Rock Around The World 1 April 1978
15
Saturday After Dark . . .
The
BEE
GEES
Night Into Day
by Joan Tarshis
Remember the vaunted British Empire? The Bee Gees now own and operate it from a captured America. Remember when Winston Churchill flashed the victory sign over his red-glowing island nation? That's General Barry Gibb's scarf blowing in the wind machine now. And what about the tense thrill of the early Bee Gees singing Dylan? Well, you can't have everything.
At least they own the music charts in America, and when Britishers do that here in the Colonies, it must be the influence of the Beatles, to whom the Bee Gees remain helplessly compared when dealing with huge success hardly believed possible before the Beatles, and now the Bee Gees. But the Bee Gees are not the not-Beatles, not even the Unbeatles.
"Even though the Beatles influenced a lot of our music," Robin Gibb has said, "we never seemed to follow what they were doing. We've never been inclined to follow other people's ideas. If anybody's gonna follow an idea they're gonna follow ours."
"Everybody was influenced by the Beatles," said Barry Gibb after recording a Beatle song in the Sgt. Pepper film. "The trouble was, not everybody sounded like them. We sang in three-part harmonies. For the soundtrack we worked with George Martin at Cherokee Studios."
Yet somehow they're tied together in the all-fusing
disco dance of record success David Bowie called "Fame."
Sailor boys worn smooth as seaglass from crossing oceans of listening generations, the Bee Gees have quavered their way from "New York Mining Disaster" to "Massachusetts," from Odessa to discotheques. Today, since Saturday Night Fever swept the world, the burgeoning Bee Gee Empire grows, on paper at least, to the tune of a million dollars a day. Where did they go right?
Certainly, part of the Bee Gees' voluminous success hails from the fact they've never used their music as a stumping stone, always a stepping stone. They know that music can take you away, and they know that
something happens through a song when personalities suddenly meet the universe in motion. Their music has always had enough to say to a busy world.
"Ten years ago," said Robin, "most music was a social outcry, and we never subscribed to that pattern. We didn't jump on trends and we've seen a lot of them the last decade. Flower Power, Glitter . 1 think the Bee Gees have always realized that there is so much love to bring out in songs that it is a catalyst to bring people together."
Another reason for the Golden Age of Bee Gees has to be their strong live performance.
Barry : "The orchestra did color a lot of our songs.
But at times we might have overused the strings and some of our work became mushy. Strings are beautiful tools to work with. They can break your heart.
"When I look back at the days we toured with thirty pieces, I know we were on display and opposed to communicating with the audience. Going to a bigger band and leaving the orchestra at home was a logical extension. I think our stage act improved 100 percent."
As they threw off the uncomfortable paraphenalia that cushioned them in the 60s, the music that flew from their new self-contained stage show turned more rhythmic, more diversified. Maurice now sings harder parts, falsettos, kicking a nervous, driving sound into the blend, while Blue Weaver's string synthesizer fuses the sixties to the seventies. They work harder, but they're happier, and maybe that's why the Bee Gees are accomplishing more than ever.
For the three Gibb brothers, things have never been better, but they were nervous wrecks at the end of the sixties after constant touring, recording, promoting, possession-gathering, even breaking up along the way. Today, five-six years after a rough adjustment period,
the brothers are back to relating to each other as brothers.
Barry: "The personal crisis we went through provided extra incentive and the records we put out now, especially the last few, are full of drive and ambition. We can feel it.
Meantime, while they float in their swimming pools, cash already in from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack could raise the Titanic and send it to the moon. The Bee Gees are well represented on six tracks, flooding the airwaves with "How Deep Is Your Love," "Staying Alive" and "Night Fever," while Tavares, Yvonne Elliman and KC & the Sunshine Band build the mansion higher with more B.G. compositions from the flick. Off screen, Barry wrote 19-year-old brother Andy Gibb's number one single, "I Just Want To Be Your Everything," and followup topper, "Love Is Thicker Than Water." Barry and Robin co-wrote and co-produced Samantha Sang's "Emotion" hit on Private Stock Records. Except to royalty accounts, the list of cover versions is endless. Not only have the Bee Gees taken over as most prolific hitmakers of the day, but they are also generating equal dollars in the publishing office, all of which is building the Robert Stigwood Organization into Fort Knox Music. The Bee Gees are Lords of the Disc.
Barry: "We don't want to sit on our laurels. We knew we always had a lot more to offer people than they thought we had. Right now the family is throbbing. No one is looking out for himself and all are looking in.
"We're working faster and I feel I can write a song in a minute with Maurice and Robin. I'm really happy that people are acknowledging our influence on popular music."
For the Bee Gees, a new era has started. They've been through it all, through and across every stage, struggling, hitting it big, splitting and reforming, number ones and tour-the-world. In the course of the last five years, they've changed from boys to men and turned the globe on to the commonwealth of the uncommon Bee Gees. And when they return to England, it won't be from only Massachusetts, but from every corner of the planet, every musical isle.
"There's a lot of work around the corner, like film, but our main concern is strong albums," said Robin. "In a way, we're just starting."
Bee Gees by Judi Lesta
