-fame of their first comeback (they had several more comebacks), with “Saturday Night Fever.”

I think that one of the keys to the addictive nature of their sound was the fact that, although as brothers their voices shared some difficult-to-describe quality of tone, their voices were also highly distinct from each other. Two of the brothers – Barry and Robin – were bona fide lead singers with extraordinary and unusual vocal timbre and range. Actually, they all had phenomenal vocal range, they all could sing in chest or head voice or falsetto, and so one feature of their songs is that when they’re doing three-part harmony the listener can’t always distinguish who’s doing the high or low parts and sometimes they switch off. In the following video, the structure of the song “Run to Me” is a good example of their separate voices and then the effect of the three all together (circa 1974). Here Barry sings the verse (including some use of his deep chest voice), Robin dominates the first two lines of the chorus, then all three finish the chorus:

Another live version, I think around the same time:

And here is an example of the Bee Gees’ staying power. This is a live performance in 2002 when they were in their fifties, about a year before Mo died and the group was finished. I believe it is from their last concert together. In addition, it’s an example of what Mo was talking about in his interview about the first time they sang together and how he still gets a thrill when they perform, especially their acoustic medleys with one mic. That’s what they’re doing here, and it’s a short excerpt from the same song “Run to Me” over thirty years later:

One of the hallmarks of the Bee Gees is how much they seem to enjoy performing together. That joy can spread to the audience. It certainly spreads to me when I watch them.

[NOTE: More parts to follow.]

Comments

There’s no harmony like close harmony: Part IIA (the Bee Gees) — 67 Comments

  1. I think my favorite example of Barry’s vocal range is in ‘You Should Be Dancing’ when he sings ‘my woman gives me power’ in his falsetto and then sings the next line ‘goes right down to my blood’ in a much lower register then returns to the falsetto.

  2. neo:

    I think it’s great you are finding new music to love. That’s part of what keeps me going. Currently I’m working my way through Philip Glass and Terry Riley.

    The Brothers Gibb are still a bridge too far for me — I don’t hate them but do find their sound off-putting — but who knows, someday? Initially I found Lou Reed’s voice creepy and repulsive, but now he’s an oddball old friend.

    Back when people had mass-market vinyl albums displayed near their stereos, I would flip through and notice their collections usually stopped somewhere in their mid-twenties, when they got a career or got married or both.

    Amazon has an amazing streaming service, Amazon Music, which allows one to hear almost every album that has been digitized with a few exceptions like those by the Beatles and Wendy Carlos. Imagine the financial muscle that Amazon has to make a deal of that magnitude. Frightening!

    If one has Amazon Prime you can sign up to Amazon Music for three months free.

    Cue Steppenwolf’s “The Pusher.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XqyGoE2Q4Y

  3. When listening to music, I don’t intellectualize it. It either resonates with my soul or not. When I think of the Bee Gees, the term that comes to mind is “a guilty pleasure”. They make me want to get up and dance while singing along, there is a joy and happiness to their music, a… hopefulness.

    huxley,

    There are a number of fine streaming services, Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz and Idagio for classical lovers.

  5. This article prompted me to reacquaint myself with the Bee Gees on Qobuz. Working through Qobuz’s playlist of their more popular tracks I was surprised to hear the song “Holiday”. I did a double take because I’ve always assumed that to be a Beatles song. So much so that I looked it up to confirm that it wasn’t a cover by the Bee Gees. Nope, they wrote it, produced it and performed it first.

    No falsetto at all and recorded in the UK in 1967. To get a deeper appreciation for Barry Gibbs’ vocal prowess, I heartily recommend it. He had a fine voice indeed.

  6. Geoffrey Britain:

    That’s pretty much what happened to me. “Holiday” was the entry drug to my current Bee Gees addiction. Unlike you, though, I had never assumed it was the Beatles, because I knew the entire Beatles songbook cold. I had thought it was by one of the many British invasion groups, but I hadn’t known that the very same Bee Gees of disco fame were originally one of those British invasion groups, and one of my favorites. I was shocked and stunned to discover they had written and performed not only “Holiday” but “I’ve Got to Get a Message to You” and the “NY Mining Disaster” song (“have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones?”), all of them written when they were still teenagers, and all of them favorites of mine in the 60s. Their songbook is unbelievably deep and also broad.

    Watch out, watch out, it’s a rabbit hole of major proportions.

  7. Geoffrey Britain:

    Barry had tremendous vocal prowess, but he wasn’t able to turn himself into Robin. “Holiday” is 90% Robin. Barry starts it and sings harmony backup, but the rest is Robin, who had an amazing voice as well.

    You can see it in the video:

  8. The reason why I don’t particularly like the BeeGees is that they were trend followers, not trend setters. A few of their songs, though, will likely stand the test of time.

  10. Johann Amadeus Metesky:

    Well, I couldn’t care less whether people are innovators or not if what they create is wonderful.

    Actually, I can’t think of any pop or rock music that didn’t build on what went before at least to some degree. And that includes the Beatles, who were one of the more innovative groups.

    However, I think that the Bee Gees were sometimes quite innovative. “Jive Talking” was certainly a departure. And although “Stayin Alive” is basically disco, it is so superior to any other disco song I can think of that it’s almost a genre in itself. Some info:

    And he also has a clear recollection of how he first came to hear ‘Stayin’ Alive’: “I distinctly remember Barry saying ‘Boy, Karl, have I got a song for you,’ and sitting down to play ‘Stayin’ Alive’ on an acoustic guitar. It was like a chant and it was unbelievable. I said ‘Barry, don’t forget that rhythm. That’s a number one record.’ I knew, five bars in, no questions asked. You couldn’t get past the intro without knowing it was a smash.”…

    Together, the Bee Gees, Karl Richardson and Albhy Galuten created what most of us think of as the sound of disco, but it was not their intention to invent a new style. “We never knew about disco and we didn’t think about disco. We thought we were making rhythm and blues records. It was all about R&B. We loved all that stuff, we just couldn’t figure out how to do it! ‘Oh man, that sounds great, but it sounds like a room full of studio musicians.’ ‘Yeah, well…’ The sound we came up with was therefore our sound, and for the Saturday Night Fever album we recorded all of the tracks in France, and overdubbed and mixed in Miami, while overdubbing in LA too. ‘More Than A Woman’ was given to the Tavares brothers, and their track came in sub-standard so we were asked to go out to LA and finish the Bee Gees’ own demo. That’s what we did, adding congas and strings before mixing at Criteria.

    “‘Night Fever’ was cut live in France. Maurice was playing DI’d bass with his pick, Dennis Byron was playing drums, Blue Weaver was playing keyboards, Alan Kendall was playing rhythm guitar, and Barry was playing rhythm and singing the pilot vocal. The drums were the only thing retained from this live track — it was a complete take, not comped — and all the other parts were overdubbed, like the keyboard part that was carefully crafted. I mean, many parts weren’t there from the start. Blue, Barry, Albhy and I would sit down and say ‘That chord sounds great there, but how about when the guitar player goes “dang, wa-tang”? Do you want the seventh in the chord or do you want to leave that hole there?’ Those were the kinds of things that had to be worked out.

    “It was all very orchestrated. It was a process and it was all about ‘head charts’; creating in the studio. You know ‘Gee, OK, that’s the part of the verse for the keyboards.’ Then we would go for the performance. All of the arrangements were done on the spot and then the performance was executed until it felt good. That was the standard. It didn’t matter how we got there — whether something was thrown together or it was one take — our concern was that it felt good, that it made a statement. How it’s done, I don’t know. I mean, how do you make a Mercedes-Benz? Do you start with the tyres? All I know is the end product. If that’s accepted, then how it came to be is just detail.

    “We had no guidelines. The only rule was there were no rules, so we could do anything. It didn’t matter if it was a bass drum or a synthesizer sound — we would talk about it and say ‘Well, why don’t we do this?’ And I can’t recall anything specific because this took place almost on every song. Plus the fact that everything was at least second-generation, most of it third. On the next album, Spirits Having Flown, we discovered 48-track, so everything at that point was multitracked, Dolby, bounced, bounced, bounced, whereas the other stuff was 24-track. However, to get it to 24 a lot of it was hand-sync’ed and we’d overdub forever. Again, those sounds were probably limited to what we had available at Criteria in terms of reverb chambers, processing, MCI consoles. Who knows?

    “I do know this: ‘Night Fever’ is the rough mix. We mixed that song in 10 minutes. We had overdubbed all these synthesizer pads, extra guitar notes, little percussion instruments and so on, and we kept mixing it again and again and again, and then finally we played the rough mix and everybody said it felt better. You see, it was all about feel at that time. It wasn’t about trying to impress people. And that was the key to the music. As a matter of fact, we had a demo of ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ from France, with the brothers singing, Blue playing keyboards and Mo playing bass, and right up until the final mix we would play that rough mix from France to use as a guide, because the feel was everything to us. ”

    One thing that distinguished the Bee Gees from traditional R&B was their characteristic rhythms. “A lot of that was Barry’s right hand,” Richardson says. “I mean, every one of those records has some form of acoustic guitar with Barry going ching-ching-ching. Whether it’s hidden or not, it’s there, driving the track along.”…

    Stayin’ Alive’ was tracked live in the studio, vocals were added and a rough mix was done, but nobody was overly impressed with the end result. “It didn’t sound steady enough,” Richardson recalls. As a result, ‘Night Fever’ was quickly penned and recorded with a view to it being the film’s banner waver and accompanying album’s first single. “Everbody was real happy with the way ‘Night Fever’ turned out,” Richardson states. “It had spark and it sounded wonderful.”

    However, when the Hollwood honchos were not quite so enthused, attention was refocused on ‘Stayin’ Alive’. Unfortunately, by this time Dennis Byron had had to fly back to England when his father passed away just days into the sessions, and with no replacement drummers happening to wander by the remote studio in the middle of winter, Barry asked if there was any way they could use the rhythm machine inside the facility’s Hammond organ to make the track sound more steady. In the days before Linn Drums, this was quite a request, prompting Karl Richardson and Albhy Galuten to suggest that it might be workable if augmented by Barry’s own rhythm guitar.

    “We were able to get a 4/4 beat out of the Hammond, but when Barry played along to it we didn’t like the result,” says Richardson. “Then Albhy and I came up with the idea of finding two bars [of real drums] that really felt good and making an eternal tape loop.” In fact, the engineer’s initial intention had been to take two bars of the four-track drums from ‘Night Fever’, re-record these about 100 times and then splice them together in order to create a new track. It was only while he, Galuten and the band listened and listened and listened to the song over the Auratones in order to find the best couple of bars that Richardson then decided to copy these onto the half-inch tape of an MCI four-track machine and create the aforementioned loop.

    “The drums from ‘Night Fever’ basically consisted of two bars at 30ips,” he says. “The tape was over 20 feet long and it was running all around the control room — I gaffered some empty tape-box hubs to the tops of mic stands and ran the tape between the four-track machine and an MCI 24-track deck, using the tape guides from a two-track deck for the tension. Because it was 4/4 time — just hi-hats and straight snare — it sounded steady as a rock, and this was pre-drum machine. For the tempo I used the varispeed on the MCI four-track, so the drums that ended up on the 24-track were at least third-generation, and because the tape heads were so badly worn I brightened the tracks that were already Dolby A-encoded with high-end EQ from the API console.”

    The drum loop would go on to have quite a career in its own right, serving as the backbone to not only ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘More Than A Woman’, but also Barbra Streisand’s ‘Woman In Love’. “That steady, steady track gave us the groove we wanted, and we then overdubbed everbody to it,” Richardson continues. “The guys did their vocals, Alan played the guitar riff, Blue played electric piano and an ARP string synth, and when Dennis returned he overdubbed the toms, crash and hi-hat. He loved it. A case of a lot less work. And the fun thing was, when we listed the credit on the record, the drummer on ‘Stayin’ Alive’ was listed as Bernard Lupé; a sort of French version of the famous session drummer Bernard Purdie. Well, we received an unbelievable amount of calls looking for this steady drummer named Bernard Lupé. You know, ‘This guy’s a rock! I’ve never heard anyone so steady in my life!'”

  11. My favorite Bee Gees song is “Living Eyes”, a song they recorded immediately after the disco backlash had begun, and a song a lot of people have never heard.

    I love all their music, including the music they composed for other artists, and not just for their youngest brother.

  12. While I will acknowledge the Bee Gees as a huge talent … just not my cup of tea. When they got tagged as disco which I despised … nope not for me. Actually when disco was popular I checked out of the music scene all together.

  13. In my long-time fan study of rock music it’s clear that anyone who made it to the top for more than an album or three, brought an insane level of talent and care to the process — as neo’s long quote indicates.

    There are more significant contributions than creating a pop hit — the polio vaccine comes to mind — but it is damn hard, unpredictable work and deserving recognition.

    Though not a fan, I say the Bee Gees passed that test in spades.

  15. No … all i knew of the Bee Gees were the “Saturday Night Fever” stuff. I was always drawn to the more hard core rock bands. May i say the “rebels” in the music scene.

    No idea they had 1,000 songs to their credit. That is amazing in it self.

  16. The backlash to the disco years was immense but mainly only in the US. ‘Spirits Having Flown’ the album that featured ‘Tragedy’, ‘Too Much Heaven’ and ‘Love You Inside Out’ (all #1 hits) came out in 1979 and after that it was tough sledding for The Bee Gees in the US. They had a massive world wide hit in 1983 with ‘You Win Again’ but it only peaked at #75 in the US. Then in 1989 they had their only top ten post disco with ‘One’ which hit #7 in the US. Both of those are really good in a more AC kind of way.

    It is definitely a trade off to have massive ubiquitous success because a backlash often follows and talent can’t stop it from happening.

  17. Together, the Bee Gees, Karl Richardson and Albhy Galuten created what most of us think of as the sound of disco, but it was not their intention to invent a new style. “We never knew about disco and we didn’t think about disco. We thought we were making rhythm and blues records. It was all about R&B. We loved all that stuff, we just couldn’t figure out how to do it! –neo quote

    I’ve wondered why the Bee Gees turned to disco. Apparently, that amusing scene never occurred. According to the quote they were aiming at R&B and invented a sound of their own. This became their brand of disco and succeeded because it was so danceable.

    I confess “Night Fever” sounds a long ways from Fats Domino or Little Richard, though not so far from, say, the O’Jays. “Fever” is definitely funkier than “Morning of My Life” from earlier Bee Gees. All’s fair in love and music.

  18. Huxley,

    I think disco/dance music really was just an off shoot of R & B music and then took on a life of its own. Think of all the off shoots of rock from the 1960s on. Psychedelic, blues rock, progressive, metal, country rock, soft rock and on and on.

    There was just a time between about 77-79 when disco dominated R & B and the entire pop music world. Then it flamed out.

  19. I was never a fan of disco either, though I didn’t hate it and I did like Donna Summer. Disco was infectiously danceable and I appreciated that. Between prog and punk, rock had become less so.

    In the late seventies it was hard to get the dancing going at parties until someone put a disco record on.

  20. I think disco/dance music really was just an off shoot of R & B music and then took on a life of its own.

    Griffin:

    True. R&B was basically a bastard term for black music, whatever it was at the time. It's not hard to trace black music then morphing into disco.

    The O'Jays big hit, "Love Train," came out in 1972 as a black anti-war song but it had that throbbing, feelgood beat which looked ahead to disco. Whit Stillman used it for the end credits of his under-rated film, "The Last Days of Disco

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vTKmVvyNRc

  21. “In my long-time fan study of rock music it’s clear that anyone who made it to the top for more than an album or three, brought an insane level of talent and care to the process…” huxley

    That comment brought the catalogs of Gordon Lightfoot and Paul Simon to mind. Not just outstanding performers but highly gifted composers.

  22. Geoffrey Britain,

    Gordon Lightfoot is an absolute genius. There is a documentary on him made a couple years ago called ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ that is on Amazon Prime and it is great.

    Also Rick Beato did a What Makes This Song Great for ‘If You Could Read My Mind’ that is in my opinion the best of the now 99 episodes of WMTSG.

    Gord is insanely under appreciated.

  23. jack:

    In the 60s they were a baroque pop band, something like the Hollies or the Beatles with some R&B thrown in. Their R&B standard “To Love Someone” from 1967 has been covered hundreds of times (something between 100 and 200 times, anyway), including by Nina Simone and Janis Joplin. And then after the disco era there were tons of songs, too. Many of them were pop standards for other singers such as Barbra Steisand’s “Woman in Love” (actually all the songs on her “Guilty” album), Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers “Islands in the Stream,” and Dionne Warwick’s “Heartbreaker,” among others, including most of younger brother Andy Gibb’s huge hits. Then later they had a lot more hits such as this one.

  24. Geoffrey Britain, Griffin:

    I was reminded of the Rick Beato Great Song episode too. “If You Could Read My Mind” is truly a great song and Beato told the story of his personal connection to it.

    Beato remarked, I think in a Best Countdown episodes, that Paul Simon is one of the world’s best fingerstyle guitarists. I can tell Simon is formidable in that department, but I’ll take Rick’s word for world’s best.

    Before Simon became famous he spent some time in England learning from the best folk guitarists there. Martin Carthy for one — Carthy ended up in Steeleye Span for a time — and someone most Americans don’t know, Davey Graham, who brought in many eclectic influences to folk guitar and was pivotal in his day.

    On the “Sounds of Silence” album Simon played an intriguing acoustic song, “Anji” which was Graham’s:

    –Davey Graham, “Anji”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXhWgbmc9yU

    Graham was a prodigy who absorbed everything — classical, folk, jazz, pop, and Middle Eastern, pioneered DADGAD tuning, and developed an intricate, deep style that went far beyond the regular folk guitarists of his time. He was the guy the UK guitarists looked up to.

    Unfortunately Graham was so influenced by jazz he took up heroin and never managed a proper career.

  25. Thanks, Neo, for the interesting item about recording Saturday Night Fever. I read back in the day that the Bee Gees decided to reinvent themselves and listened to the radio intensively to update their music. I thought the LP with “Jive Talkin'” was great, too.

    I know (and understand) a lot of people hate it, but listening to the intro to “Stayin’ Alive” with fresh ears recently, I was blown away.

    Also, big upvote for Gordon Lightfoot. Saw him in concert a few times, never disappointed.

  26. Oliver T:

    I agree that the intro to “Stayin Alive” is astoundingly good. It immediately grabs a person. Startlingly good.

  27. I was thinking of you and close harmony the other day, listening to a duet made of twin sisters, they are called Ibeyi. Multilingual and very intetesting percussion accompaniment!

  28. In passing I would note, as I discovered during my cardiac “incident,” is that when the responders or others who would save you start compression on your chest to restart your heart many are trained to do so to the tempo of Stayin’ Alive.

  29. Pingback:The Bee Gees Will Always Be Stayin Alive

  30. Neo,

    I’m glad you do these, even if little of this music is something I’d ever seek out. It’s funny. You’ve mentioned that you much prefer male voices in this kind of performance, and the BeeGees, the Beach Boys and Four Seasons sound, on first exposure, asexual or homosexual. When I heard those first mentioned on the radio when I was just hitting puberty, it was this aspect of their approach that first hit me, as I was seeking, let us say, different implied role models at the time. Therefore what appealed to me and (I daresay) my circle of friends, were Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Wilson Pickett and James Brown, John Lennon, maybe Bob Dylan or even Lou Reed.

    And maybe who we are when we’re a child or a teenager remains there within us forever after as a large factor in our irrational, emotive response to music as ungovernable stimuli.

    By the way, in terms of harmony vocals, I have always liked Kate and Anna McGarrigle, as well as the Roches (Maggie, Suzy and Terri). But “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was the song that really meant something important to my sense of self there in my childish world. That voice defined who I wanted to be, wherever that led, whatever that meant.

    Now, was the young female audience of the time afraid of and repelled by Mick Jagger? Did some want instead to be safely enfolded in the arms of Robin or Barry Gibbs, Frankie Valli or Brian Wilson? Something was going on, something definitely went on, and some portion of that identity froze to remain fixed there in the psyche forevermore.

    No doubt with consequences unforeseen.

  32. miklos:

    I much prefer male voices, but not primarily falsetto at all. I like falsetto well enough, but I actually prefer regular chest or head voices. For example, three musicians/singers I have written about a lot and really really like are Leonard Cohen, Richard Thompson, and Knopfler of Dire Staits. LOVE them. Also, for a group, the Everly Brothers, and the Eagles. I like the disco/falsetto Bee Gees stuff, but mostly prefer the Bee Gees regular voices to their falsettos.

    I liked the Stones as well. Don’t have any desire to listen to them now, though. But Satisfaction is a great great song. That opening riff, of course.

  33. miklos:

    By the way, by the time the Bee Gees were singing falsetto, I was no teenager. Nor was I a fan of theirs at the time.

    Also, I liked Bob Dylan’s voice the minute I heard it, and that was in the early 60s on the radio on some folk station. I liked his early stuff but not his later stuff. I was cured of any desire to ever go to a Dylan concert by actually attending one. He never looked up from the ground, mumbled the lyrics so that even the songs we already knew sounded like gibberish, and changed the tunes to horrible monotones.

  34. Mick Jagger had a falsetto in his back pocket which he pulled out on occasion. “Emotional Rescue” most notably, though I didn’t much care for that.

    But the Stones’ one great disco song, “Miss You,” definitely.

  35. Huxley,

    I’ve never bought it that ‘Miss You’ was a disco song. It was a disco era song and was probably influenced by the trends of the time but not disco in my opinion. It did have a really good 7 minute dance remix though so maybe I’m being nit picky but that song just isn’t disco to me.

  36. Get “Greenfields: the Gibb Brothers’ Songbook”.
    Recent and spectacular!
    Barry says that he has now gone Country/Nashville. I think Nashville has gone Gibbs.

  38. Texan99

    Thank you for that link. I have never watched that show, and now I realize what I missed all these years. Fortunately (or un), I also realized while I watched it that watching more than about 3 minutes would be a little too much, so that clip was a perfect introduction.

  39. Griffin:

    OK, the Stones’ one great sorta-disco song!

    Mick had been going to discos a lot. It does have the basic four-on-the-floor beat, but no toot, toot, beep, beep.

  40. I really LIKE the falsetto in “Emotional Rescue”, tho I’m far more a Doors/ Jim Morrison fan, and Lou Reed. And for me it’s good that it’s only there for awhile.

    YouTube offered me this 32 song 1997 full live concert (after Neo’s Run to Me link):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0npW4WoGmc
    Which not only has most of their top hits, but makes it very easy to find the song you want.
    *** More live shows should be using this tech ***

    It’s easy to review Stayin’ Alive, or my fav, Nights in Broadway (too short – but all three together on one mic #21). Cute kissing a little girl with a rose seconds before Stayin’ Alive 1:37.

    Most of their lyrics are only good to very good. Tho sometimes surprisingly good (Lonely Days: “outside the restaurant, the music plays, so nonchalant…”)
    [I’m enjoying “live blog commenting” this concert while writing the comment – and jumping around.] I seldom feel like singing a Bee Gees song, by myself.

    Not like the Everly Brothers, who I have more fun singing to. A few weeks ago I listened a lot to many Everlys.

    Big surprise for me is #7 Closer than Close, with Mo on lead, and it’s not a hit BUT I quite like it. Maybe for slow dancing, but not like fun disco. Just before Robin says “Now it’s time for Maurice to make a fool of himself”. I noticed on some earlier concert vids that Robin sort of pushes Mo around a little, sometimes. Thought of it at the time, after reading about the Everly breakup.

    There’s something about Robin Gibbs’ “looks” that fit his unique sound, that I don’t quite like. Partly the overbite (like Freddie Mercury), but while he’s not ugly, I somehow find him overall not attractive. Mo, especially with a hat, is better – and Barry is cute. Some of those Huge Hair 70s / 80s concerts were too much – I wonder if their look/ style is also a big part of the dislike for those who dislike them.

    The Kinks also have a couple of brothers, but Ray Davies usually sings alone while brother Dave plays guitar (great!), tho he does sing backing vocals. Reminds me of Lou Reed saying he was asked to write the song “Walk and the Wild Side”. We think, after Ray Davies, you’re the most literate rock song writer [Take No Prisoners – Lou Reed Live]

    Been looking at GameStop (all day, and all of the night!). At $63 on Friday.

    I got The Roche’s CD because of their fine Hallelujah Chorus – but generally like Leonard Cohen more than the Bee Gees. So after this concert, it’s back to “Everybody Knows”, or maybe “First we take Manhattan”.

  42. Neo,

    Actually, the first BeeGees song I became aware of (and rather liked) was “To Love Somebody.” I knew they were talented long before the disco-era falsetto material; they just sounded a little too sensitive (or pretend-sensitive), a little too showbiz and professional entertainer-level “sincere” for me.

    Falsetto as such sometimes serves as a fantastically affecting resource. I go back to Robert Johnson in 1937, his voice soaring upwards at the end of some lines in “Me and the Devil Blues.” Tommy Johnson, his contemporary, is unforgettable when he breaks his voice in “Canned Heat Blues” and elsewhere. Both of those singers can still send chills up one’s spine.

    Marvin Gaye, in the 1970s, and Jagger in any number of songs, break into falsetto on occasion as an emotionally effective resource, without in any way seeming unmasculine or weak. Frankie Valli and Robin Gibb just seem to reside in a different category. (I don’t know what one might say about Lou Christie in “Lightning Strikes Again.”)

    Disco was always okay with me. Maybe going into a crowded nightclub, fully open to such the kinaesthetic experience, bumping up against sexually available young women when “looking for love” to some extent oneself, influenced to some extent by alcohol and even perhaps cocaine, feeling the rhythm as well as only partly hearing anything, even voices in one’s ear, above the gigantic BEAT — well, such associations probably made the music sound better on one’s home stereo, though not to be forgotten is the factor of how synthesizer technology was swiftly advancing and disco music was its prime laboratory. It seemed ultramodern, at least for a spell, and that was Cool, and most Americans want above all else to be Cool (or at least not UnCool).

    Giorgio Moroder had a couple of great years ruling that world. And Disco was to a great extent a gay aesthetic… just before, just before, the advent of AIDS.

    Cultural fashions are never uncomplicated.

  43. I sure wouldn’t mind a disco revival. Cocaine and unsafe sex aside, it was fun and comparatively innocent, with nice clothes and real dance moves.

    I liked the swing revival in the 90s too.

    Meanwhile, it seems rap/hip-hop will never die.

  44. Of course, there is the argument that disco never died, it just morphed into the various flavors of dance club music — house, techno, rave, etc.

  45. huxley,

    You mentioned Glass and Riley. I would of course add Steve Reich. There were and are others but that triumvirate are the most significant for me.

    In my early 20s I was giving piano recitals of my own compositions and improvisations in which I’d incorporated what I thought of as a “trance music” aesthetic. This all started for me with the piano by John Cale on the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting for the Man” in 1966, which was what led me to begin playing the piano in the first place, when I was 12, moving on to Bela Bartok and then eventual lessons from 75 year old Mrs Grosvenor.

  46. miklos000rosza :

    You were listening to “I’m Waiting for the Man” at age 12? Oh, baby!

    OTOH, at age 12 I was living with a junkie. I bought his cough syrup when he was short. Swings and roundabouts.

    I like Reich, but his music is too percussive and drives my ears crazy.

  47. huxley; miklos:

    Robin Gibb had the sort of unique voice that people tend to either love or hate, but he did not sing in falsetto when he sang alone, except in one very obscure song. All of his solo lines or solo songs with the Bee Gees were mostly in his head voice or sometimes in his chest voice. He had a huge range and could go very high or very low. Example of the former is here, example of the latter is here.

    I don’t even think that Robin used falsetto on the choruses very much if at all, because his very high head voice sufficed. If you’re interested (and perhaps you’re not) you can read about his huge vocal range here. Also, at this site you can hear one of the only examples of him singing solo falsetto – it’s almost scary-high – on the song “Living Together.” On another song – the first at the site, entitled “Don’t Fall in Love With Me” – you can hear a good example of what tended to happen on the choruses. In that song, Robin sings lead in his head voice, his brothers sing in falsetto on the chorus (or at least Barry does) but he joins them in head voice rather than falsetto. With the Bee Gees singing together, it’s sometimes hard to hear and identify the separate voices. But in solo, Robin sings in normal voice almost 100% of the time, as does Maurice in his rare solos (such as this one). It was Barry who sang a lot of solo falsetto.

  48. Tom Grey:

    I’ve also learned a lot about the Davies brothers through interviews, and they had a remarkably contentious relationship that often involved physical fights that actually got quite serious. The Bee Gees liked to tease each other and now and then had falling outs, but I don’t think Robin and Maurice ever had a serious falling out at all and they did a lot of good-natured teasing.

    Also see my comment above this one on Robin’s voice.

    As for their looks, you might be startled to learn – via YouTube comments – that a lot of women like Robin’s looks immensely. His looks actually varied a great deal over the years, sometimes quite handsome and sometimes very awkward. He did have his teeth fixed quite early on (as did all the brothers, as soon as they got any money to do it I think), but his fix was not quite as successful and he remained slightly buck-toothed. Maurice looked fabulous in the hats. And Barry Gibb was, according to enormous numbers of women, one of the handsomest men alive. When young, he also had remarkable carriage/presence, which I find very arresting. Here’s a video (lip-synced for a TV show, alas) in the early days when you can see what I mean about his presence (see 2:30), as well as Robin’s (somewhat endearing, to me) awkwardness.

    All three brothers were very very funny, by the way, especially in interviews with all three when they happened to feel comfortable with the person interviewing them.

  49. miklos, etc:

    Anyone who wants to hear an amazingly long-lived falsetto, check out Eddie Holman at 70 years of age:

    He’s a minister now, but the song was a hit for him in 1970.

  50. neo:

    I like learning about unusual talents. I assume genetic endowment is a big part of large, not to mention huge, vocal ranges.

    My mother once told me about Yma Sumac, a Peruvian singer famous for a range of 4-5 octaves. Somehow that stuck in my mind and I was excited when I discovered her voice was part of “The Big Lebowski” soundtrack.

    –Yma Sumac – Ataypura
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqg90kpVlRM

    Lately I’ve also been looking into Martin Denny who recorded Sumac in his Exotica series of albums.

    –Martin Denny and Yma Sumac – Wimoweh
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LUSUel_kck

    Her “Wimoweh” is a once in a lifetime experience!

  51. I am so TIRED of “Rock Groups” I could SCREAM. !!!

    I was i high school when I first heard the ICONIC “Rock Around The Clock”, I almost barfed – and the same goes for Elvis.

    Fortunately, “Folk Music” came along and made music bearable – possibly because I came from Sweden where real Folk Music was still alive (see: August Strindberg’s Favorite “Fjäril’n vingad syns på Haga”º which was deemed too “religeos-sounding” for his funeral. A national hero denied his send-off. Or the beautiful “Vårvindar Friska Lâka” can pull your heart-strings.

    (Both on You-tube, although the versions often are “modernized”) GAK!!

    When a radio that had run out of stations in 1965 happened to blurt Out Judy Colljns’ “Farewell to Tarwathie” @ 2AM, I/we were finally redeemed.

    I still can’t stand it when some rank amateur is strangling a guitar and Wailing.

    If you want Guitar, Andrés Segovia is still able to be heard.

  52. The Davies brothers are right up there with the Fogertys for siblings with contentious relationships in the rock world.

    The Kinks song ‘Rock N Roll Fantasy’ about the band and specifically Ray and Dave is a great song. Ray Davies is such a unique songwriter and storyteller.

  53. Erik:

    For what it’s worth, the Bee Gees are a pop group rather than a rock group, although you may still hate them.

  54. Griffin:

    The Kinks were another early favorite of mine. The Davies brothers, very unique, especially Ray’s later lyrics.

  56. I heard Yma Sumac when I was a child. She was quite well known back then.

    neo:

    So I understand. My mother played a lot of music; though, not Yma Sumac. I do find it a trip to listen back to 50s music. Some I know; some I intuit from being alive at the time.

    I can well imagine the big daddy with black-framed eyeglasses and a pipe pouring martinis and showing off his stereo system by playing Yma Sumac. It’s charming really.

  57. Erik:

    So where do you stand on ABBA, Sweden’s claim to pop fame?

    I find them quite charming too. For whatever they did, they did it about as perfectly as it could be done.

    Not many Americans realize what a mega-platinum monster world group they were.

  58. huxley:

    Whose imaginary father are you channeling there? Some 1950s dad from Mad Men? Or are you speaking of someone you knew?

    But if it’s my father you’re thinking about, that’s pretty funny. My actual father: no eyeglasses, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t listen to music except now and then Lawrence Welk or ballroom dance records (my parents were huge ballroom dancers, very good), and no stereo in the house. Just a really crummy record player in the basement.

  59. “I can well imagine the big daddy with black-framed eyeglasses and a pipe pouring martinis and showing off his stereo system by playing Yma Sumac. It’s charming really.”

    Neo responds,

    “huxley:

    Whose imaginary father are you channeling there? Some 1950s dad from Mad Men? Or are you speaking of someone you knew?

    But if it’s my father you’re thinking about, that’s pretty funny. My actual father: no eyeglasses, didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t listen to music except now and then Lawrence Welk …””

    Not Mad Men, but Mad Magazine; a copy he got ahold of at 7 years old.

    Dave Berg. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c1/fe/6b/c1fe6b0fab08d487265a8aa4d7b6ebcf.jpg

  62. Now I’m wondering if some “hate Bee Gees” isn’t based a bit on their joining Peter Frampton in the big St. Pepper’s movie flop. Near the top comments:
    They turned the best album of all time into one of the worst movies ever

    At the time, 1978, I think the largest selling double album of all time was:
    Frampton Comes Alive (I had it on tape, but only sometimes listened to it. Couple great hits, filler not really so good.)
    Thx for Mad Mag.

    On ABBA, they were HUGE in Central Europe. Where, since they were Swedish, the commies allowed them on the radio, while forbidding most US/ UK songs. At balls (no ball season this year, sadly), there is usually a pop/ disco/ DJ dancing, and “Dancing Queen” is almost inevitable.

    Funny, they’re also huge on John Denver’s “Country Roads”, with groups holding hands in a circle and doing easy fun semi-drunk dancing, plus going in and out.

    I didn’t like that overplayed song in the US, but now it’s fun to dance to.
    In a literal, circle dance.

  63. I finally found the time to enjoy this post and all the comments. Thank you Neo. Brought back many buried fond memories. Griffin, thanks for the Gordon Lightfoot recommendations (Rick Beato/Amazon Prime).

  64. I got a good laugh out of comparing the BeeGees to the Chipmunks because that’s how I felt back in the day (I am 70 at the moment). I thought the lyrics of their songs were dumb too, I mean, “You can tell by the way I use my voice I’m a woman’s man” sung in falsetto. Really?

    But if you follow the idea to its conclusion, you come to this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Bagdasarian

    and the story of one of our time’s great creative talents, unknownish in his own day and forgotten in ours. Not to mention “perfect close harmony!”

  66. I can’t thank you enough for this post on the Bee Gees! I have so enjoyed the interviews and found a number of songs from the 60’s that I had completely forgotten about. Thank you!

  67. Sharon W:

    Glad you’ve enjoyed them!

    I also had pretty much forgotten them for about 40 years – and in fact never knew very much about them in the first place. The rediscovery and extended look a la YouTube has been a great pleasure – but a time-consuming one. Watch out 🙂 ! The Bee Gees are very habit-forming, I’ve discovered.

    At least they’re not fattening.

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