The Joy of the Bee Gees

-Ah, the reasons for our popularity?

-Er...

Ooh. HE LAUGHS

I think that's impossible to answer.

Really impossible. Nobody really knows what the reasons are.

# Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'

# I'm a-stayin' alive, stayin' alive

# Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive... #

The Bee Gees. They're more than a flourish of falsettos.

# Stayin' ali-i-i...

# ..i-i-i...

# ..i-i-i-ive... #

They're not just teeth, tans and tight trousers.

Why is it, do you think, that millions of people love your music?

# Cos we're living in a world of fools... #

There's so much more to the Bee Gees

than Saturday Night Fever and office parties.

That looks gay.

You put them on at a party and everybody's dancing.

It doesn't matter how old they are.

# And it's me you need to show

-# How deep is your love?

-How deep is your love... #

Look beyond the white suits and satin. The Bee Gees are pop royalty.

I think the Bee Gees should be revered

in the way the Beatles are revered. And they're not.

Back in the '60s, they were pop balladeers.

The Bee Gees were heartbreakers.

# You don't know what it's like

# Baby, you don't know what it's like

# To love somebody... #

These are some of the most moving,

touching lyrics, I think, ever put to paper.

These were geniuses at communicating emotion, in different ways,

across different decades, to different generations.

The brothers Gibb. They were all graft and craft,

but when they united in song and harmony,

the Bee Gees were pure class.

# Nobody gets too much heaven no more... #

Creating these melodies like spun gold out of the thin air.

How did they do it? It is extraordinary.

From pop to soul to disco, we walk the line between the naffness,

the genius, and, yes, the joy of the Bee Gees.

# I just got to get a message to you... #

Some of our songs, I never really want to listen to.

And some songs, I think, "Oh, boy, that was a good record.

You know? "How did that happen?" HE LAUGHS

# Ah-ah-ah

# Ah-ah ah ah ah

# Ah-ah ah ah ah ah-ah ahhh...

# One hour

# One more hour and my life will be through... #

STACCATO PIANO MUSIC

In the '50s, variety was king, with shows for all the family,

complete with impersonators, dancing girls, and ventriloquists.

Just look at this face, eh?

A mean, melancholic misfit.

LAUGHTER

And this hotbed of talent

is where the brothers Gibb cut their milk teeth.

There is a side of the Bee Gees' music that, you know,

you could say was destined for cabaret from the start.

You can laugh at the fact they were performing in little suits

when they were young kids, but they were in showbusiness

right from the beginning,

and showbusiness meant the whole business of show.

From an early age, music was in their blood, and their dad Hugh,

a band leader on the Mecca club circuit, was their mentor.

Dad used to play the Russell Street club in Manchester,

and he told everybody at this club that his three kids were singing

and harmonising, and they said, "Well, bring them along to the club.

"As long as you're with them, they'll be OK.

"They're underage, but bring them anyway."

And we were three kids, you know? Never work with kids and dogs.

They'll steal everything.

'Come over to the sunny side now.

'Australia, a great place for families.

'Opportunity for you.

'Fine for your wife. Great for your children.'

# Here comes summer

# School is out... #

The Gibb family took up the offer to become "Ten Pound Poms",

and their trip to Oz would inform their songwriting for years to come.

We went on this beautiful white ship called the Fairsea.

We saw things like Egypt and India and the Suez Canal, and Sri Lanka.

That's incredible for kids to experience that,

and I've always felt that was really what kick-started the creativity,

you know, seeing these different cultures at such a young age.

The adventure had begun.

# Let the sun shine bright on my happy summer home... #

Encouraged by their dad, the brothers formed a band,

and toured Queensland's holiday resorts and dives...

# Come on and hear, come on and hear

# It's the best band in the land... #

We did the Sandgate Hotel, and it was a galvanised roof,

and the water was pouring in onto the stage.

Like, not just raining, pouring in.

And we had to stand there, with water pouring,

soaking and singing, and people sitting in front of us fighting.

Not standing, but punching each other sitting down.

..until the young brothers caught the eye of TV producers.

Here are some of the boys I'm looking for. The Bee Gees.

Barry here, the leader of the group. Come here.

Barry Gibb, and your young brothers. Now, come on, who are you?

Which is which? You're twins, eh?

-I'm Robin.

-Robin.

-And Maurice.

-And Maurice.

Barry was tall, good-looking lad, you know.

And then there was Robin and Maurice,

who were these short little dudes, you know?

And they played a guitar, and they had all little high voices.

# Ah-ah-ah...

# I'll speak long and sing long

# Cos time is passing by

# I'll drift along and breeze along just like a butterfly... #

They were looked upon as more of a novelty act, you know, then?

And people could... People realised their talent,

but it just wasn't taken all that seriously.

Growing up down under,

their songs took inspiration from old school America.

# Bye-bye, love

# Bye-bye, happiness... #

With their clean-cut looks and harmonies,

they harked back to the '50s...

# Wine and women and song will only make me sad

# Love and kisses and hugs, the thing I never had... #

..until they were inspired by only the biggest band in the world.

What a day it was at Adelaide airport.

Arriving to meet the citizens were John Lennon,

two other Beatle regulars, and Jimmie Nicol.

You've missed the ashtray!

Paul, what do you expect to find here in Australia?

Australians. THEY ALL LAUGH

The feeling, the actual vibration that was going on in the culture,

it changed everybody. You know, it changed hair, it changed clothes.

Everything changed, and no-one knew why,

but they all had to follow this thing.

# Where is the sun

# That shone on my head... #

Spicks And Specks was the first record

that went to number one in Perth.

We thought, "Something's happening. Something's happening."

# All of my life

# I call yesterday

# The spicks and the specks of my life gone away... #

By 1967, they had released 11 singles in Australia,

but for the Bee Gees, London was calling.

We had to get to England. We had to be a part of it,

and I remember my father and us having a really big argument

with the executives at Festival Records,

because we didn't want to stay.

We had to make it internationally one way or another.

We knew that in some way, that was our destiny.

# Let me take you down

# Cos I'm going to

# Strawberry fields... #

When we arrived in England was the week of release of Strawberry Fields,

and that was a shock to the system, everybody's system, you know?

And Penny Lane, and...

That was the drive. "Oh, God," you know,

"they've raised the bar again."

You know? How do these boys, how do these guys do this, you know?

And everybody's got to aspire to that now.

# Penny Lane, there is a barber showing photographs... #

Ever ambitious, the Bee Gees went straight to the top.

Epstein, of course, at the time, was ruling the roost, you know,

as far as all the bands were, the pop bands were concerned.

And the Bee Gees were trying to make their way, and so was Robert.

Epstein passed them on to his Aussie business partner,

impresario Robert Stigwood.

He heard them singing on the steps outside his office,

and thought he'd found the new Beatles,

and of course, people probably laughed, as they do.

There we were. Going to names, being signed to names.

Being signed to the Beatles' organisation.

And being in those offices while the Beatles, one or the other,

would walk through. It was just incredible.

The Bee Gees are one of those bands that could,

without Robert Stigwood, could have easily never been anything.

In anybody else's hands, you may never have heard of them again.

In 1967, the Beatles were it,

and the charts were full of male beat groups.

# Ya-ya ya ya ya ya ya-a-ay... #

# No milk today, it wasn't always so

# The company was gay... #

With the Fab Four as his template, Stigwood wanted a four-piece band,

so he roped in another Aussie with boyish good looks, Colin Peterson.

But the brothers Gibb didn't stop at four.

Maurice owed me 25 bucks,

so he said, "No, we haven't got any money either, mate.

"We just arrived and we're skint as well,

"but we've just been signed up by this guy called Robert Stigwood,

"and so why don't you come and play guitar?"

I was really not wanted.

It was only Barry that said to Robert,

"We want Vince to be," you know, "a full member of the band."

And, um, I became a Bee Gee.

With all five Bee Gees in place, the boys now had to deliver the hits...

That was the highest point of pressure in our lives.

"How do we have a hit in England? How do we do that?"

..and their first single chose an unlikely inspiration.

Just after nine o'clock this morning,

as prayers were ending at Pantglas Junior and Infant School,

this mountain, a coal slag half a mile high,

began to slide towards the little town of Aberfan.

We went out and sat on the stairs where the elevator was

and the power went off, and so in the dark,

we sort of proceeded down that path,

the idea that you could be in a mine and you could be isolated

and not know what's going on outside.

# In the event of something happening to me

# There is something I would like you all to see

# It's just a photograph of someone that I knew

# Have you seen my wife, Mr Jones? #

With their eyes on the US, Stigwood and the record company

changed Have You Seen My Wife, Mr Jones? to New York Mining Disaster.

At the time, I think they were,

you know, "What's he's singing about? New York mining disaster?"

"It's a strange subject for a song."

The whole content of those lyrics were quite unusual.

That's one of the main songs that will bring tears to my eyes.

Their songwriting is absolutely from the heart.

It's wide open and exposed

and that's exactly why I love them.

That's brave beyond belief.

# Or have they given up and all gone home to bed

# Thinking those who once existed must be dead?

# Have you seen my wife, Mr Jones? #

They'd proved they were original songwriters,

but it didn't hurt to sound like the Beatles.

When New York Mining Disaster came out in America,

a lot of people thought it was the Beatles.

I think they were always seen as arrivistes as well, the Bee Gees,

the kind of people that are doing

something that people view as sort of ersatz.

Barry's a great sort of pasticher of John Lennon's songwriting style.

It makes me think of Oasis

because they're trying to do something similar,

they're sort of copying that kind of way that Lennon wrote songs,

but he does it incredibly well.

# Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide

# Mr Jones. #

New York Mining Disaster and the Bee Gees

didn't quite chime with the Summer of Love...

-# Let's go

-Let's go

-# To San Francisco

-Let's go to San Francisco... #

..so the brothers sought solace in soul.

Robin's favourite artist and my favourite artist was Otis Redding.

# Got to, got to, got to try a little tenderness... #

It was never outside of our system.

It was always something we loved, anyway.

Sam and Dave, Stax, was very deep inside us.

We weren't getting the opportunity to bring those things out

because of the whole psychedelic syndrome

and the idea that we had to do what everyone else was doing,

which was to be something like the Beatles, you know.

That was the way out for us, to be influenced by American music.

We sort of found something

and that was the idea of the emotional ballad,

the idea of that was really working for us.

# Hey, baby, you don't know what it's like

# Baby, you don't know what it's like

# To love somebody

# To love somebody

# The way I love you. #

This emotional ballad was originally intended for Otis Redding.

They were approaching it thinking of a solo artist, but there's something

about the Bee Gees' delivery which accesses that emotion

but not the way a soul artist would do that.

# I'm a man

# Can't you see what I am?

# I live and I breathe for you... #

For example, Otis' approach to soul, it's very much a punch in the face.

"This is soul, feel my experience, feel my emotional angst,

"join me in this journey,"

whereas the Bee Gees' is much more...

..much more a tickle.

"I'm in pain. Feel my pain, join me in this suffering."

And it creeps up on you, and then it grabs you.

# No, you don't know what it's like

# Baby, you don't know what it's like

# To love somebody

# To love somebody

# The way I love you. #

Songs of experience, you know, they're kids writing these songs

that sound like they were written

by, you know, sort of middle-aged men. That's quite odd.

So while the hip kids were being far out, the nation was

listening to the Bee Gees, and by September 1967,

they hit the top of the charts.

It was really an anti-flower power song.

You know, it was us sort of playing with that idea.

Tonight, Massachusetts, from the Bee Gees.

CHEERING

Suddenly we're on Top Of The Pops and Massachusetts was number one.

# And the lights all went down in Massachusetts

# The day I left her standing on the road. #

The Bee Gees' dream was to make it internationally

and their American soul influences and gift for balladry

helped propel them stateside.

This is the first time they've appeared on television

in the United States, so ladies and gentlemen, let's give a warm hand,

very talented group of men, the Bee Gees.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# Smile an everlasting smile

# A smile can bring you near to me

# Don't ever let me find you gone

# Cos that would bring a tear to me. #

The songs are very comforting. They're very comforting melodies.

HE PLAYS: Words

And then it does the same shape again,

but it finishes differently, sort of...

The harmonies are always moving and the melody is always moving,

even though it's incredibly simple,

but you're not bored by the simplicity

because it's always changing.

# It's only words

# And words are all I have

# To take your heart away. #

It's the difference between that addictive quality within a melody

and monotony, and they cut it just right,

where you're just on the edge of, "Oh, I need a bit more of this."

And before you can consider whether or not you've heard it too often,

you're on the edge of wanting a bit more.

# And words are all I have

# To take your heart away. #

The Bee Gees' ballads were emotional epics

and while Barry made hearts flutter, Robin made the earth tremble.

I really, really love Robin Gibbs' voice.

I think he's sensational, one of the all-time greats.

# I started a joke

# Which started the whole world crying... #

That heart and soul sliced open and rendered to a public, it's...

..quite literally liver in a frying pan, isn't it? Delicious!

# Oh, no

# I started to cry

# Which started the whole world laughing... #

He sounds like he's about to cry.

He sounds like he's about to burst into tears any moment.

His mother said, "Whenever Robin sang, it made me feel cold."

I think that's meant as a compliment.

# I looked at the skies

# Running my hands over my eyes

# And I fell out of bed

# Hurting my head

# From things that I'd said. #

He had this incredible, almost operatic type of voice,

and it was unique for him, and so he loved the really unhappy songs

because it lent itself to his way of singing.

This very high voice with the vibrato,

which nobody else was doing then.

# Oh... #

And when the voices of Robin, Barry and Maurice came together,

it was a magical blend.

What is unique about their vocal harmony?

Something that only the Bee Gees, the Beach Boys,

Everly Brothers - sibling harmonies. It's a very unique sound

and it's almost impossible for any other act to achieve that sound.

# I've just got to get a message to you

# Hold on, hold on... #

We'd hear them in the studio and take out the track and play back,

you'd just hear those vocals

and they would find something wrong with it and do it again

but it was heavenly to me.

# Hold on... #

There is something so gorgeous to me about families singing together.

Their voices sound so rich

and full and beautiful and their ballads were

such a great showcase for their songwriting and for their vocals.

# I told him I'm in no hurry... #

The brothers' voices may have mixed well,

but the internal power struggles were less harmonious.

Both Barry and Robin wanted to sing lead.

Whilst on the plus side they have the sibling voices,

sibling rivalry - that must be very difficult to deal with.

It's a very complex dynamic being in a family,

let alone trying to create with your siblings, and then have

an elder sibling, which at some point would have been dictating the rules.

Most of us, we grow up, move out of the house.

They were stitched together at the hip

because this was their business.

Whilst aching for a distance, a gap, breathing space between each of them,

they managed to translate that into a creative output, which is fragile.

If they get it wrong, it breaks.

# O-o-oh o-o-o-o-oh... #

But for the moment, the brothers stayed united

and they were unaware just how big the band had become in Europe.

SCREAMING

The Bee Gees, the most exciting sound in the world.

It was the first time we'd ever seen 12,000 kids in one place.

I remember that car. The car got crushed.

We were lying on our backs pushing the roof up, so it was pretty hairy.

But all we could think of was, "Wow, just like the Beatles!"

The desire to top the Beatles spurred them on

and the band's 1968 tour featured a 16-piece orchestra.

They could show to the audience that they could do live

what they could do on record, and believe me, they did do it live.

It was as good, every bit as good as the actual record.

# Talk about the life in Massachusetts... #

First time we played with them on a tour, which was '68 in Germany,

I was fascinated by the way the orchestra worked on stage, so I think

I watched them every night.

It was a bit of an introduction for me to that kind of performance.

In fact, it inspired me to have a go at that myself a year later.

# Upon the seventh seasick day

# We made our port of call... #

The Bee Gees had hit upon a winning formula, but their albums proved

they were unafraid to experiment in the studio.

The first few albums are filled with these songs,

it's just, "I don't know where this is coming from."

They're just really weird, inexplicable songs.

They're the product of very inexplicable, unique imaginations.

CHANTING IN LATIN

They came right out of left field.

Colin and I didn't know where they came from.

They were writing at incredible pace.

It was just flowing out of them because things were going well.

If one of us had an idea,

we would all jump in and stretch that out and make that work.

The guys used to just come up with songs,

like, pick them out of the air.

It was a sense that we psychically knew where each other was going,

because we knew each other,

and the greatest thing about songwriters

and why they don't last is because you have to be in the same zone.

Nobody has the relationship,

or has had the relationship that three brothers have.

# Every Christian lion-hearted man will show you... #

A few years back, I had a boring period doing not much,

but I decided to write out their lyrics.

I was really kind of enamoured by it.

There's actual poetry in these,

and the amount of work that went into the placing of the words,

and they're not unnecessary words,

it's not done just for vocal harmony or technique.

# I'm not trying to make history

# You could have been good to me... #

It's very difficult to kind of pigeonhole them.

They're sort of psychedelic but sort of not,

they're sort of middle of the road but sort of not.

They've just got a complete niche of their own.

# Mother

# I'm going to join the air force today... #

The band had their unconventional moments in the studio

while their image was also "different".

It was a very curious band, wasn't it?

I mean, you've got the Mr Handsome in the middle, you know,

with his absolute beautifully placed teeth...

Barry had the pin-up looks.

It was Barry, it was always Barry.

Maurice at one side...

An aimless, pleasant chap of no note...

Maurice didn't look very comfortable

standing doing synchronised movements with the rest of them.

He always looked much more comfortable with a guitar.

And then you've got Robin on the other side

with horses' gnashers, right,

worst hairdo in the world,

but incredible depth of character and soul.

# Let there be love... #

The brothers were pop stars and their lives became showbiz events.

But the child stars were ill-prepared

for the trappings of success and discovered that fame had a price.

We wanted to be famous, but we didn't know what came with that.

We never got into heavy drugs.

It was either grass, for Maurice it was drink,

and maybe to some extent for all of us it was amphetamines.

# Let there be love. #

In this whirlwind, the Bee Gees decided to embark on

the recording of Odessa, their take on the concept album.

As we get towards the end of the '60s,

other bands start to have an influence on the charts,

and most notably Pink Floyd now,

and the early Pink Floyd was very, very experimental.

# Float on a river for ever and ever

# Emily, Emily

# There is no other day... #

Odessa, I would say,

is probably their nod to a psychedelic Pink Floyd,

just a nod in the right direction

because they weren't a psychedelic band.

# Who is the girl with the crying face

# Looking at millions of signs? #

Fame, ego and excess were now getting to the band

and the Bee Gees seemed to be losing direction.

Odessa is a very...

It's a very difficult record to pigeonhole.

It opens with the title track,

written by Robin, and it's just insane.

# Baa baa, black sheep, you haven't any wool

# Captain Richardson left himself a lonely wife in Hull... #

It was starting to crumble.

Unfortunately, it was so sad, this beautiful thing was falling apart.

Stigwood made a fateful decision on the next single

and chose Barry's song as the A side,

leaving Robin on the flip side, which was to tear the band apart.

# When I was small

# And Christmas trees were tall

# We used to love while others used to play... #

I didn't make the choices about what the A side or B side were.

I used to hear these things third-hand, second-hand

and go, "What's going on?" And that's what led to the split,

really the obsession with Rob to be an individual.

I sensed that it was all over and I said to Colin,

I told Colin Peters, I said, "Mate, it's time to bail out."

And Colin said, "No, no, no, it's fine, it's fine, it's all great."

I said, "Well, see you later."

Not long after that, Robin bailed.

Then Colin bailed.

And then it was Barry and Maurice.

I figured at that point it was over,

you know, as brothers and friends, it just was no longer happening.

# But you and I

# Our love will never die

# But guess we'll cry come first of May. #

Odessa was released in 1969 while the Bee Gees splintered in public.

# Every single word has been spoken

# It's much too late to change the ways... #

There was a lot of music papers who always wanted you to say something

and as it turned out, they were setting Robin against me

and me against Robin

and these were things we'd never experienced in our lives.

I mean, you said things, but those things didn't have any meaning.

You just said them because you wanted to see your name in the paper,

you know. If that's ego, yeah. Yeah. And we were all doing that.

That was not a good time,

and so we separated for 15 months.

In 1970, Stigwood made amends and reunited the brothers,

this time as a trio.

The songwriting magic was still there.

Robin and Barry, who were the two that always

historically have the problem with each other,

meet, and set down and write, How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?

# I could never see tomorrow

# But I was never told about the sorrows

# And how can you mend a broken heart?

# How can you stop the rain from falling down?

# How can you stop the sun from shining?

# What makes the world go round? #

Emotional content is not about

relationships external to the group.

It is actually about these three men

that were boys...

..and their existence together.

# And how can you mend this broken man?

# How can a loser ever win?

# Please help me mend my broken heart

# And let me live again. #

But the comeback was short-lived

because in the early '70s, it was less about ballads.

MUSIC: Metal Guru by T Rex

# Yeah, yeah... #

Music now looked and sounded different...

# Metal guru, is it you?

# Metal guru, is it you? #

..and for the Bee Gees, the hits dried up.

By 1972, we were literally out the door, you know,

nobody was really interested, and that's...

..that's something that hits you very hard.

"Wow, no-one is interested.

"Nobody wants to play our record. What do we do?"

They'd gone from stardom to supper clubs,

but for the Bee Gees this was a variety homecoming of sorts.

HE LAUGHS

Northern English clubs, chicken in a basket, everybody drunk,

pretty much like early Australian audiences,

we didn't feel like we were out of sorts.

We felt quite happy - "OK, we'll do this, make a bit of money,

"put some food on the table."

# Run to me

# Whenever you're lonely... #

But Stigwood still believed in the brothers

and he saw their future in soul.

# Daydreaming and I'm thinking of you

# Daydreaming and I'm thinking of you... #

Who better to take them there than Aretha Franklin's producer,

Arif Mardin?

What Arif brought to them

was another approach to this emotional content.

This is soul from an American perspective.

We left the maudlin stuff, we left the romantic, heavy stuff behind,

and we sort of locked into what was happening with the Delfonics,

the falsetto singers, and we started to fall in love with that.

# All of the wind

# La-la-la-loving

# I love you... #

This is an American thing, this is a black thing.

We've got this male falsetto singing a ballad and he's not a eunuch.

This is a regular guy, albeit in tight trousers,

delivering a song which is emotional.

# Give

# All that you have to give... #

It's an accepted format - not amongst white bands,

this is an American gospel/soul thing

but Barry's discovered he has this capacity.

Barry discovered his falsetto

and he started writing for that kind of, for that genre.

-# Blaming it all

-Blaming it all

-# On the nights on Broadway

-Blaming on the nights of Broadway

# Singing them love songs... #

I thought, "OK, I don't mind making a fool of myself"

so I went out and did that, and everyone went, "Oh, my goodness."

That opened up the Pandora's box

because suddenly there was a sound on there that was magnificent.

It wasn't an attempt to deliver American black music.

It was an attempt, I think, to be comfortable within this new space.

Moving to America was all part of that narrative -

absorb your surroundings, absorb the culture,

absorb the sounds.

Arif helped them define the elements of the new Bee Gees sound.

During this time in the studio,

Barry not only discovered his falsetto,

but in 1975, the Bee Gees locked into their groove.

When you looked at the charts at that time, you think,

"Well, what are people really going for?"

And people wanted to dance.

There's this story that's told on the radio,

they're driving on the railroad track...

There's some legal requirement that every time one of the Bee Gees was interviewed,

-they'd mention driving...

-HE MIMICS TRAIN CHUGGING

It would go click-de-click-de-click...

And then it would stop.

And every night, we'd go over this, and it started sticking in my head.

That became in intro to Jive Talkin'.

# J-J-J-Jive talkin'

# Tellin' me lies

# Jive talkin'

# You wear a disguise... #

I love that little keyboard riff in it.

# Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo... #

HE PLAYS PIANO RIFF FROM JIVE TALKIN'

# Doo-be-doo-be-doo Doo-be-doo-be-doo... #

Little handclap.

Doesn't get better than that.

# Oh, you're jive talkin'

# You're telling me lies, yeah

# Jive talkin'... #

That was a real breakthrough, Jive Talkin'.

We put it out on RSO without the name of the Bee Gees on it,

because by then, their stock had fallen so low

with radio stations in America, they weren't playing Bee Gees records

because of the two previous, sort of, flop albums.

And within hours of the record landing at all the radio stations,

they were calling saying "Who is this? This is amazing!"

# Ba-be-ba-be-ba-be-da Ba-be-ba-be-ba-be-da. #

The Bee Gees were back!

They united in image and song

and self-produced their next album Children Of The World.

Meanwhile, in New York, the underground sound of the dance floor

that was to become key to the Bee Gees' rebirth

was seeping into the mainstream.

Hello?

Disco used to be the black, Hispanic and gay subculture -

dancing at night, to cope with the daytime

in a bankrupt and decaying New York.

One of the things that makes disco music, a lot of disco, incredible,

is that there's an ineffable melancholy of the centre of it.

Obviously, the Bee Gees were perfect at that.

They were big on melancholy ballads.

There's something...

Just that, sort of, ineffable sense of melancholy.

They get it perfectly.

You Should Be Dancing is the first point at which they start to discover the full-on disco sound.

They started to do a song-writing session,

of which that would form

the basis of what became the Saturday Night Fever project.

Mine was the little repeat echo.

# What you doing on your back? #

# What you doing on your back? Ah...

# You should be dancing, yeah... #

One of my best friends, Nik Cohn, wrote this article for New York

magazine about what he called the return of Saturday night,

which was back to the '50s sort of thing.

Doing your hair and getting all dressed up and going one night

and blowing it all on the dance floor.

Stigwood saw the article - he promptly optioned it for a movie.

So then the whole idea was that we need a soundtrack,

and of course, the Bee Gees, since they were cresting a wave...

They weren't known as disco,

they were just really having a lot of hits.

Three titles came into my head at that period,

and one was Staying Alive.

The other was More Than A Woman.

And Night Fever.

And Robert Stigwood called up and said,

"Have you got any ideas for the title of the film?"

So I said, "Strangely enough, I've got a title called Night Fever."

And Robert Stigwood said,

"Well, yeah, that's OK, but it sounds a bit pornographic." So...

While Stigwood pondered over the pornographic connotations,

the Bee Gees took inspiration from an easy listening classic -

Theme From A Summer Place.

Every time you hear that,

instantly, you're in a warm place, you're by the sea,

you're having a cool drink. And I always thought

that was a great song to make into a disco track.

When Barry heard me doing that,

he said, "Oh, let's turn it round a little bit."

He got me to change it.

We inverted the chords, we put it around and we came up with this...

We recorded the song and it was Night Fever.

# Listen to the ground

# There is movement all around

# There is something goin' down

# And I can feel it.

# On the waves of the air

# There is dancin' out there

# If it's somethin' we can share

# We can steal it. #

Reimaged, the brothers united as a trio with hair primped

and shirts undone, while Barry stepped forward as the front man.

The sound was quite black, the clothes were often white.

When we look at how the Bee Gees were re-presented, this was

a new unit and suddenly we have a band where they all look the same,

we have a band that look like something

that comes out of the Bronx,

something that is a combination of influences that might hark

back to the film Superfly.

And, in Superfly, there's a key character, Ron O'Neal.

This is someone from the hood.

This is a criminal and there's a certain amount of street cred

that goes with this image, which is black America in the '70s.

# Here I am

# Prayin' for this moment to last

# Livin' on the music so fine

# Borne on the wind

# Makin' it mine

# Night fever, night fever

# We know how to do it. #

If you put it in context of the time, in the '70s we'd got

The Professionals and The Sweeney rushing around, bashing people up.

You pillock!

One more word from you and I'll nick you.

And then you go to these beautiful men in gold satin, singing about

impossible love and broken hearts and...

and looking wistful.

# How deep is your love?

# How deep is your love? How deep is your love?

# I really need to learn. #

When John Travolta strutted through the Bronx in Saturday Night Fever

and the Bee Gees music was married with celluloid,

the woman's man was born.

# You can tell by the way I use my walk

# I'm a woman's man, no time to talk

# Music loud and women warm

# I've been kicked around since I was born... #

The bit at the beginning where John Travolta is

walking down the street with his tight trousers

and his shirt unbuttoned with a sort of macho swagger,

it just caught...

that moment and crystallised it.

# Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother

# You're stayin' alive Stayin' alive

# Feel the city breakin' and everybody shakin'

# And we're stayin' alive Stayin' alive

# Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother... #

Their images merged and the Bee Gees and Travolta went global.

It gave them an element of credibility

because they were now part of the movie.

This is an immaculately clean-cut set of individuals.

So this is mass appeal now.

To be a young woman in Leicester and see that on a cinema screen

was to be, in a way, exposed to Studio 54

and all that glorious decadence.

We were looking for hedonism and some glamour and some excitement

that wasn't making us think too hard.

# Stayin' ali-i-i-ive. #

The Bee Gees had been big in the '60s

but, on the back of Saturday Night Fever,

they went massive, defining pop culture in 1978.

How Deep Is Your Love was number one before the film came out

but to go from that to a million records a week was just unreal.

We lost all sense of reality.

People climbing over our walls, people driving past

and pumping the Fever music outside the gates

and, you know, that kind of craziness.

Saturday Night Fever, the album, is, I think, the defining

album of the '70s, like Sgt Pepper was with the '60s.

They got two generations at that point.

They got the housewives that were probably with them

since the '60s, who now had kids,

that thought, "That's my band."

Shut that door...

The whole world had Saturday Night Fever

but soon this went Saturday night light entertainment.

Grayson's groovers.

SONG: Night Fever

Five, six, seven, and...

It seems that everybody wants to be a John Travolta.

The problem is that film moves just too fast

for the devotees to memorise all the steps

so back-to-school they've come, for dancing lessons.

-Get your John Travolta finger.

-John Travolta finger.

Touch your left elbow with it. Here we go.

It's point and touch and point and touch.

And that, I am told, is what they mean by a beautiful mover.

In early 1978, the Bee Gees owned the charts and there was

no space for anyone else, unless you worked with or were related to them.

# Do it light

# Taking me through the night

# Shadow dancing. #

Their number ones were gazumped by number ones of other songs

that they'd written or produced.

# If I can't have you

# I don't want nobody, baby. #

What's amazing with the Bee Gees, they'd write songs,

we'd record it and they'd be great and then suddenly

they'd say, "Oh, no, it's not good enough," and push it aside.

And Andy would take it and get a hit with it.

The Bee Gees continued riding the crest of the disco wave

and hit number one again in 1979.

# Loving you

# Tragedy

# When the feeling's gone and you can't go on

# It's tragedy

# When the morning cries and you don't know why

# It's hard to bear

# With no-one to love you you're goin' nowhere. #

I remember seeing Telly Savalas on television,

because Kojak was huge, and his comment was,

"You know, like everything else, this bubble will burst."

And I always kept that in my head.

You can't have that kind of success without criticism

and it's something we had to learn, and we did.

The backlash against disco was already beginning because it got

really bloated and really big really fast

and I think the Bee Gees

were kind of seen as the apex of that bloat.

# Tragedy

# When the feeling's gone and you can't go on

# It's tragedy. #

The success of Saturday Night Fever

was the final nail in the coffin for disco.

Suddenly, disco became the sound of white, straight people.

# Tragedy! #

But tragedy was nothing if not prophetic.

The Bee Gees were so big it was painful.

# Meaningless songs

# In very high voices

# With 1,000 violins. #

Richard Curtis and I wrote this song,

which was sort of a Mickey take of the Bee Gees.

I don't think they liked it. I can't think why.

# In a pair of tight, gold jeans. #

What encapsulates medallion man was the cover

of The Children Of The World album.

You can almost smell the Aramis coming off the album cover.

They were sort of looking in the middle distance.

It looked like they were caught in a wind tunnel.

It was quite a sort of macho image,

but it was also quite sort of otherworldly.

The teeth and hair and the medallion and the...

You know, that was... That became uncool really quickly.

Some people have implied that your high voices,

coupled with the long hair,

shirt open to the naval, revealing hairy chest and medallion look

suggests that you are somewhat less than masculine and that you...

# Look the other way. #

LAUGHTER

Exactly. What do you say to that?

# Ha, ha, ha, ha. #

When these comedians try to mock you,

it's a compliment in disguise.

Very much so. It means that you are a part of the public psyche.

You have a valued and important place in it.

At this point, where the Bee Gees are seen as possibly naff,

they moved behind the scenes.

You know, they realised that the brand, for the time being,

seems to be so irreparably damaged.

In 1980, the Bee Gees parted company with Stigwood.

After filing a lawsuit to be released from RSO Records,

they retreated to the studio and set a different course.

They then embarked on what became the next phase of their career -

as songwriters, guns for hire.

We needed to show that we were actually songwriters and that

Fever was a project, and we were finding all kinds of reasons

to make ourselves feel better. And...

in that way, we wrote songs for other people

that we probably would never have written.

# With the love you're livin' on

# You gotta be mine

# We take it away... #

I was so nervous about working with her, I called Neil Diamond

and so, "What's she like to work with?" You know?

And he said, "Oh, relax, she's great. Just go for it.

"Don't worry about it. She's very professional

"and a very sweet person," so, you know, OK.

# And we got nothing to be sorry for

# Our love is one in a million

# Eyes can see... #

They were now at the upper echelons of the best artists.

They could access anyone, in fact.

# Islands in the stream

# That is what we are

# No-one in between

# How can we be wrong?

# Sail away with me

# To another world. #

These were hit-makers and this gave them a new life, a new tension.

But the songs are written in the same brotherly way, but they target

it for a specific individual and, again, this is a unique quality,

one that had been honed over decades.

# I'm in the middle of a chain reaction

# A chain reaction! #

It just goes to show you that the public image of what the Bee Gees

were has no relation to the kind of quality of their music

and, if you divorce the music from that, people will still buy it.

After spending six years catapulting music's biggest stars

back to the top, by 1987, the Bee Gees were ready to relaunch.

The Bee Gees are still going strong and, yes, I do remember them, just.

Their new album ESP is their 25th LP in a recording career that

has spanned nearly as many years.

You Win Again is the 50th single from the song-writing trio

whose material has been covered by over 100 different artists.

# I couldn't figure why

# You couldn't give me what everybody needs

# I shouldn't let you kick me when I'm down

# My baby... #

We'd really been doing this since we were tiny kids

and we were good at it. We always had blinkers on.

We never could see what else we would do.

And this is all we wanted to do so I think grim determination

and persistence and taking all the blows and all the kicks

and not worrying about it and just getting on with it.

"Well, it wasn't this time but next time." You know?

It's always perceiving that

something great was going to happen, no matter what.

# There's no fight you can't fight

# This battle of love with me

# You win again

# So little time

# We do nothing but compete. #

By the time we get to the '80s,

it is a much more mature Bee Gees that we see on stage.

They've done it all.

There is an audience that has grown up with them

now as well that has stayed with them. It is an older audience.

They are not, at that point,

attempting to appeal to a younger audience.

They just have a fantastic back catalogue.

# Still waters run deep

# Just remember when we lie to each other

# No-one wins and losers weep. #

We were no longer kids,

we were no longer something that could really appeal to kids.

Money never really was an issue for us, it was really about being famous.

The feeling of fame was our big money.

But their main line back to the kids was their songs

and the '90s boy bands.

# And when you rise in the morning sun

# I feel you touch my hand in the pouring rain... #

The Bee Gees songs had the perfect ingredients for the boy band.

The harmonies and the melancholy,

their longing ballads were perfect for a bit of hormonal adulation.

It's now about the business. We want the song that will launch you.

We want the song that people will buy into, within 30 seconds.

We want to cross generations. We want mass appeal.

Bee Gees has to be in the mix.

# How deep is your love?

# How deep is your love? How deep is your love? #

You pick the right Bee Gees song, you're going to have a hit.

# It's only words

# And words are all I have

# To take your heart away. #

And it wasn't just the ballads that put the Bee Gees

back on Top Of The Pops.

# Tragedy!

# When the feeling's gone and you can't go on

# It's tragedy. #

For Pete Waterman to get Steps to record Tragedy,

a whole new generation love that song.

It was a big hit first time for the Bee Gees,

but it became an even bigger hit second time

and there's few examples where the cover version is a bigger hit

than the original version.

It did nothing for their credibility cos,

to be honest, I mean, that, you know, forgive me, Steps,

but it's a karaoke, wedding, sing-along version.

The Britpop era is the sort of era where people should have gone,

"Bloody hell, have you heard these early Bee Gees?"

They should have been sort of hoisted up as an example

of kind of classic '60s pop music

in a way that all sorts of other things weren't during...

Small Faces or whatever. And they just weren't.

They absolutely weren't and it's because Steps have covered Tragedy

and, you know, it's seen as to do with the naffest of naff pop music.

How much it's just desperately unfair, really.

After the years of ridicule, the Bee Gees were still going strong

and they charted yet again in 2001, but it was to be their last hit.

# I've seen the story

# I've read it over once or twice

# I said that you say

# A little bit of bad advice

# I've been in trouble

# Happened to me all my life. #

In 2003, Maurice died and the brotherhood was torn asunder.

# There's a light

# A certain kind of light

# That never shone on me... #

Maurice dying, that was a real shock to the whole family.

And it took a long time for us to get past that.

After Maurice's death, Barry and Robin really performed together.

And, with Robin's untimely death in 2012, Barry remained alone,

the last brother standing.

I have very vivid dreams of my brothers, you know.

It's like you actually see your brother

and he's talking to you the way he always did.

# You don't know what it's like... #

And you wake up and you think, "God, that was so real."

He wanted to go on stage and I was up for it and that was the dream.

# To love somebody

# To love somebody

# The way I love you. #

# And it's me you need to show

# How deep is your love?

# How deep is your love? How deep is your love? #

The Bee Gees gave us four decades of hits.

They were so much more than cool.

# Cos we're living in a world of fools. #

Songs and melodies that last,

that outlast the genres they were written in,

like disco or R&B or anything, I mean, they are timeless.

They were masters of melancholy

and gave us some of pop's most moving moments.

# I just gotta get a message to you

# Hold on

# Hold on... #

The delivery is so honest and heartbreaking,

you have to be a brick wall not to let that affect you.

# Hold on. #

They were able to connect and speak to you directly in their lyrics

on an emotional level

and that is how I began a relationship with the Bee Gees.

But, at the time, I would never say I was into the Bee Gees

because they were not cool.

# Night fever, night fever

# We know how to do it

# Feel like forever, baby. #

We would put on tracks by the Bee Gees

from Saturday Night Fever

just to see what all the cool people would do.

Would they be horrified or would they dance?

And when I put it on, everyone was horrified

then they all went crazy because they loved it.

It was a guilty pleasure.

# Jive talkin'

# You're tellin' me lies, yeah. #

I think the Bee Gees have always had secret cred.

They've always been one of those bands it's not, like, cool

to be like, "Yeah, Bee Gees, man, that's my jam!"

But they have a massive respect.

# Just isn't a crime

# And if there's somebody

# You'll love till you die. #

It's genius. It's proper genius.

It's being one of the greatest song-writing teams ever.

SONG: Stayin' Alive

And their legacy lives on.

I really can't imagine doing anything else with my life, you know.

Some of the greatest moments for me are on a stage

and I still have that hunger so... But I'll always see my brothers.

They'll always be with me. But I've still got to do it.

I've still got to do it.

# Not goin' nowhere

# Somebody help me

# Somebody help me, yeah

# Not goin' nowhere

# Stayin' ali-ive. #