Is talent genetic? There’s certainly a pervasive argument to suggest it might be. Some of the most successful performers in pop history are part of musical families – top drawer acts like Michael Jackson, Beyoncé and Noel Gallagher have all been notable for having siblings blessed with singing voices just as strong as their own.
But when it comes to a single bloodline, there is one band of brothers that always come out on top — a trio with an extraordinary up-down-on-off story that saw them enjoy record sales of in excess of 220 million to become the world’s most successful family group, while honing their craft as residents of three continents.
They are, of course, the Bee Gees: Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb: born into a hand-to-mouth existence on the Isle Of Man in the 1940s, becoming rapscallion delinquents in ’50s England, child stars in ’60s Australia and musical megastars in ’70s America, aided in no small part by the monumentally-successful soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, one of the biggest-selling and culturally significant albums of all time.
After a clutch of Aussie-only releases that began in 1963, their career really took off four years later with the cheerful sounding single, New York Mining Disaster 1941, and the Gibbs would infuse popular culture with dozens of worldwide hits — including 12 UK/US No. 1s — that featured their singular and highly-influential three-part harmonies.
They continued into the 21st century with their final album, 2001’s This Is Where I Came In. Non-identical twins Maurice and Robin died in 2003 and 2012 respectively, leaving elder brother Barry as keeper of the flame, though, honourably, without using the Bee Gees name, even though it was in part based on his initials in the first place.
They influenced David Bowie‘s Space Oddity, been covered by George Michael and Bruce Springsteen, and on a personal level it’s a matter of some regret I didn’t get to see the brothers live in the flesh. The closest, I suppose, was witnessing Take That (cough*) perform their version of How Deep Is Your Love — one of my most favourite Bee Gees tunes — in the Top Of The Pops studio as a pre-record in 1996, just after the taping of an episode that saw Tina Turner, David Bowie and Pet Shop Boys hawking their latest 45s at the BBC’s Elstree centre.
And if that sounds like a cue then you’d be right, as stevepafford.com is delighted to welcome out newest contributor. Wayne Studer is a musicologist and author of the Bowie-heavy book Rock On The Wild Side: Gay Images in the Popular Music of the Rock Era. He’s also creator of the almost biblical Pet Shop Boys Commentary website at geowayne.com, so I could hardly wish for a more natural fit.
For his debut feature, Wayne’s listed his Perfect 10 of top drawer Bee Gees tunes, so without further ado…
To Love Somebody (1967)
Famously written by Barry and Robin as a “soul ballad” with a view toward Otis Redding recording it – only he died in a plane crash before he had a chance to do so (though Nina Simone had a go) – To Love Somebody served as the second single from the trio’s first international album, released in 1967 with the somewhat unimaginative title Bee Gees 1st.
While it’s Robin who’s generally thought of as the most soulful singer among the Gibb brothers (though the Gibb family joke was always that his singing voice sounded like a “quavering Arab”), Barry does a more than passable job of conveying the heartfelt angst of their lyrics. A lot of people overlook the implicit putdown of the recurring title phrase, “You don’t know what it’s like to love somebody the way I love you.” In other words, she doesn’t deserve him. But that doesn’t stop him from loving her anyway. And if that isn’t a formula for romantic misery, I don’t know what is.
I Started A Joke (1968)
Welcome to one of the most mysterious hit singles of the Rock Era. I mean, just what the hell is it about? The singer – Robin in one of his most celebrated lead vocals – would seem to be speaking from beyond the grave about some “joke” he started that caused everyone to cry, until he himself started to cry, which then made everyone else laugh, until he finally died, which then “started the whole world living.” Along the way he falls out of bed and hurts his head on things he had said. OK, maybe it‘s all one big extended metaphor, but a metaphor for WHAT? Or maybe it‘s just word-salad that sounds good but doesn’t mean diddly squat.
Some people, desperate to make some kind of sense of it all, believe the narrator is Jesus Christ. Who knows? I suspect even the Bee Gees themselves didn‘t know, and if they did, they never let on. Barry once said of the period in which they wrote it, “There was a lot of psychedelia and the idea that if you wrote something, even if it sounded ridiculous, somebody would find the meaning for it, and that was the truth.” I take him at his word. Nevertheless, Robin always got a tremendous ovation whenever he sang it live.
Nights On Broadway (1975)
Proving that their big 1975 out-of-leftfield comeback hit Jive Talkin‘ was no mere fluke, the Bee Gees followed it up with this even better (I would say much better) song about a stalker (read the lyrics) pursuing the woman he loves to New York City, where he obsessively watches her from a distance performing on stage. I mean, the Gibbs could wrench hit material from the strangest places. Oddball lyrics aside, it‘s the sheer power of this cut that earns it a spot here. Those unforgettably pounding piano chords alone do it for me, but Barry‘s and Robin‘s shared lead vocals – yes, again trading off, playing their respective strengths as singers against each other – are equally superb.
And if that weren‘t enough, they come up with one of the finest middle-eights of the 1970s, slowing down the pace just long enough to give a great contrasting oomph! to the more uptempo final choruses. It gets lumped in with their other Disco Era tracks of the mid- and late-seventies, but there‘s nothing disco about it. It‘s just plain great pop music.
Fanny (Be Tender with My Love) (1976)
It’s blue-eyed soul time again, only this time updated to the “sweet soul” sound so popular in the mid-seventies. The Brothers Gibb do a magnificent job here of conveying how opening yourself up to a world of love also opens you up to a world of hurt. So the narrator begs Fanny not to hurt him, so much so that it almost sounds like he‘s asking for it. By the way, tell me that’s not a brassy moniker to choose for this fictional lover, even if they did reportedly draw it from the actual name of their housekeeper at the famous 461 Ocean Blvd building in Miami Beach.
Although Barry would be the Bee Gee who would soon gain notoriety for his falsetto vocals, it was apparently Maurice who interjects most of them in this track. As Mo would later say of this number, ”We all love that one, but it‘s just a bitch to sing.”
You Should Be Dancing (1976)
The earlier Jive Talkin‘ notwithstanding, this was the Bee Gees’ first real disco single. And it‘s their best disco song, too. I know the mass of rock journalism has traditionally handed that distinction to Stayin‘ Alive, but I suspect that‘s just because they‘re enamoured of its lyrics, which appeal to their politically correct proletarian sensibilities. But when John Travolta did his famous centrepiece solo dance in Saturday Night Fever, he didn‘t choose Stayin‘ Alive or one of the other new Bee Gees tracks that debuted in the film. He picked You Should Be Dancing instead.
In fact, although the director John Badham wanted him to don his boogie shoes for a different number, the future Grease star put his high-heeled foot down and asserted, “No, it‘s You Should Be Dancing or nothing.“ He knew what he was talking about – and dancing to. Underscoring that truth, though the Brothers Gibb would enjoy a string of six consecutive No. 1 pop hits during the Disco Era, this (which was not among those six) was the only one that reached the very pinnacle of the specialist Billboard Dance/Disco chart.
You Win Again (1987)
By the early 1980s, the Bee Gees were personae non gratae on the charts. The rockist/racist/sexist/homophobic Disco Sucks movement had virtually banished them from the radio, at least as performers. So for several years they contented themselves as songwriters and producers for other artists (among them Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton, and Diana Ross) and enjoyed an enviable string of successes in those roles.
But by 1987 the brothers were ready to give it another go under the Bee Gees banner. That’s when they put out the excellent E.S.P. The trio’s 17th studio album went virtually unnoticed in the US by all but their most dedicated fans, barely scraping into the Top 100. But it achieved a good deal of success in other countries, reaching No. 5, for instance, in the United Kingdom. Much of the credit for that goes to its fantastic lead single, You Win Again, an international chart-topper (but reaching only #75 in the States). With its tough, thoroughly updated sound – very much of the late eighties – it exuded a confidence that testifies to their professionalism and sophistication as songwriters and performers. Meanwhile, most Americans didn’t know what they were missing.
Ordinary Lives (1989)
The international success of E.S.P. primed the pump for even greater heights. Their next album, 1989‘s One, while still not a barnstormer in North America, boasted a title track that would become the Gibbs‘ first Top 10 hit in a little over a decade. Although the song One provided a short-lived US chart comeback for Barry, Robin, and Maurice, it was the album‘s lead track and second single that really stood out.
An uptempo but sombre rumination that appears to have been influenced by the recent death of their younger brother Andy, Ordinary Lives is one of those patented Bee Gees songs – and there are many – that seem to suggest more than they overtly deliver. But that’s where their strength lies. There‘s something profoundly tragic going on beneath Ordinary Lives, though you can‘t quite put your finger on precisely what. The Gibbs leave it up to you to fill in the blanks. And that, my friends, is a common strategy of great art. In the case of this song, it‘s just plain haunting.
For Whom The Bell Tolls (1993)
Like Islands in the Stream from a decade earlier, which the Bee Gees penned for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton – garnering in the process a Number One hit on the US pop, country, and adult contemporary charts – the Brothers Gibb took another title from Ernest Hemingway for their 1993 single For Whom The Bell Tolls, a profoundly powerful ballad that’s only slightly marred by Barry‘s somewhat wimpy (in my opinion) falsetto lead vocal during the verses.
But what more than makes up for that flaw is the trade off of Robin‘s astonishing lead during the chorus. Quite simply, he burns up the microphone. Robin Gibb was one of the most distinctive, idiosyncratic vocalists of the Rock Era, and perhaps no song better illustrates that fact than this. The shortened single version, incidentally, doesn‘t do him justice. Seek out the full-length album version for maximum impact.
Fallen Angel (1993)
The Bee Gees are commonly thought of as a singles band, an assessment with which I largely agree, although a few of their albums, such as Main Course, E.S.P, and One are excellent overall. Their earlier double-album Odessa (named after the once beautiful, currently besieged Ukrainian port city) has become something of a cult classic as well. But, all that being said, each of their other albums has at least one or two (and often more) non-singles that are far more than mere filler. Take Fallen Angel, the “deep cut” closing track of Size Isn‘t Everything, the same twentieth studio set that gave us For Whom The Bell Tolls.
The story goes that the Gibbs had asked the Pet Shop Boys to produce the album for them, but the Boys were too overawed – too intimidated by the Gibbs‘ talent and legacy – to accept the commission. So Size Isn‘t Everything became an essentially self-produced record. Regardless, a strong Pets influence, to which both Robin and Maurice willingly admitted, shows up in this song.
With intense, hyperactive percussion, throbbing bass, and layer upon layer of synths, Fallen Angel sounds almost as if the Bee Gees had set out to out-PSB Messrs. Tennant and Lowe. And they do a more than passable job of it, too, with another great lead vocal by Robin to boot. (Might it have been the Gibbs‘ way of proving that they didn‘t need the seminal synth duo after all?) A little bonus is the fact that the “fallen angel“ of the title is named Caroline, which earns this track a spot within that great collection of Rock Era classics in which women of that name appear, a trope that has led one pop music critic to proclaim, “That Caroline sure is a bitch!“
Alone (1997)
The opening track and first single from the Bee Gees‘ twenty-first and penultimate studio album Still Waters, Alone grabs you from the get-go with its faux bagpipes, hardly a commonplace sound for pop music. Maurice came up with it and apparently hadn‘t originally planned on keeping it for the final cut. But he and his brothers came to realise that it provided a mighty strong hook and was best retained.
One cool sample, however, does not a top-notch recording make. What makes Alone one of the last truly great Gibb songs is its superb melody expressed not only with Barry‘s falsetto in the verses but also with Robin‘s in the chorus. While Robin‘s falsetto often graced their group harmonies, he rarely sang lead in his falsetto range. That‘s perhaps because Robin‘s falsetto could be downright weird. Yet here it takes on a peculiarly mournful quality that serves as the song‘s emotional core. Indeed, that chorus cries.
Well played, boys.
Wayne Studer
BONUS BEATS (four from Wayne + one from Steve)
I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You (1968)
A modern take on the tried-and-true murder ballad, only in this case it’s an after-the-murder-and-impending-execution ballad. Although the lyrics are sung primarily from the perspective of a single person, the condemned man, Robin and Barry curiously trade verses, which renders the narrative a little confusing. But I suspect they simply both wanted a crack at this singularly dramatic scenario.
Whatever else you might say about this song, it’s a pretty audacious concept for Top 40 radio in the Swinging ’60s. Oh, yeah, that and the fact that it’s just plain gorgeous.
Lonely Days (1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3YC5sc_V6IFollowing Robin’s return to the trio after an aborted solo career, the Bee Gees produced the first of their comeback hits, of which they would have several scattered throughout their famously pendulous career. And for a band often lambasted in their early days for sounding a little too Beatlesy, it was pretty darn bold for them to do so with their most Beatlesy song ever, Lonely Days. Considering that it was only earlier that same year that The Beatles had released their final single, The Long And Winding Road, and had announced their breakup, it may not be too much of a stretch to think that Barry, Robin, and Maurice may have been positing themselves, at least subconsciously, as natural successors.
True, the verses bordered on the tweely maudlin – something they would positively revel in with their massive follow-up How Can You Mend A Broken Heart? – but the chorus, with its pounding piano and lusty “Where would I be without my woman?” refrain, suggested levels of testosterone they wouldn’t summon again until the mid-seventies. And there ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little boost of testosterone – especially when you remember, during a chance meeting with the Gibbs, the Pet Shop Boys were happy to admit their 1986 single Opportunities (Let‘s Make Lots Of Money) owed a considerable debt to the refrain and piano intro of the earlier 45.
Stayin’ Alive (1977)
Far from my favourite Bee Gees song but, as noted earlier, it’s the one that rock critics tend to admire, assuming they admire anything at all by the Gibbs. Stayin’ Alive is also the one that cemented them as disco godlings, even if hardcore discophiles of the era turned their noses up at it. Many still do. For good or ill, there’s no denying it’s iconic.
Love You Inside Out (1979)
Unfairly lumped in with their helium voiced dance floor classics (though there’s little if anything disco about it), Love You Inside Out is the last in the Bee Gees’ long string of consecutive US Number Ones before it all came crashing down in the anti-disco backlash. Worth remembering not only for its imaginative rhythm but also for the audacious line about their hearts hanging out, which you just know spawned laughter in the studio.
BONUS BONUS BEATS
Kilburn Towers (1968)
*Even more embarrassingly, I’m fond of the gentle Beatles-esque ballad Kilburn Towers. A sweetly orchestrated deep cut dating from the period when the Bee Gees expanded their line up to include guitarist Vince Melouney and drummer Colin Petersen, the track can be found on the 1968 LP Idea and also the flip side to I Started A Joke.
I suspect the connection was greater by my having lived in Kilburn for so long. I casually assumed the song referenced my old hood, a once Irish stronghold in North-West London.
So imagine my utter astonishment that in preparation for this article I discovered via Wikipedia that it’s actually about a 1960s residential block on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, a rotund focal point of the Manly harbourside area affectionately named the “Toilet Roll Building.”
Utterly bizarrely, Kilburn Towers was at the end of the road I lived throughout much of 2016 to 2020 and yet it’s sod’s law I only discovered it was the song’s inspiration after I’d left the area. I know, right, as the Gibbs would say — tragedy!
Steve Pafford
