[bright tone]
Downloaded from YTS.MX
[funky bass line]
♪ ♪
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
[remix of "Stayin' Alive"]
[funky disco music]
- ♪ Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Music loud ♪
♪ Kicked around ♪
♪ And now it's all right, it's okay ♪
♪ And you may look the other way ♪
♪ We can try to understand ♪
♪ "The New York Times'" effect on man ♪
♪ ♪
[siren wails]
♪ ♪
♪ Ah, ha, ha, ha ♪
♪ Stayin' alive ♪
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
[crowd cheering]
- Okay, fellas, when you're ready.
Okay, fellas, get back in line.
- How did you people get back here?
Come on. Come on. Sorry.
- Excuse me. Have you got a pen?
- I'm sorry, you can't come in here.
- Get him out of here. - You can't come in here.
What are you doing? This is a private session!
[crowd cheering]
- Thank you.
Thank you very, very much. Good evening to all of you.
Thank you.
["How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?"]
[soft ballad]
- ♪ I can think of younger days ♪
♪ When living for my life ♪
♪ Was everything a man could want to do ♪
♪ I could never see tomorrow ♪
♪ No one said a word ♪
♪ About the sorrow ♪
- ♪ And ♪
♪ How can you mend ♪
♪ A broken heart? ♪
♪ How can you stop the rain ♪
♪ From falling down? ♪
all: ♪ How can you stop ♪
♪ The sun from shining? ♪
♪ What makes the world go round? ♪
♪ Na, na, na-na-na-na ♪
♪ Na-na-na-na-na ♪
♪ Na-na-na-na ♪
♪ Na-na-na ♪
♪ Please help me mend ♪
♪ My broken heart ♪
- ♪ And let me live again ♪
[cheers and applause] ♪ Da-da, da-da-da ♪
♪ Da-da-da-da ♪
♪ Da-da-da-da-da-da ♪
♪ ♪
I am beginning to recognize the fact
that nothing is true.
Nothing.
It's all down to perception.
My immediate family is gone.
But that's life.
It's the same thing with every family,
that someone will be left in the end.
And this time of life,
I have fantastic memories,
but everybody's memory is different,
so they're just my memories, you know?
I know that Maurice and Robin would've had
a different kind of memory.
[projector whirring]
[Richard Swift's "Lady Luck"]
- ♪ One, two, three, four ♪
♪ ♪
- I remember Barry saying that one day,
we're gonna be really famous.
And we said, "Oh, yeah." You know, "Whatever you say."
He's the big brother, you know.
- ♪ Ooh ♪
- We kind of saw ourselves as triplets
rather than me and Maurice being twins,
and we always had the same goals growing up
that it became impossible to see each other
as normal brothers.
- My ninth Christmas,
there was an acoustic guitar at the end of my bed,
and Robin and Maurice started to collaborate
and pretend to sing with me,
and we started doing gigs as a teenage act.
♪ I, O ♪
- We emigrated as a whole family
from England to Australia.
- All three of us had the same understanding
that we were going to be famous
come hell or high water.
♪ You know I love getting up in the morning ♪
♪ When the sun first strikes the trees ♪
Our father, he had his own band,
but it didn't work out, so he became our manager,
and it was a team.
There was us three and Dad.
And Mum, of course.
- My mother, she was always the person
who kept the calm between Dad and us.
Very strong, very loyal.
["How Many Birds"]
[crowd screaming]
- The Beatles have just arrived
for the first time in our country.
- When the Beatles came on the scene,
it was like, "That's what we've been trying to do."
- They turned pop music into an art form,
and they were singing three-part harmony
like we did.
- So we made up our own minds
that we were going back to be part of the British Invasion.
- Making music was what we wanted to do
for the rest of our lives,
so we thought, you know, whatever's going to happen,
we'll make happen.
["Spicks and Specks"]
- ♪ Where is the sun ♪
Before we left Australia,
we did an album called "Spicks and Specks,"
and they became our best demos.
♪ The sun in my life ♪
♪ It is dead ♪
Dad and I did the rounds,
met with industry people,
and as we sat in everyone's office,
they would say the same thing:
"No, no, I'm sorry, lads. We can't help you."
- My dad, he was very, you know, "We gotta do this."
Because my dad was really the most ambitious man,
I think, in the Gibb clan.
- We loved the Beatles,
so Dad had sent this stuff to NEMS,
the Brian Epstein offices.
- Brian Epstein, the man who built the Beatles
into a cult,
is now as well-known as they are.
- I was doing Brian's mail most of the time.
There was a letter by the father
of these three handsome, cute guys
who were very proactive and who'd had some success.
They came from Manchester,
but they were writing from Australia.
I showed it to him.
Brian said, "Yeah, yeah. That's very nice. No, nice."
He said, "Well, give it to Robert."
["Wine and Women"]
"He's Australian
and he's good at these kind of things."
- Somebody sent you a tape
of these boys from Australia?
- Yes, they did.
- Oh. [laughter]
- I heard it, and I was absolutely astounded.
It was the most brilliant harmony singing
and composing I'd ever heard.
all: ♪ If this should end ♪
♪ I don't mind ♪
♪ If this should end ♪
♪ I will find ♪
- ♪ What shall I do? ♪
both: ♪ What shall I do? ♪
- ♪ What shall I do? ♪
both: ♪ What shall I do? ♪
♪ ♪
- At the time, Robert was my manager.
Cream was signed to Robert
on what I thought was an exclusive deal.
I was surprised that other bands were coming in.
all: ♪ If this should end ♪
- Robert was so eccentric.
I mean, absolutely bonkers.
He was Australian, but he spoke like an English gentleman,
and he would wear these really big, flashy ties,
and he had a combover, and it was all--
who is this guy?
- Whoever this man was, he really believed in us.
He was almost like a parent.
- You can't deny talent,
and the talent was so obvious.
all: ♪ Ooh ♪
♪ ♪
- Somebody mentioned that the Bee Gees were in town.
They were good friends of mine from Australia.
So I phoned them up.
I said, "Is Maurice there, then?
Put Maurice on." [champagne cork pops]
He said, "We've being signed up
"by this guy called Robert Stigwood.
"We're doing this recording.
Why don't you come and play guitar?"
Caught a train into London and found IBC Studios.
So there they were.
There were Barry, Robin, and Maurice
and the drummer, Colin Petersen.
That night,
my life changed completely.
Completely.
- The first evening we were in there,
there was a blackout.
So while we were waiting for the power to come back on,
we just sat on the steps,
and Barry was playing his guitar.
It was so echoey.
I mean, it was a wonderful echo in this place.
- There we were in the dark.
The first thought was, "In the event
of something happening to me."
both: ♪ In the event ♪
♪ Of something happening to me ♪
- And we thought, "Well, what could come from that?"
both: ♪ There is something I would like you all to see ♪
- We made believe we were in a mine.
both: ♪ It's just a photograph of someone that I knew ♪
all: ♪ Have you seen my wife, Mr. Jones? ♪
♪ Do you know what it's like on the outside? ♪
♪ Don't go talking too loud, you'll cause a landslide ♪
♪ Mr. Jones ♪
- Because it was gonna be our first single,
we wanted a title that captured the imagination,
that got people's attention.
- And "New York Mining Disaster" was born then.
- We had our first hit record within the first five months
of being in England.
The thrill was that it did the same thing in America.
We thought that we might get a hit in England,
but we never dreamed that we might get a hit
in England and America as well.
[Otis Redding's "Respect"]
♪ ♪
- So I came over to the United States
to make a record deal for them.
I made a decision to place the group with Atlantic.
- ♪ What you want ♪
♪ Honey, you got it ♪
- He said, "I'm taking you to meet Ahmet Ertegun
and to get you into the American music scene."
Otis Redding was playing at the Apollo.
Ahmet Ertegun and Robert Stigwood
took me down there to see Otis.
- ♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
- And it was amazing.
- Soul has always had a special place
in the Bee Gees' music.
- We've always been influenced by Black music.
Smokey Robinson, Motown,
all that was a big influence on us.
- Robert introduced us.
He said, "I want you to write a song for Otis Redding."
"To Love Somebody" was born that night.
- ♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪
- But unfortunately,
Otis never got to record the song.
["To Love Somebody"]
[soulful ballad]
♪ There's a light ♪
♪ A certain kind of light ♪
♪ That never shone on me ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I want my life to be ♪
♪ Lived with you ♪
- I mean, I must have always known
"To Love Somebody,"
'cause that song is just, like, in the ether.
Those lyrics, "There's a certain kind of light
that never shone on me,"
like, I don't even know if he's talking about himself,
but there was some point where I got obsessed,
like, tracking down every cover version,
like Nina Simone, the Animals.
Some great singers have sung that song, obviously,
but his vocal, when he sings it,
I can still get chills thinking about it.
- ♪ Baby ♪
all: ♪ You don't know what it's like ♪
♪ Baby, you don't know what it's like ♪
♪ To love somebody ♪
♪ The way I love you ♪
- ♪ Aw, no, no ♪
both: ♪ You don't know ♪ all: ♪ What it's like ♪
- I just remember this music being on,
and I'm like, "Who's this?"
And, "Why, it's the Bee Gees."
And I was like, "The Bee Gees?"
["In My Own Time"]
It actually blew my mind.
Those early records sound like the Beatles' early records.
- ♪ I received an invitation ♪
- It's classic '60s guitar pop sound,
but then it had another thing going on.
- ♪ "Come to the United Nations" ♪
- You've got the brothers singing,
and when you've got brothers singing,
it's like an instrument that nobody else can buy.
- ♪ That was when I was somebody ♪
[bouncy rock music]
all: ♪ In my own time ♪
- You can't go buy that sound in a shop.
You can buy a Fender Stratocaster
and put it through a VOX amp and sound like Buddy Holly.
You can't sing like the Bee Gees,
because when you've got
family members singing together,
it's unique.
- It's the blend of the tones of each brother.
And Robin had this wonderful, tear-jerking voice.
["I Started a Joke"]
[somber ballad]
- Robin was a joyous kid.
Hysterically funny.
He took great joy in being on television.
This was the funniest kid you could ever meet.
- My father always used to call him the nanny goat.
'Cause Robin would go... [silly vocalization]
He'd be rehearsing in the back of the car,
you know, doing all these phases
and, you know... ♪ I love you-ooh ♪
And he'd go, "Shut up!
You sound like a bloody nanny goat."
♪ ♪
- ♪ I started a joke ♪
♪ Which started the whole world crying ♪
- Robin was always a bit of a loner.
- I like being spontaneous.
I like being funny with people,
but you won't get that right away with me, you see.
- Robin had a wit that no one could compete with.
And he could be very dark too.
- ♪ I looked at the skies ♪
- Robin is not a person who would say,
"Oh, I love my brothers,"
or, "Group hug."
You know, none of that stuff.
- I'm basically a very shy person.
I'm very hard to get to know.
I have to really know somebody before I reveal myself.
♪ Till I finally died ♪
♪ Which started the whole world living ♪
♪ Oh ♪
- You know, I mean, that's the voice.
That's the voice that reaches your heart.
♪ ♪
- We did a show at the Saville Theatre,
and Paul McCartney was there with Jane Asher,
because Robert had said,
"Would you come and see the boys?"
- When you think that
five months before all this was going on,
I was in Pitt Street buying up the Beatle fan club book,
and now here I am partying with these guys.
We felt like we'd arrived.
Now I'm living out in Highgate outside London.
Barry's got a place in Eaton Square.
Robin's got a house in St. George's Hill,
beautiful area.
- And Mum and Dad had their own place,
and, of course, Andy lived with them.
He was just like us,
and he was always tagging along,
hoping that one day, he would do this too.
He would like to sing.
- There was a lot of hits in that short time,
you know, and after all the work
we had done through clubs and everything,
I felt grown up, you know,
so we made the most of it.
- Very talented group of men, the Bee Gees.
- Once again, the fabulous Bee Gees.
- Here they are, and get involved with the Bee Gees.
Here they are.
- ♪ I am man and you are woman ♪
♪ Who needs marriage? ♪
♪ We are humans all ♪
By then, we were flying,
you know, just the most amazing experience.
♪ Then it would please you if I should call ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Doesn't matter what your name is ♪
♪ I can do a million things to you ♪
As a pop group,
this was the biggest moment of our lives.
Never expected.
Hoped for but never really expected.
[drum solo]
♪ ♪
[crowd shouting]
♪ No, no, no ♪
♪ No, no ♪ [tires squealing]
[engine revving]
Then came "Massachusetts."
Robin said, "I've got this idea for a song."
He sang the melody,
and I just remember our jaws dropping.
[sweeping ballad]
- ♪ Feel I'm going back ♪
♪ To Massachusetts ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Something's telling me ♪
♪ I must go home ♪
♪ ♪
all: ♪ And the lights ♪
♪ All went down ♪
♪ In Massachusetts ♪
- ♪ The day I left ♪
♪ Her standing on her own ♪
- For me, they connected from very early on.
"Massachusetts" is probably the first song,
I think, that really resonates.
There is a gospel quality to it.
There is a folk quality to it.
I didn't know where the hell Massachusetts was,
but I found myself singing that
and translating it to where I was from.
- Robert runs up and he goes,
"'Massachusetts' has just gone to number one."
We went, "What?"
To have a number one in England,
you have no idea how much we dreamed of this
back in Australia.
- ♪ And Massachusetts ♪
♪ Is one place I have seen ♪
♪ ♪
- "Massachusetts" from the Bee Gees.
- I met the Bee Gees at "Top of the Pops."
I was young.
Was I 16? Maybe I was even 17.
- Top pop girl in America, top pop girl in Britain,
the one and only Lulu.
- ♪ Some people live within the world ♪
♪ And some people live without it ♪
♪ Some people gotta whisper their love ♪
♪ And some, they gotta shout it ♪
The Bee Gees were always in the studio.
They were always recording.
[melodic piano notes]
They would literally go into the studio
and start writing.
I had never known anything like that before.
- We don't usually write our lyrics
till the day we sing them.
We usually write our lyrics in the studio itself.
That seems to work through thick and thin.
It always works for us.
- It's very hard to describe how we write,
but the only way I can describe
how we work at it is by becoming one mind.
- Maurice had unique insight
into the way Robin and I thought.
[experimental piano chords]
He would just be fiddling around on the piano.
He'd suddenly play something, and,
"What was that?"
He was trying to please us
and the way that we would all try to please each other,
and that sometimes was the birth of a song.
- All of a sudden, we'll wake each other's
little instincts up and the melodies come.
It's wonderful when you hear it taking shape.
Then it all blossoms.
- The third verse is four bars.
- It's rolling.
- They'd say, "Okay, we're ready to roll," right?
And they'd play the song, and I'd work the chords out.
Colin would figure out
what he's gonna do on the drums.
They'd say, "Right, here we go.
Let's go. Bang, bang, bang."
Down it went.
["Idea"]
And that spontaneity came out in the songs.
- In those days, you knocked an album out in three weeks.
I think we had three albums out in one year.
both: ♪ But that was when I got an idea ♪
♪ Came like a gun and shot in my ear ♪
[crowd shouting]
- ♪ Don't you think it's time you got up ♪
♪ And stood alone? ♪
♪ ♪
- When we went to Europe,
there'd always be a big bunch of kids outside
waiting for us to arrive.
It was a frightening time,
because they crawled all over the Mercedes.
They were on the roof. They were at the window.
It was crazy.
"Hey, guys.
Do you think we're famous? Could be."
[laughs]
[crowd cheering]
- The Bee Gees,
the most exciting sound in the world.
["World"]
- ♪ Now ♪
♪ I found ♪
♪ That the world ♪
♪ Is round ♪
- If you've never been famous,
the first time it happens,
it's a very difficult thing to handle.
You don't know how to behave.
You don't know how to experience it.
And that affected all of us in its own way.
[somber rock music]
- I had six Rolls-Royces before I was 21.
I don't know where they are now.
[laughs]
But I mean, that's how crazy it was.
- We were all very selfish at that point.
The testosterone kicked in,
and the competition of life began.
["I've Gotta Get a Message to You"]
[mellow music]
♪ I told him I'm in no hurry ♪
♪ But if I broke her heart ♪
♪ Then won't you tell her I'm sorry? ♪
- There was always a conflict between Barry and Robin
'cause they both had fantastic voices
and Robin wanted to sing the song
and Barry wanted to sing it.
both: ♪ I've just gotta get a message to you ♪
all: ♪ Hold on ♪
♪ Hold on ♪
- Both of us wanted to be individual performers.
We all wanted individual recognition.
And therein lies the issue.
all: ♪ Hold on ♪
- I'm speaking to you from a club in Hamburg,
and I'm Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.
Robin here.
Robin, we've heard rumors that the group is splitting up.
Would you like to verify those rumors?
- If I was to say that was true,
then I would be the premier of Russia.
- I don't know.
- Thank you very much, Mr. Petersen.
How about you, Mr. Melouney?
- Oh, no. I don't think it is.
- No. No. No.
["Don't Wanna Live Inside Myself"]
- I always say that making music
with your family
is equally the greatest strength
and the greatest weakness you could ever have
in a musical partnership.
[somber piano ballad]
To get to the top or near the top,
you've gotta be incredibly driven,
and what drives you is your ego.
And when you get there
and everybody's got an ego about it,
it can be tricky to stay there.
- ♪ I am the searcher ♪
♪ Of my fortunes ♪
♪ I got my right hand ♪
♪ On the wheel ♪
- The three of us stopped looking inwards to each other
and all started looking outwards
to what we could be individually.
"To hell with what my brothers think."
And each one of us was thinking that.
both: ♪ Don't wanna live ♪
♪ Inside myself ♪
- To travel the world when you're young
with a family member
gives you a certain sense of who you are
and where you've come from and all that.
So you kind of walk that tightrope.
- We'd been together all our lives, don't forget.
- We'd been together since Robin and I were five,
singing professionally.
You know, it's a lot of years.
- We'd been kids living together with each other
right up until the time we arrived
and even after we arrived in England.
- ♪ Don't wanna live inside myself ♪
Robin was first to say,
"Well, I'm quitting the group."
I stopped really knowing Robin
and his personal life once we became famous.
And the same with Mo.
Our three lives were three different lives.
We were no longer living the same life.
♪ ♪
- Brothers...
in general, it's a very complicated thing,
you know?
Emotions are heightened,
and there's things that go back to childhood about, you know,
if one kid got more attention than the other,
and all these things play out
in front of just a small group of friends,
but when you magnify that with the whole world,
it changes the game a little bit.
- Robin, that's a good picture.
That's you, Barry, Colin, Vince.
- That's correct, yes. - Do you miss 'em?
- Well, it's not really a matter
of missing them, really.
But I still see them on and off, you know,
so that's the way things go.
I'll show you the studio anyway.
[George Bizet's "Habanera"]
- It was really me and Robin that were in conflict,
and I think Maurice was in the middle.
- Story of my life, really. [laughs]
Barry would call me up and say,
"Well, can you call Robin and tell him
if he wants to do this?"
And Robin would go, "Well, give Barry a call
and let him know that I'm gonna be over."
I said, "Robin, you call Barry."
"Barry, you call Robin."
And they both said, "No, we won't."
And for 18 months, they never did.
- We had this fascination
with calling the newspapers up.
You called "NME" or you called "Disc" or "Music Echo"
and you'd say... [grumbles]
"Robin said this about me, and I just wanna be able
to correct the record," and all that stuff.
- It was a whole strange episode of our lives,
but a lot of things had gone down at that time,
and we needed time apart to think about them.
- At Caxton Hall, VIP transport
for very important pop star Barry Gibb.
He's getting married
to 20-year-old former Miss Edinburgh
Linda Gray.
[cheery music]
- Their world was crazy at that time.
You know, at one time, there was three brothers,
and then all of a sudden, it was three wives.
- Maurice Gibb and Lulu became Mr. and Mrs.
at St. James' Parish Church
at Gerrards Cross in Buckinghamshire.
- You think, by marrying someone
that you absolutely adore,
you think it's gonna solve all your problems,
but really...
- At Caxton Hall,
Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees marries Molly Hullis.
[upbeat rock music]
- Molly was my first real love.
The first serious one.
But it was a very traumatic time for me.
[bombastic music]
I went with my manager.
He said, "Look, Robin,
I'm gonna send you to New Zealand."
He says, "You're doing the Redwood Park Festival."
So I went there, and of course,
it was advertised that the Bee Gees were coming,
not just Robin Gibb, you see.
[crowd shouting]
All right. Okay.
- How'd you feel last night?
- I have an obligation to my audience
not to look scared, and...
I can't say I really felt scared.
I was terrified. [laughs]
♪ How far am I able to ♪
[microphone feedback whining]
[crowd screaming]
- All three of us became isolated,
and all three of us did things to each other
that I think we're all sorry for.
[soft music]
We loved each other.
There was an enormous amount of love between us.
Growing up, we did everything together.
- We often thought we were triplets.
Because we all had the same love.
We had the same sense of humor.
We had the same love of the same kind of music.
- Just typical kids, you know?
But the one thing that no one else was doing
was that we were singing in harmony,
and beyond anything else, that's all we cared about.
♪ ♪
We fell in love with the Mills Brothers.
They all did something unique in their own way.
And at the same time,
Robin and I did two different leads,
and Maurice would always know where to put that other melody
to make a three-part harmony.
They mirrored what we wanted to be.
- Do you find you miss Robin and Maurice musically?
- Yeah. [chuckles]
Not musically.
I miss them both as brothers.
- Something about entering the world
from the same place, I think, has an effect
on your ability to sing together,
your creative awareness, and your artistic voice.
- Could we see the Bee Gees back together again?
- That's a very strong point that it could be.
I can't say definitely,
but I'd like to see the Bee Gees again.
[solemn music]
- Mr. Epstein has been unwell now for some months.
And he's been in the habit of taking tablets
to help him sleep at night.
He was found in his second-floor bedroom
just after 2:00 this afternoon by his housekeeper.
- When Brian died and we restructured NEMS,
Robert asked to become
a more important senior executive
for the Beatles,
and that wasn't acceptable to them,
so he then left the company
and took with him Eric Clapton and Bee Gees
so he could start off on his own.
- We were an asset.
We were one of those people Robert needed
as an element of going public.
[camera shutters snapping]
It was at the launching of the company
where we started to communicate again.
[applause]
And once we came back together again,
we wrote "Lonely Days,"
which reflected the idea that we'd been broken up.
- We'd always been boys going up together,
and I think we came back together as men.
We respected each other's opinions,
which we didn't before that.
["How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?"]
If anything, that was the good thing
about the breakup.
[soft ballad]
♪ I can think of younger days ♪
- I had already started a first verse and chorus.
I knew what "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?" was,
but then Robin walks in.
I said, "I'm just working on this song.
Do you wanna do it with me?"
And he went, "Yeah, of course."
- ♪ I could never see tomorrow ♪
- We'd been apart for two years.
If we hadn't been brothers,
we wouldn't have lasted half an hour.
It just wouldn't have happened.
♪ ♪
♪ And ♪
♪ How can you mend ♪
♪ A broken heart? ♪
Things started to just improve over time, you know?
♪ How can you stop the rain ♪
♪ From falling down? ♪
We became the Bee Gees again.
all: ♪ How can you stop ♪
♪ The sun from shining? ♪
♪ What makes the world go round? ♪
♪ ♪
- We came back together, and we made
two number one records in America,
so we were on a bit of a high.
♪ ♪
But we were not really that good
when it came to just doing anything without a pill,
you know, or without a drink.
It was destroying us.
all: ♪ My broken heart ♪
And that became the battle,
the fight to survive being a pop group.
all: ♪ Da-da-da-da ♪
- ♪ Da-da-da-da-da-da ♪
[cheers and applause]
Thank you very, very much on behalf of my brothers,
Robin
and Maurice,
and this beautiful orchestra,
our lead guitarist, Alan Kendall...
- Robert Stigwood said,
"The Bee Gees are gonna go on a tour,
and they want a guitar player who can play bass as well,"
'cause in those days,
Maurice played bass, but he would go on piano sometimes.
And so I called him and I said, "Well, I can't play bass,"
and he said, "Just say you can play bass,"
so I said, "Okay, I can play bass."
[mellow rock music]
I'll be honest, I was very much into the lifestyle.
I just loved being on the road.
I loved playing music, chasing women.
♪ ♪
Maurice is so funny,
'cause he was good at magic tricks,
and he'd like to drink a little, as I did.
Robin, I never really knew.
I mean, I'd converse with him but not as much as the others.
And I would bump into him every now and then
wandering the corridors of the hotel.
And there's Barry with his glamorous wife
smoking a bowl, you know?
♪ ♪
My early days with the Bee Gees
were, for me, thrilling,
even though I can understand why it wasn't for them,
'cause they weren't necessarily selling out.
[solemn music]
- When we were broken up,
the world changed radically very quickly.
And that was the beginning of the period
when there was just no interest in us at all.
- Remember, we were on tour.
They'd try to keep Robin
from looking out into the audience,
in case it was only half full.
- When we got back home, I turned to more drinking.
I'd go to the pubs. The police knew my car.
I was becoming the town drunk.
I mean, I think I had about 2 grand in the bank
and lived next order to a fish and chips shop.
- So by '74,
we didn't think there was gonna be much of a future.
When you become famous, you think everyone loves you
and they're gonna love you forever,
and it's not true.
["Marley Purt Drive"]
[bluesy rock ballad]
- All of a sudden now, we had to work the clubs
at the north of England to pay the taxman,
so we had the Sheffield Fiesta,
the Golden Garter in Manchester,
Batley Variety Club,
great clubs of our time.
- The Batley thing,
it's where all the has-beens went to play,
and not saying that they were has-beens,
but it was like, "Oh, God, not Batley," you know?
- ♪ Sunday morning, woke up ♪
- I was a waitress at the Batley Variety Club.
I really wasn't a fan of the Bee Gees.
The only thing I knew about them was,
you know, Maurice was mar--
well, he was going through a divorce with Lulu.
- Yvonne came in, and I saw her eyes.
I don't know about the rest of her.
I just saw her eyes.
And I said, "I'm gonna marry her."
And I knew I was gonna marry her.
- He was so cute.
His personality was amazing.
- Maurice had this childlike quality,
which is something very special in men.
- He loved dressing up in police uniforms.
Wherever we went on tour,
they'd give him a hat, give him a badge.
- Is that his wallet? - It's a badge.
- Whoa! [laughter]
What was that? - I'm not showing you now.
- People loved him.
He had the best smile ever.
- I remember him teaching me the showbiz smile,
and he said, "Well, the trick is,
"you don't move your eyes
and you just go like this."
[laughs]
And I'll be honest with you,
I think Maurice was the glue that held it all together.
- Oh, I'm Mr. Fix-It.
Either some discrepancy between Barry and Robin,
or if we're gonna make a decision about something,
"Well, what does Maurice think?"
But most of the time, I'm like my mum.
I'm the peacemaker.
- You know, if they'd not been brothers,
they would not be together.
No doubt in my mind.
♪ ♪
[soft music]
- I met the Gibbs when they were on a bit of a--
shall we say, a downturn in their career.
Robert Stigwood made me,
unaccountably, the head of his record label.
I was only 21 years old.
I truly believed it was because I was
the only guy in the room that I got the job.
It was odd to me because I thought,
"If they can write those songs,
how come they can't be consistent?"
If you got the ability to write
"How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?"
and "To Love Somebody,"
where does that talent go?
- I mean, there was two albums in a row that were dismal.
- Ahmet Ertegun said to Robert,
"You know, maybe their time has gone,"
'cause it was Atlantic who were paying
for these recordings,
and Robert wouldn't hear of it, of course.
He would never let the Bee Gees go.
- There was this thing about Stigwood--[laughs]
Stigwood and his loyalties.
I had a kind of deep-seated resentment
about the fact that, you know, they were still
his favorite.
[Eric Clapton's "Motherless Children"]
[rollicking guitar music]
I had come out of a long period
of addiction and alcoholism,
and I went into the sort of recovery period.
♪ ♪
All these musical ambitions came to the surface,
so I went to Miami to record.
♪ ♪
- We had a conversation with Eric
about making a comeback.
Eric said, "Well, I've just made this album
"called '461 Ocean Boulevard' in Miami.
"Why don't you guys make an album in America
"instead of always making an album in England,
"and maybe the change of environment
will do something for you?"
- The studio there was unbelievable,
and I think that's what
the suggestion was about, really.
I thought those guys were actually an R&B band
that hadn't really worked that out yet.
And I thought, "Man, this would be so good
if they could pick up on what's going on in America."
- I do know that they had to change something.
That's when the whole idea
of actually being more of a band together
rather than, you know,
musicians and orchestras and all that stuff.
["Mr. Natural"]
- Alan Kendall, who was a friend of mine,
said, "The Bee Gees are looking for a drummer.
You know, are you interested?"
And I went, "Yes." [laughs]
"I think I'm interested. Yeah. I am interested."
- We needed to get more energized
and don't rely so much
on the ballads that we had been doing.
- We wanted to be a band so bad,
and that was basically the birth of it.
- We had a great bass player, Maurice.
We had a great guitar player, Alan.
So really, the only thing we needed
was a keyboard player,
and I thought, "Blue."
[lively piano solo]
♪ ♪
- Dennis called and said,
"Look, you know, I'm putting a band together
"with the Bee Gees,
"and I've spoken to Barry, and everybody's in agreement.
Are you interested?"
I said, "No. No.
I'm having great fun. I'm in a rock and roll band."
Queen was our support act.
I'm touring America and living the rock and roll life.
all: ♪ You don't get me, I'm part of the union ♪
♪ You don't get me, I'm part of the union ♪
- We'd grown up together playing in bands in Cardiff.
I said, "We've known each other
for a long time, right?"
He said, "Den, don't do this to me."
And I said, "I am doing it to you."
I said, "Just do me one favor:
"meet Barry.
"And after you've met Barry, if you don't wanna do it,
I'll leave you alone."
["Voices"]
- Maurice and I had moved to the Isle of Man,
which is where we were born.
Blue was the guy who was gonna come to the Isle of Man
and audition for us on piano.
- ♪ If I were you and you were me ♪
- We were staying in Barry's house,
and it was Linda, and then Maurice came over
and Huey, the father.
Instantly, you feel comfortable with them.
- They started talking about synthesizers
and Moogs,
and Blue had them all.
- There's the Sunday evening I was leaving,
and Huey said, "Hey, we haven't heard you play."
[laughs]
- But my piano was so bad
that he played something and it just sounded awful.
- It was just, like, totally embarrassing.
- I said, "Sounds fine to me, man.
Let's do it," you know?
- Barry offered him the job.
- I'd always loved the music,
but the first time you ever hear the Bee Gees
just when they're in a room like this,
you know, it's just magic.
I think that's what won me over with them.
I said yes,
and January the 1st, we left.
all: ♪ Doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo ♪
♪ Doo-dee-doo, dah, day ♪
["Wind of Change"]
[upbeat R&B music]
♪ ♪
- Miami's a gateway city,
but in those days, it was kind of sleepy.
You know, a little off the beaten path.
But in the winter, that was the place to be,
so Atlantic Records would always book their acts
down at Criteria.
- ♪ And the lights ♪
- I was about the number three engineer
at the studio.
I worked my way up,
and I was at that point in my career
where I was ready for anything.
- ♪ Get on up ♪
♪ Look around ♪
♪ Can't you feel the wind of change? ♪
- When we got to Miami, all of a sudden, sunshine,
and, oh, you know?
This is paradise.
- We'd come from England,
and so there was nothing sleepy about America.
- Put them in the same house I'd rented for Eric Clapton,
461 Ocean Boulevard.
- I think the first thing all of us did was
take pictures against that palm tree, you know,
doing the Eric Clapton pose.
- ♪ We need a god down here ♪
- Being in that house together,
you know, we were creative,
and we were a family.
I mean, I felt like that.
- It did make us close.
I mean, you had to be. And we'd all watch TV at night.
The chemistry was very exciting.
- When you got up in the morning,
you went to breakfast; you had a cup of tea.
It was all very relaxed.
- ♪ Can't you see the wind of change? ♪
- It was strange, considering the amount of pressure
that was really on the Bee Gees at that time.
- They were about to drop us.
We had to adopt a new sound.
We had to adopt a new attitude.
- So the next step was, we brought Arif Mardin in
to produce them.
[Aretha Franklin's "Day Dreaming"]
- ♪ Daydreaming and I'm thinking of you ♪
- We'd often work with other people,
but they weren't producers,
and this man was a literal producer.
- They had expressed how much they wanted to do
American R&B kind of stuff,
and Arif was, you know, top of the heap for that.
- Arif was so instrumental in producing Black artists,
and we wanted that input.
- ♪ It turns me right on when I hear him say ♪
- We actually did an album with Arif before that,
but Arif said, "We've gotta go more into R&B,"
and we started working together
right here in Miami, down at Criteria.
- Well, I was in Studio B,
and Arif says to me,
"Carl, have I got a group for you."
And of course, everybody knew the Bee Gees.
It was a surprise out of nowhere.
I was excited.
You know, they sing like angels.
And they were as excited as I was.
And Arif was right in there with them.
- He said, "Look,
"if you're ever going to break out brand-new,
"you gotta start now.
"You gotta shock the pants off these people
who don't believe in you."
- Robert came and saw us when we were making the album,
sat down with us on the beach, and said, "Right.
"We're gonna start from scratch.
"This is gonna be it.
Let's make it big."
- ♪ Whoa ♪
- If you said to me or anyone,
"Just go and write a hit song right now,"
they would be able to craft something good,
but it would probably be missing this magic
that, if you work in music long enough,
you understand is running everything.
Like surfers with waves. Surfers don't make the waves.
Fishermen don't make the fish.
Songwriters don't really write songs.
You receive songs.
["Jive Talkin'"]
- Driving backwards and forwards to Criteria,
this clickity-click thing was going on in this bridge
every time we crossed over it.
And in my head, it sounded like,
"ch, ch-ch, ch-ch."
[rhythmic clacking]
And it was gone.
And eventually, I started singing to it in my head.
♪ Just your jive talkin' ♪
- I remember going to the studio.
Barry said, "Can you do chicken picking, Alan?"
I didn't really know what it was.
So I just played this one note and muted it.
Thought it sounded like a chicken.
[mimicking guitar lick]
And mixed with Barry's rhythm part,
it really worked, you know?
- ♪ It's just your jive talkin' ♪
♪ You're telling me lies, yeah ♪
♪ Jive talkin' ♪
♪ You wear a disguise ♪
♪ Jive talkin' ♪
♪ So misunderstood, yeah ♪
♪ Jive talkin' ♪
♪ You really no good ♪
- At that time, you know,
a handful of R&B artists were using synthesizers,
so we went into this field
pioneering, in a way.
[synth solo]
♪ ♪
- Music is this huge energy flying around everywhere,
and if you're lucky, you get little slices of it
that turn into songs.
- There is a sort of--
- Like a radio transmitter. - It's exactly like that.
It's almost as if somebody's already written
the songs in the air and they're giving them to us.
♪ Leaving me looking like a dumbstruck fool ♪
♪ With all your jive talkin' ♪
♪ You're telling me lies ♪
- It was Robert who really pressed
for "Jive Talkin'" to come out as the first single,
because it was something totally unexpected from us.
- We sent the record out
but without naming the Bee Gees on it,
because by then, their stock had fallen so low
with radio stations in America,
and within hours
of the record landing at all the radio stations,
they were calling in, saying, "Who is this?
This is amazing."
[radio tuning]
- The British group who move into number one this week
hit number one
exactly four years ago to the week.
[drumroll]
The brand-new number one song in the USA,
the Bee Gees and "Jive Talkin'."
♪ ♪
- When "Jive Talkin'" came out,
everybody went, "Who?
"The Bee Gees? 'Broken Heart' Bee Gees?
Are you kidding?"
- Something different was happening,
and the brothers felt it too.
Miami, Miami Beach,
that whole vibe turned them on.
- I just fell in love with the atmosphere here.
It reminded me so much of growing up in Australia.
- That's great, Rob.
- And from "Jive Talkin'" onwards,
we kicked it up.
- The songwriting was just very unique.
Nothing like it.
They would write on the spot,
and they would bounce off each other.
- Okay, you let us know when you're ready.
- "Nights on Broadway" was one of those.
The guys had been to New York, and they go, "Oh, this is--
we gotta write a New York kind of song."
- Here we go. Take ten.
- They just did it naturally in the studio,
and everybody chipped in.
- Three, four.
[funky music]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Well, here we are ♪
♪ In a room full of strangers ♪
Ahmet Ertegun came to Miami.
He was there when we were cutting "Nights on Broadway."
At the time, it was "Lights on Broadway."
♪ Blaming it all ♪
♪ On the lights on Broadway ♪
[music distorts]
And Ahmet went, "No." [laughs]
He said, "You know, you've got to get more adult
about the song."
So "Lights on Broadway" became "Nights on Broadway."
- ♪ Well, I had to follow you ♪
♪ ♪
both: ♪ Though you did not want me to ♪
♪ ♪
all: ♪ But that won't stop my loving you ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I can't stay away ♪
♪ Blaming it all ♪
♪ On the nights on Broadway ♪
♪ Singing them love songs ♪
♪ Singing them "straight to the heart" songs ♪
- We were completing "Nights on Broadway."
We'd just done most of the vocal tracks.
Usually, you know, at the end, you know,
you have some ad-libs or some kind of thing
to take us away from the original melody
and have some fun.
- Arif suggested to the band,
"Hey, you know, we really need some kind of background parts
that come in and express the meaning of the song."
- He was looking for one of us to scream,
in tune, if possible.
I said, "I'll go out and give it a shot."
- Are we almost ready? Let's do it.
- So he went out there and he did
the "blaming it alls."
- [falsetto] ♪ Blame it all ♪
- ♪ On the nights on Broadway ♪
- ♪ Blame it on the nights on Broadway ♪
- Everybody in the control room woke up,
and it was like, "Oh, this is a new sound."
- ♪ Blame it all ♪
- ♪ On the nights on Broadway ♪
- ♪ Blame it on the nights on Broadway ♪
I was thinking, "My God, I don't--
"where is this coming from?
I can do this."
My whole life, I didn't know I could do this.
- Everybody's giving me credit.
No, he was singing it. I said, "Keep on doing it."
- ♪ Blame it on the nights on Broadway ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Ah ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
- Arif brought it out of us, all that.
I mean, we weren't the first to sing falsetto.
[The Stylistics' "Can't Give You Anything (But My Love)"]
We loved the Stylistics.
We loved the Spinners, the Delfonics.
They were all falsetto lead singers.
- ♪ If I had money, I'd go out ♪
♪ Buy you furs, dress you like a queen ♪
- There's something to be said about all music
is that it doesn't happen in a vacuum.
The falsetto is very much a Black tradition,
but they've translated it
into this interesting interpretation of soul.
But I guess more importantly for me,
it's emotional.
- [falsetto] ♪ Ah ♪
Because we were so excited about this,
we started writing songs for this voice.
- It created another dimension of sound--
that's what we thought-- you know, emotionally.
It became another icon of the Gibbs.
Everybody knew, when you heard that falsetto,
that's the Bee Gees.
both: ♪ Be tender ♪
♪ With my love ♪
♪ You know how easy it is to hurt me ♪
- When we sing songs like...
♪ You know how easy it is to hurt me ♪
It's Barry and Robin singing in unison.
But they mesh together so well that it sounds like one voice.
But it's a different voice from them separately.
- ♪ With my love ♪
both: ♪ You know how easy it is to hurt me ♪
♪ Fanny, be tender ♪
- It's delivered with such delicacy,
and the message in the lyrics
was what guys should say, didn't say, couldn't say,
for whatever reasons.
It's the kind of music you might've bought
and given to your girlfriend.
[laughs]
But that's what was special about them.
both: [vocalizing]
♪ Fanny, be tender ♪
♪ With my love ♪
- "Main Course" became a turning point for us.
Dennis Bryon on drums
and Blue Weaver and Alan Kendall,
that became our band.
♪ With my love ♪
- ♪ 'Cause it's all that I've got ♪
♪ And my love won't desert me ♪
both: ♪ Be tender with my love ♪
- One of their best qualities was adaptability.
In many ways, they were chameleons of pop.
- The way they changed
and the groove they got into there
was so profound.
If that was something that was initiated by me,
I can't think of any--
one of the great things I've done in my life.
I'll take full credit.
[laughs]
[waves crashing]
- We're getting ready to record the next album,
and we get this phone call
that Arif can't be involved in this album.
[tense music]
Robert chose to take
the organization away from Atlantic Records
and go private.
Atlantic, who were not happy about that, said,
"Well, you're not using Arif anymore
as a house producer."
I said, "What about the next album?"
Arif--you know, I said,
"Who do you think can continue where you left off?"
♪ ♪
- I got a call from Barry,
and he said, "I want my studio time back
and I wanna work with you."
[scratchy music playing]
♪ ♪
And I'm in the control room.
I said to Dennis, the drummer, I says, you know,
"That pattern you're playing right now
is just a little too busy."
♪ ♪
He said, "Well, what do you mean?"
I said, "I can't get into specifics
about the note values."
I didn't have a technical term for the open and closed hi-hat
or any of that stuff.
So apparently, you know, I needed a communicator.
[funky groove]
- I was working as an independent producer
on some pub band in London.
Carl called and he said, "What are you doing?"
And I said, "Well, I just finished the mix.
I'm on a plane tomorrow."
- Albhy went to Berklee School of Music
in New England,
and he was one of my best friends.
And he says, "I'll be on the next flight to Florida."
- ♪ Baby, keep it coming ♪
- I got off the plane. I went straight to the studio.
I walked in.
They were working on "You Should Be Dancing."
They came in the control room,
and Barry said, "What did you think?"
And I said, "Well, I just got in,
but sounds awfully good."
We seemed to hit it off, so I came back the next day.
- Now, what you have to remember at the time,
Albhy was a hippie.
I mean, he was just different.
- ♪ I get nothing ♪
- Albhy used to hang around the studio,
and I got on really well with him.
I found out he played on "I Shot the Sheriff"
with Eric.
- Albhy had an inroad into technology,
and he had a great ear.
- Everybody just seemed to be, I think, relieved
to have another ear in the control room
to hear what they were doing as a whole.
["Love So Right"]
[mellow ballad]
♪ ♪
In the beginning, when I came,
the three brothers were clearly a unit.
Each of them knew the way their brothers sang
and would be on the same mic
and they would lean in or lean out
or complement each other's voices.
They were in perfect synchrony.
all: ♪ How a love so right ♪
♪ Can turn out to be so wrong ♪
- We found another sound. We found a new sound.
I came up with a lot of new ideas
to suit the falsetto.
Everybody was saying the same thing:
"Do that falsetto again. Do that falsetto again."
And so that was fine for me. I was having a ball.
["You Should Be Dancing"]
[upbeat disco music]
- A lot of new music has been coming out of Miami lately,
enough so that we've even heard mentioned
the term "Miami Sound."
♪ ♪
- ♪ My baby moves at midnight ♪
♪ Goes right on till the dawn ♪
- This is actually a really important period
for musicianship and production and songwriting
that targets the dance floor.
♪ ♪
- ♪ What you doing on your back? ♪
- It's a different emotional energy,
which is about, can you make the body move?
Can you make the body happy?
- ♪ You should be dancing ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Dancing, yeah ♪
- And certain songs sounded like
the human embodiment of a brass section.
The same way a horn just punches...
- Yeah.
- That's what Barry's voice reminds me of.
- ♪ Gives me power ♪
♪ Goes right down to my blood ♪
- I was always into arrangement of instruments.
"You Should Be Dancing,"
their voices together sound like trumpets to me.
- ♪ You should be dancing, yeah ♪
- I am not high, for the record.
I just wanna-- [laughter]
- [scatting to horn section]
It was a discovery.
We've discovered a new audience.
- At the clubs,
"You Should Be Dancing" exploded.
Not just, "Oh, well, I heard that record
and I really liked it."
It was three times a night at any club that you went to.
There was a whole industry
that was built around this clubbing thing.
"Billboard" started a chart that was dance music chart.
This billion-dollar industry was being built
way before the Bee Gees.
A lot of people don't realize
disco started in the gay and the Black community.
People don't understand
what it was like back then for gay people.
There was a law in New York
that did not allow people of the same sex
to dance together
in a place that had a liquor license.
And then the law changed,
and that allowed me to open my club.
- ♪ Whoo-hoo ♪
- A new era of dance music started
in the gay underground clubs.
- [scatting to disco beat]
[Don Downing's "Dream World"]
- So the record industry wants to name it,
package it, sell it.
That was the explosion
of the disco sound.
- ♪ Dream world ♪
♪ ♪
- We're down at Criteria Sound Studios,
and currently, it's the studio
that's being used by the Bee Gees.
What particular thing about the studio
makes it so attractive?
- It's cheap. - It's cheap, yeah.
- No. Cheap it isn't, but--
- But the actual atmosphere of the place is very relaxing.
We create better here than we do anywhere else.
- Yeah.
- That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
[laughter]
[upbeat disco music]
America was the ultimate dream.
As three kids, we said,
"One day, we're gonna have houses in America
all next door to each other with swimming pools."
[laughs]
And we thought, "Oh, that'll be great."
♪ ♪
- It was a huge uprooting.
♪ ♪
It's a very large family,
and it just kept getting bigger and bigger over time.
♪ ♪
Mum and Dad came to Miami as quickly as we did.
I think they were probably the happiest they'd ever been
in their lives.
And of course, Andy came here with them.
- Andy was a gift out of left field.
But I never knew he existed until one day, he shows up
fresh from Australia.
- Andy was a great kid.
He could do anything he set his mind to.
- Barry was Andy's idol.
They were almost like twins.
- We were very much alike.
We looked alike. We had the same birthmarks.
I would say that we were as much like twins
as Maurice and Robin.
- "Main Course" and "Children of the World,"
which followed that,
they were, like, triple platinum.
I think he really wanted to be a part of that.
- They suggested that I go to Australia,
as my brothers first did in 1958
when I was only five months old,
and start working there and get some records released.
- Andy was very young then.
He had his little band.
- It was a process of building him up,
getting him to play live, getting him to be an artist.
- I was there for two years.
Out of the blue, a phone call came
from my brother Barry
and said, "I wanna produce you,"
and I think it was, like, two weeks or something,
I was in the studio to do a new album in Miami.
I didn't think I was ready.
- The first few times
on a real professional studio microphone,
Andy was, like, petrified,
but, you know, Barry was there
and guided him through and helped him with lyrics.
He was very receptive to new ideas.
[Andy Gibb's "I Just Want to Be Your Everything"]
And it didn't take him long, you know,
to find, like, you know, another groove.
[upbeat pop music playing]
♪ ♪
- ♪ For so long ♪
♪ You and me been finding each other ♪
♪ For so long ♪
- The Bee Gees' point of view was about having hit records
and being on the radio,
and so the greatest gift that you could give
to your younger brother
would be to give him that success,
to write songs with him, to teach him to be a star.
- ♪ I, I ♪
♪ I just want to be your everything ♪
- And then suddenly, out of nowhere,
Andy had about three number ones in a row.
- He was a teen idol.
There was talk about him becoming a Bee Gee.
I think Robert saw he had a younger audience.
Smart to keep him on his own.
- ♪ Oh, if I ♪
♪ If I stay here without you, darling ♪
♪ I will die ♪
- All of a sudden, he was the big thing.
There was a period when we lived in the shadow
of Andy's band.
- ♪ To be your everything ♪
♪ ♪
- After "Children of the World" album,
the next project,
we were booked to record in France
'cause of the Elton John album "Honky Château."
It sounded great.
- ♪ Bye-bye, château, I must leave you ♪
♪ Though it breaks my heart ♪
- Robert sent us there--
I think it was some kind of tax thing.
- We thought, "Well, if this studio sounds that good,
"hell yeah, let's go off to France.
Why not?
[Elton John's "Honky Cat"]
♪ ♪
- It wasn't the honky château that Elton John had used.
[upbeat piano rock]
- Now, château sounds absolutely gorgeous,
doesn't it?
Beautiful building, great grounds and gardens
and ponds and fountains.
No.
[laughs] It's nothing like that.
It was a half-built castle, no central heating, nothing,
and it was a dump.
- We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
Not a happy place to be.
- It was really kind of decrepit.
I think it'd been used to make porn movies.
- This was not right.
But because there was a contract,
we just decided to, you know, plow on through.
- We were going there to mix a live album
called "Here At Last...Live."
- But also, we were getting songs ready
for our new studio album,
which would be the follow-up to "Children of the World."
- And we got a call from Robert Stigwood.
[dramatic disco music]
♪ ♪
- A friend of mine, Nik Cohn,
wrote this piece for "New York" magazine,
"Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night."
Disco was really underway, in Manhattan, anyway,
but Nik Cohn's point was that
rather than just being underground gay clubs,
straight couples are now going to do the hustle
on a Saturday night in the suburbs.
So I got Robert to buy the film rights
to a magazine article, of which there was no story.
But it caught Robert's attention
because he saw
that that's a lead role for an actor
if it was a movie.
He announced
at the Beverly Hills Hotel at breakfast,
"I'm signing John Travolta to a three-picture deal,"
and people thought he was mad.
He was a TV actor.
No one gets a million dollars for three pictures.
Turned out to be the bargain of the century, of course,
because he got him for "Grease"
and the movie we don't talk about,
"Moment by Moment,"
but two out of three's not bad.
[David Shire's "Salsation"]
I was still running RSO Records,
so my job was to do the soundtrack,
and my brief was,
"Put all of your favorite disco tracks
"and everyone will play it at a party
and they'll never stop dancing."
[percussive dance music]
♪ ♪
These were comparatively easy,
but we needed the Bee Gees to write a few songs.
- Phone call came through from Robert,
saying, "I wanna make this film."
- He said, "But I'm gonna need two or three songs."
- It wasn't the idea that they would do the soundtrack.
We knew they were busy.
"But have you got some songs?" Robert said,
and they said, "Yeah, sure."
- Robert said, "I'm sending you a script."
But we decided not to read the script.
- We weren't writing the "Fever" music.
We were writing our new album and just having fun doing it.
- They already had a couple of tunes
or some titles, anyway.
We thought, "Let's leave it with them."
- What we ended up doing was the demos of these songs.
- And I was really surprised
that, you know, it was only a few weeks later
we got the songs.
We got a cassette, and to this day, it's amazing.
["Stayin' Alive"]
♪ ♪
[tape whirring]
- ♪ On the waves of the air ♪
[tape whirring]
♪ You're in my life ♪
- It was just one after the other.
You know, "Stayin' Alive," "More Than a Woman,"
"How Deep Is Your Love," "If I Can't Have You,"
"Night Fever"
on one cassette.
And I thought, "Yes.
We've got a soundtrack."
- You know, you listen to that tape,
whoever was playing on those records,
they would've been hits.
Those songs are so good.
You think, "Shit," you know?
"That's so cool."
- We had the demos,
and then we went into the process
of making real records.
- Barry and Carl and I lived in that control room,
I don't know, 16 hours a day.
- Yeah. That was the only thing to do.
["Night Fever"]
We recorded "Night Fever" first.
We actually had that in the can.
♪ ♪
- Robert called and said, "I need a title for the film."
"What I've got at the moment," I said, "is two titles:
'Stayin' Alive' and 'Night Fever.'"
And he said, "'Night Fever.'
Hmm," he said, "sounds okay," he said,
"but it sounds a bit too pornographic.
It'd need to be called 'Saturday Night,'" he said.
So it turned into "Saturday Night Fever."
♪ Night fever, night fever ♪
♪ We know how to do it ♪
- We were editing "Fever" on the lot at Paramount.
I was deluged by Paramount people saying,
"How's your little disco movie coming along?"
So that was a bit patronizing.
But the inspiring thing was
that Stigwood, during postproduction, said,
"Why do we wait for the release of the film?
Let's put out a single now."
And then he started with the heads of Paramount,
like, "How many theaters?"
And they told him something like 200.
He said, "I'm releasing the record in every city.
Why can't it be in every single city?"
So they made a deal
whereby if the record got to the top 20,
they would increase the number of screens.
If it got top ten, they'd go more.
He said, "I need the first record
to be number one."
["How Deep Is Your Love"]
[soft ballad]
- Stigwood phoned up and said to Barry,
"I need the best love song
you've ever written for the movie."
So we went into a room in the château.
Chopin had stayed there.
So every time I looked at this piano,
I envisaged Chopin sitting down and playing.
♪ ♪
I sat down at the piano
and thought of his Prelude in E Flat,
and I knew Barry could sing in E flat.
When we were working like that,
I had a cassette player.
- [vocalizing with piano]
♪ ♪
[indistinct chatter]
♪ Love again ♪
♪ Still in love ♪
- And I'm sure it happened at that point.
Through the stained glass window
came a beam of sunlight, you know?
♪ Your eyes in the morning sun ♪
♪ ♪
- ♪ I know your eyes in the morning sun ♪
♪ I feel you touch me in the pouring rain ♪
And that's a memory-- that'll last me all my life.
Never forget it.
♪ ♪
- You know, all the feelings,
all the emotions are still there.
When you talk about it, it all comes back, you know?
♪ ♪
I have a--
my heart is in that song.
- ♪ I know your eyes in the morning sun ♪
♪ I feel you touch me in the pouring rain ♪
♪ And the moment that you wander far from me ♪
♪ I wanna feel you in my arms again ♪
♪ And you come to me on a summer breeze ♪
♪ Keep me warm in your love, then you softly leave ♪
♪ And it's me you need to show ♪
♪ How deep is your love? ♪ - ♪ How deep is your love? ♪
all: ♪ How deep is your love? ♪
♪ I really mean to learn ♪
♪ 'Cause we're living in a world of fools ♪
♪ Breaking us down ♪
♪ When they all should let us be ♪
♪ We belong to you and me ♪
♪ ♪
- Everything came together.
But sadly, Dennis had had some bad news.
- My mother was in hospital. She had Alzheimer's.
So, you know, I told Barry what was going on.
He said, you know, "Get Dick to book you a flight now."
- He had to fly back to the UK, and we had no drummer.
- We thought, "Well, we gotta carry on writing
and getting these tracks together."
[distorted rewinding drum]
- Okay, I know now.
[drumbeat playing]
- When I was at Berklee, I had studied things
where they were moving tapes around
and make sort of these interesting sonic loops.
And when Dennis was not there,
I said, "Well, why don't we just
"take a bar out of 'Night Fever'?
"I think it's a little slower tempo.
"We'll slow it down a little bit
and see if we can make a loop out of it."
["Night Fever" playing]
♪ ♪
We found a bar that we thought had a really nice feel to it.
We copied it over to a...
- 1/2 inch four-track. - 1/2 inch four-track.
- And spliced the tape into a loop.
Tape dump.
[drumbeat playing]
- I was pretty good at imagining
what you might be able to do,
but Carl was able to make it happen.
- It was just necessity being the mother of invention.
- No one had taken a drumbeat before
and created a two-bar phrase.
We were breaking new ground.
- Perfect. Good.
- This is the first time we had ever taken the song
and built it piece by piece from the ground up,
and we started with this drum loop.
[drumbeat]
And then we did a bass line.
[funky bass line]
And then a guitar part.
[swinging guitar riff]
♪ ♪
Never again would we rely as much on the liveness.
We would always know
that we could construct the song
and put the pieces together
based on the original vision of the song
and how we imagined it.
["Stayin' Alive"]
- I got back to the sessions, and there was just a buzz.
- When we did it, we thought,
"We're just doing this temporarily,"
and when Dennis comes back,
we'll replace it with real drums,"
but what happened is, the feel was so amazing
that we couldn't get rid of it.
- He played it for me, and I could tell
from the first listen.
I said, "Man, that is amazing."
- When you listen to the drum track
on "Stayin' Alive," like, by itself,
it's really this super rugged, like, tough thing.
It's like... [mimicking drumbeat]
It's not pretty or pop like you remember.
It's pretty tough.
♪ ♪
- "Stayin' Alive" was the influence
that New York gave to us.
And the energy level at that point
in the late '70s was really that, you know?
It's survival. It's survival.
- This is '77.
Everybody know that time is hard now.
You know, if I was out there myself,
I would've got what I wanted too.
- You were not among the looters?
- No, I wasn't. Unfortunate.
- Do you feel personally threatened
by the .44 Caliber Killer?
- Yes, I do.
I don't feel free to go out,
to walk the streets or go out at all.
- Very few people realize
it's to do with anything but dance,
but the lyrics don't talk about dance at all,
and the lyrics very obviously state
the scenario of survival.
- ♪ Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother ♪
♪ You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive ♪
♪ Feel the city breaking and everybody shaking ♪
♪ And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive ♪
♪ Ah, ha, ha, ha ♪
♪ Stayin' alive, stayin' alive ♪
- If you think about... ♪ Ha, ha, ha, ha ♪
I mean, that could very easily have just been a horn line,
but instead, their voices are so sick,
they're like, "Nah, we're gonna sing it."
♪ ♪
- ♪ Oh, when you walk ♪
- The general fever at the time
was, "You must see this film."
The songs precipitated the interest.
It was this cultural phenomenon.
["More Than a Woman"]
- In the first week of release,
they were having to hire extra staff in some cinemas
to stop them dancing in the aisles.
- ♪ Girl, I've know you very well ♪
♪ I've seen you growing every day ♪
- Other movies were being put back
or taken out of other screens to make room for "Fever."
I mean, it was really quite a phenomenon.
John took me aside at one point and said,
"Hey, what do you think?
You think maybe an Academy Award nomination?"
And I'm thinking, "Jesus Christ, no."
I mean, this is ridiculous.
It's a dance movie, you know?
He had the last laugh.
- And John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever."
[cheers and applause]
- The "Fever" thing happened.
That's when everything exploded.
Other record companies were printing it.
Then our record company couldn't keep up the pace.
- We didn't know what was going on
because this was just a soundtrack.
- Could I ask, for example,
what "Saturday Night Fever" has grossed thus far?
- Around 110 million. [audience cheers]
At the moment. In America.
- In America? - In America, yeah.
- And the album?
- The album, I think, is nearing
18 million double albums worldwide.
- But I mean, that would be the record-breaker of all time.
- Yes, it's already the biggest-grossing album
in the history of music.
- The statistics are just incredible.
Four singles from "Saturday Night Fever"
have hit number one since the album was released,
more than from any other new album in history.
That's just a few of the statistics
that lead to gold records like this.
And so it's my privilege to say,
ladies and gentlemen, will you welcome
the Bee Gees!
[cheers and applause]
[Walter Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven"]
Has it changed your lives, the enormous success of it?
[disco-tinged classical music]
- Yes, I can safely say it's changed our lives.
[camera shutters clicking]
- The Bee Gees, I think, were stunned by their success.
♪ ♪
- We were aware we were creating a specific sound,
but we didn't know what it was gonna do.
♪ ♪
- It did end up with them having half the top ten
with these songs.
It was extraordinary.
Kind of the same domination the Beatles had
in the '60s in America.
♪ ♪
- They were just everywhere.
- But our own friends don't treat us the same way.
- What, from a distance, they treat you?
- Well, I was speaking to one of my friends the other day,
and as he was cleaning my shoes, I said, "Listen."
[laughter]
- Stigwood said,
"Let's give the band half a point or a quarter."
Now, that's not a percentage. That's a tiny amount of money.
- But when you sell as many copies
as "Saturday Night Fever" sold,
it turns out to be big money.
♪ ♪
- What are you doing
with these millions of dollars?
- What are you doing with your millions of dollars?
- Oh, no. [laughter]
- It is the biggest night of the year
for people in the recording industry,
the Grammy Awards.
- And the winner is "Saturday Night Fever."
[cheers and applause] Whoo!
- For a soundtrack to win Best Album was amazing.
It went on to be one of the best-selling albums
in history.
♪ ♪
- We didn't know we were defining the culture.
We were just still Barry, Maurice, and Robin
wondering what the hell's going on.
♪ ♪
- The fever has been contagious.
Discos, the places in which to dance away the night
and the morning hours, are thriving.
What the fever has done is made
just about anything related to disco profitable.
Where there's money to be made,
disco is the business.
- We didn't categorize our songs as disco,
but then we weren't thinking that way at all.
We were just thinking about writing songs
based on this discovery of this falsetto voice
and how well that seemed to work.
- What the Bee Gees brought,
I always felt they brought melody to disco.
Most disco at that point was melody-free, you know?
This was a different take on disco.
It was completely for--
for the broadest possible audience.
- You got the lyrics? - Yes.
- Great. - Right here.
- Okay. Let's go. - Straight into it.
[guitar strumming]
One, two, three, four.
[rough disco music playing]
Right. Okay.
♪ ♪
[both vocalizing]
♪ ♪
- Hey, guys. - It's too slow.
It would be nice if we could find a bigger sound
for that solo.
- Great.
- The way we rehearsed it last night.
- All right. [punchy synth notes]
- Yeah. Just like that.
Yeah. Beautiful.
Bring that sound in. That's great.
[synth note] Yeah.
- Okay, let's try it again. - Okay.
One, two, three, four.
♪ 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 beside you ♪
♪ You're going nowhere ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Ah ♪
- When we brought out "Spirits Having Flown,"
it did phenomenally well.
At the same time, "Fever" was still in the top ten.
You know, we could've left it another year,
and it still probably would've been a little too soon
with what was going on with "Fever."
[Odyssey's "Native New Yorker"]
[jazzy disco music]
♪ ♪
- Good morning, everybody.
Charley Steiner, 99X.
As is per usual for Monday,
a very busy day coming into town.
I'm working at a top 40 station
in New York, big one,
WXLO, but it was known as 99X.
And I was the morning news guy.
Most radio stations had a very small playlist,
and the Bee Gees probably had the top four, top five hits
any given week.
- 13 CFRW.
Music of the Bee Gees and "Tragedy."
- Get out on the dance floor
and do one more with the Bee Gees.
- All the Gibb brothers together, the Bee Gees,
"You Should Be Dancing."
You should be shaking that thing one time.
- And for those of us at the radio station,
we're-- [laughs]
We're gonna take hostages.
["Too Much Heaven"]
- And if you haven't had enough Bee Gees music yet,
well, we've got more.
Guess you could kind of call it over-giving.
- And then Andy Gibb too.
He was like the caboose on this musical train.
It was like waves in the sea.
- ♪ Nobody gets too much heaven no more ♪
- You're right on the top of the world.
What is it that drives you back on the road?
- When we make records and when we're in the studio,
we never really see who buys those records.
I think getting on the road means that to us.
It means that we come face-to-face with people
to whom our records mean a lot.
But to be sure, doing a tour is an enormous amount of work.
The only thing that I noticed that's not right is,
it doesn't actually say the Bee Gees,
and I think it should actually--
the Bee Gees' name should be--
it should be "Bee Gees, Spirits Having Flown."
["Love You Inside Out"]
- The '79 tour was a complete sellout.
- The Bee Gees hadn't toured since 1976,
and that tour was a promotion
for the "Spirits Having Flown" album,
but it was celebrating
"Saturday Night Fever" as well, you know.
- 25,000 people are supposed to be here.
- It's gonna be great.
- You don't mind the Bee Gees in the rain?
- No. - No, not at all.
- We've been here since 9:00 this morning.
- They're worth waiting in the rain for.
- I mean, it was huge.
Dodger Stadium, places like that.
We used to dream of this.
Having people in the audience like Barbra Streisand
watching your show and loving it, you know,
I mean, these are fantasies.
You're in a sort of goldfish bowl on tour.
You know, it's like, you don't see much
of what's going on out there.
- Anyway, the most important thing is
what we're gonna do after the show.
[laughter] - What do you wanna do?
- That's what we're here to talk about.
- It's here.
The Disco Body Shaper,
the brand-new exerciser sensation
that's sweeping the country.
Send for yours today.
- Buy it today, be a disco star tonight.
- Let's disco to Burger King.
- It all goes back to one thing
and the same thing that's happening now:
greed.
[Rick Dees' "Disco Duck"]
Greed is the thing that happens in people
that really ruins a lot of shit.
- ♪ Went to a party the other night ♪
- In the beginning,
you would buy a disco-bannered record
and it would be a great song,
no matter which one you picked out.
- ♪ Moving my feet to the disco beat ♪
- But then some executive in diapers decided,
"Let's put 'disco'
on all these records we wanna sell,"
and it wasn't good music anymore.
It was garbage.
- ♪ Look at me ♪
♪ I'm the disco duck ♪
- [Donald Duck voice] Ah, get down, mama.
- So that was, I think, the straw
that broke the camel's back.
- ♪ Disco ♪
♪ Disco duck ♪
- Disco as a purely musical form
is, you know, dead.
- I hated it.
Couldn't think of anything redeem--
it was old people's music.
- It was a very easy thing
to get involved with for commercial reasons.
- [Donald Duck voice] ♪ Everybody's doing ♪
♪ The disco ♪
- I'd like to show you
how we destroy the disco records.
This is how I do it.
Have to kind of get worked up a little bit.
It's like-- - Yeah.
- And then I just--
[music slows to a stop]
Oof. That felt good.
[Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold"]
- Our next guest tonight is Steve Dahl.
And he is a disc jockey for station WLUP-FM
out in Chicago, Illinois,
and he hates disco music.
- Steve Dahl was kind of hard to avoid in Chicago.
[bold rock music]
♪ ♪
Steve Dahl was on the radio saying, "Disco sucks.
Disco sucks."
I was 14.
I listened to the Loop,
the radio station that this kind of centered around.
- He brings helium to the studio,
inhales it and imitates the Bee Gees on the air,
and then breaks up their records.
- [high-pitched] ♪ How deep is your love? ♪
[laughter] ♪ How deep is your love? ♪
♪ I really need to know ♪
- You know, when you do all those things,
like put out garbage,
you know, have radio being--feeling ostracized
and a lot of straight people feeling threatened,
it creates a real poison.
[crowd cheering]
- Hello again, everybody.
Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall from Comiskey Park,
where we're gonna have a wild night tonight,
a twilight doubleheader.
- I was an usher at Comiskey Park.
That was my first job.
- Look at that crowd out there.
- 50,000 people,
the largest crowd of the season,
showed up at Chicago's Comiskey Park.
Many had come for Disco Demolition Night,
a promotional gimmick.
15,000 others had to be turned away.
- Steve Dahl says,
"We're gonna let everybody in the White Sox park
"for 98¢
"if you bring a disco record,
"and we're gonna blow those records up
in the middle of center field."
[tense music]
We're letting people in.
I pointed out to my chief usher,
"That record, that record, that record,
"that record, that record, that record,
"those aren't disco records.
Those are just-- those are R&B records."
♪ ♪
And the thing that I noticed
more than anything
was just mostly Black records.
[crowd cheering]
- At the same time
all this stuff is going down in Chicago,
we were playing the stadiums.
It was an amazing tour.
We were sort of, like, in our own little world,
not thinking about the outside world.
[upbeat disco music playing]
♪ ♪
[crowd roaring]
♪ ♪
- He struck him out, and the ball game is over.
[cheers and applause]
- Okay, let's usher Steve down to the explosives
with a loud "Disco sucks" chant.
Disco sucks!
all: Disco sucks!
Disco sucks!
["You Should Be Dancing" playing]
- Ladies and gentlemen, our brother Andy.
[crowd cheering]
♪ ♪
♪ My baby moves at midnight ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Goes right on till the dawn ♪
♪ ♪
♪ My woman takes me higher ♪
♪ ♪
♪ My woman keeps me warm ♪
♪ ♪
all: ♪ What you doing on your back? ♪
♪ Oh-ho ♪
♪ What you doing on your back? ♪
♪ Ah, you should be dancing ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Dancing, yeah ♪
♪ ♪
- Come on!
- Andy joined us onstage for "You Should Be Dancing,"
and it was the four of us together,
and Andy joined my mic,
so we were singing around the one mic,
and he kept looking up, and he stood back and he goes,
"Can you believe this shit?"
all: ♪ Yeah ♪ - Come on.
- Nobody could believe what was going on.
And to see the four of us onstage,
when I looked over and saw Barry and Robin
and I saw Andy in front of me, I thought,
"This is how it's gotta be."
- ♪ Yeah ♪
♪ ♪
- How 'bout the Bee Gees?
[crowd booing]
Well, listen, we took all the disco records
that you brought tonight,
threw 'em in a giant box,
and we're gonna blow 'em up real good.
♪ ♪
[fireworks popping]
One, two, three, boom!
[explosion booms]
[cheers and applause]
That blew 'em up real good!
♪ ♪
- ♪ Dance ♪
- They'd tell you as an usher, every now and then,
you're gonna get a drunk person
storming the field.
Try to grab 'em, hold on to 'em, or whatever.
But everybody ran on the field.
- ♪ Dance ♪
♪ Dance ♪
♪ Dance, dance ♪
- When I got older, I recognized
that this was actually the end of a era.
- ♪ Dance ♪
♪ Dance ♪
- It was a book burning.
It was a racist,
homophobic book burning.
And the Bee Gees got caught up in that
because they were part of that culture
that was lifting a lot of people up.
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
- Thank you. We love you.
And we'll see you again. Bye-bye.
[solemn music]
♪ ♪
- Nearly 7,000 spectators held their very own demolition.
Game two of the doubleheader was canceled last night.
That game will be forfeited.
- The anti-disco movement
was almost anti-Bee Gees at that point.
- Ironically, the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever,"
the album that made them superstars,
also branded them as a disco group.
- Because you can dance to it, I mean,
doesn't necessarily make it a disco song.
I mean, you can dance to lots of songs.
- You really don't wanna be labeled "disco"...
- No, no. - At all, do you?
- Because our music is a variety
of different kinds of music.
It shouldn't be called just that.
- So people hated disco.
Hated it.
- We had FBI and Secret Service
around the airplane every time we landed in a certain place
'cause of the bomb threats.
It was scary stuff.
- We were perplexed,
'cause I got that vibe from them.
You know, "Why are people doing this?"
- The Bee Gees claim
some radio stations around the country
are refusing to play their new single.
- The Bee Gees are not allowed to have a hit
because they had a lot of success
with "Saturday Night Fever."
That, to me, is crap.
- Radio is, of course, very difficult to get back
once you lose them.
Back then, if you weren't on the radio,
there was nothing.
- Let's all grow up. We're just a pop group.
We're not a political force.
We're just making music.
But I don't think there's any reason to chalk us off
because we existed in the '70s
and we would like to exist in the '80s, you know.
Does anybody mind if we exist in the '80s, thank you?
- It was so overwhelming,
and the whole dynamic changed.
- There were just crazy days.
I preferred Maurice as Maurice not being a Bee Gee,
if that makes sense to you.
I preferred him as Maurice, not being a Bee Gee.
- Suddenly, they realized
that they were in a different position.
Robin went through a kind of--
it wasn't a breakdown, but it was just something
where he felt very shy of being in public
and doing things for a while.
- The backlash was a very frightening experience.
When things get to that point,
you're out of control of the whole thing.
- We thought the Bee Gees better go on the back burner
for a while until this dies down
or something, you know.
We couldn't do anything as the Bee Gees at all.
♪ ♪
- Well, backlash, I'm really good on.
Any band that is successful
is going to have
some form of resist-- that's just the law of nature.
[somber music]
When they get so successful,
sometimes the only interesting thing
to say about them is, "Oh, I don't like them.
"Everyone else likes, you know, 'How Deep Is Your Love.'
I don't-- you know, it's stupid."
For bands of my generation,
you understand about the ups and downs.
You can see it. Like, where are the pitfalls?
What is the shit you're gonna take?
When might this happen? When might that happen?
For those people that were on the first wave
of sort of global pop superstardom,
if you wanna call it that,
it was new to them.
Like, "Why does everyone suddenly hate our band?
"We sold 8 billion records last year.
What's the deal?"
So it's confusing.
- It was not just the Bee Gees
but the idea of dance
in that period,
it was no longer acceptable
for this kind of music to carry the weight,
to carry the industry.
♪ ♪
Everybody was at that point in their lives
where they began to look for other things to do.
And Andy was having problems too.
- Andy? Andy...
- I saw him in Malibu.
He'd been involved
with a lot of people who were doing drugs,
and he was doing drugs.
He was doing cocaine.
I talked to him outside on the balcony,
saying, you know, "This is really a nice house, Andy.
"It's a nice car out there, that Porsche.
"Really nice.
You're not gonna keep all this, you know."
And he said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "You do what you're doing,
"this stuff will vanish.
"All this stuff will go.
Your career will go out the window, everything."
And he says, "I know. I know. I know what I have to do."
- There was a lot of chaos that I didn't witness,
but I was aware of it.
We were scattered all over the place
for a little while.
♪ ♪
Robin was either in New York, or Maurice was in England.
I was alone at the time,
and I got a phone call from Barbra.
♪ ♪
She asked me about writing songs for her,
and that terrified me.
I don't know if I can do this, you know?
So I called my brothers,
and I said, "This is what we gotta do.
And let's do it."
And that's how the "Guilty" album came about.
[Barry Gibb's "Woman in Love"]
[acoustic pop music]
We really could not get on the radio.
So the whole idea was to write for other people.
Let's be songwriters.
Let's try and graduate from being a group
that's probably...
beginning to fade, you know?
Let's see if we can dance around that.
♪ Life is a moment in space ♪
♪ When the dream is gone ♪
♪ It's a lonelier place ♪
- It was more about outlets for writing,
writing songs that aren't Bee Gees songs.
They have an attitude somewhere else.
- ♪ I stumble and fall ♪
♪ But I give you it all ♪
♪ I am a woman in love ♪
♪ And I do anything ♪
♪ To get you into my world ♪
- Now, Robin, you and Barry cowrote "Woman in Love,"
which became the international smash.
Was it difficult taking the woman's perspective?
- Oh, no. [laughter]
- It's our way of doing things.
We will assume that role
within the song to write the song.
- After the Barbra Streisand album,
managers would call up all the time:
"Gee, can I get together with you guys?
Will you make my record?"
And, you know, established artists.
- ♪ Oh ♪
♪ Why do you have to be a heartbreaker ♪
♪ When I'm just being ♪
♪ What you want me to be? ♪
- ♪ Get in the middle of a chain reaction ♪
♪ You get a medal when you're lost in action ♪
- It was just as important for us
to have an artist singing one of our songs
and being on the radio as it was for ourselves.
both: ♪ Islands in the stream ♪
♪ That is what we are ♪
♪ No one in between ♪
♪ How can we be wrong? ♪
♪ Sail away with me ♪
- When you write a song with someone in mind
that you really love
and then that person ends up singing it,
there's no reward like it.
- ♪ Immortality ♪
♪ Oh, baby ♪
♪ There is a vision and a fire in me ♪
♪ Oh ♪
- We wrote so many different types of song,
and that created that new determination
for us to become the Bee Gees again.
all: ♪ When a lonely heart breaks ♪
♪ It's the one that forsakes ♪
♪ It's the dream that we stole ♪
- I think, over time,
we became more and more unified.
By '85,
we really got it together as a group.
♪ ♪
We became a real band again.
["For Whom the Bell Tolls"]
all: ♪ For you, it's goodbye ♪
♪ For me, it's to cry ♪
♪ For whom the bell tolls ♪
- We never really had a category.
We just had different periods,
and we managed to fit into different eras,
and we saw a lot of people
who were the champions of their era come and go.
We didn't always connect, but we stayed around.
We managed to defy the criticism
most of the time.
all: ♪ It's the one that forsakes ♪
♪ It's the dream that we stole ♪
- And I just hope and pray
that the music lasts, you know?
Because I begin to recognize
that there's not as much time in front of me
as there is behind me.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- Hi, Australia.
This is Andy Gibb here in Miami,
and I'd like to wish all you kids--
One more time?
♪ ♪
Hi, Australia.
This is Andy Gibb here in Miami,
and I'd like to wish all the kids
and all my friends in Australia a very merry Christmas
and a happy New Year.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Ah, ah ♪
♪ Ah, ah ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ ♪
- Barry was first,
and then, in fact, Robin's half an hour older than I am,
and we're twins,
and that's how we basically met.
[laughs]
- ♪ Ah, ah ♪
♪ Ah, ah ♪
- Robert Stigwood, this is for you.
- No, you didn't do it.
You gotta react to the thing. - What line?
Oh, the reaction?
- Yeah. - All right.
- It's a close-up. - Okay.
Oh, yeah, that's right. Sorry, do it again.
- Yeah, do it again. - Do it again.
Okay.
Robert Stigwood, this is for you.
- ♪ Ah ♪
♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪
♪ Ah, ah ♪
[cheers and applause]
- Ladies and gentlemen,
an Oscar nominee for "Saturday Night Fever,"
John Travolta.
- Tonight
the Recording Academy is celebrating
three brothers who changed my life
and the world of music forever,
and though brothers Robin and Maurice are sadly gone,
we are thrilled to be joined by a brother like no other,
one of the most successful singer-songwriters
of our times, my friend Barry Gibb.
[cheers and applause]
- ♪ Hmm ♪
[vocal looping]
♪ Feel I'm going back ♪
♪ To Massachusetts ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Something's telling me ♪
♪ I must go home ♪
- They're a brilliant chapter in the book of music.
You know, some people are a footnote.
Some people take up--
the Beatles and Dylan take up huge--
But the Bee Gees are there.
all: ♪ The day I left ♪
♪ Her standing on her own ♪
- You go back and look at their body of work,
and it's some of the best songs ever written.
- ♪ About the life in Massachusetts ♪
- There's nothing else to say about the Bee Gees
except they were fucking awesome.
- ♪ Speak about the people ♪
♪ I have seen ♪
all: ♪ And the lights all went down ♪
♪ In Massachusetts ♪
♪ And Massachusetts ♪
♪ Is one place I have seen ♪
- ♪ And Massachusetts ♪
all: ♪ Is one place I have seen ♪
[cheers and applause]
[birds singing]
- When I think about it now,
I think about how it all sort of started.
We just had this dream,
and we thought, "Well,
what do we want to be famous for?"
It turns out it was the songwriting.
[somber piano music]
And I think everything we set out to do,
we did, against all odds.
♪ ♪
I can't honestly come to terms with the fact
that they're not here anymore.
Never been able to do that.
♪ ♪
I'm always reliving it.
It's always, "What would Robin think?"
or, "What would Maurice think?"
And Andy.
It never goes away.
♪ ♪
And what I wanted to say earlier
is that I'd rather have 'em all back here,
no hits at all.
♪ ♪
["Run to Me" playing]
[heartfelt acoustic guitar music]
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
♪ If ever you got rain in your heart ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Someone has hurt you ♪
♪ And torn you apart ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Am I unwise ♪
♪ To open up your eyes ♪
♪ To love me? ♪
♪ And when you got nothing to lose ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Nothing to pay for ♪
♪ And nothing to choose ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Am I unwise ♪ - ♪ Oh, no ♪
- ♪ To open up your eyes ♪
♪ To love me? ♪ - ♪ Run to me ♪
♪ Whenever you're lonely ♪
♪ Run to me ♪
♪ If you need a shoulder ♪
all: ♪ Now and then ♪
♪ You need someone older ♪
♪ So, darling ♪
♪ You run to me ♪
[cheers and applause]
["Stayin' Alive"]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Well, 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 ♪
all: ♪ And now it's all right, it's okay ♪
♪ And you may look the other way ♪
♪ We can try to understand ♪
♪ "The New York Times'" effect on man ♪
♪ Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother ♪
♪ You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive ♪
♪ Feel the city breaking and everybody shaking ♪
♪ And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive ♪
♪ Ah, ha, ha, ha ♪
♪ Stayin' alive, stayin' alive ♪
♪ Ah, ha, ha, ha ♪
♪ Stayin' alive ♪
[cheers and applause]
- ♪ And you walk ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Life going nowhere ♪
♪ Somebody help me ♪
♪ Somebody help me, yeah ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Life going nowhere ♪
♪ Somebody help me ♪
♪ I'm stayin' alive ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Life going nowhere ♪
♪ Somebody help me ♪
♪ Somebody help me, yeah ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Somebody ♪
♪ Life going nowhere ♪
♪ Somebody help me ♪
♪ I'm stayin' alive ♪
♪ ♪
[cheers and applause]
crowd: Barry, Barry, Barry,
Barry, Barry, Barry, Barry, Barry, Barry,
Barry, Barry, Barry.
["Butterfly"]
[soft acoustic guitar music]
One, two, three, four.
♪ ♪
all: ♪ Green fields ♪
♪ Where we used to wander ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Purple valleys ♪
♪ Near my home ♪
♪ ♪
♪ We would play there ♪
♪ Beneath the sky ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Then I kissed you ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Butterfly ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Young girl ♪
♪ You came restless ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And you left me ♪
♪ Here to cry ♪
♪ ♪
♪ My big teardrops ♪
♪ In red pastures ♪
♪ ♪
♪ For I loved you ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Butterfly ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Butterfly ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ I dream about you ♪
♪ Lonely without you, butterfly ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Butterfly ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Each night I'm sleeping ♪
♪ Your face comes creeping, butterfly ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Green fields ♪
♪ Where we used to wander ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Purple valleys ♪
♪ Near my home ♪
♪ ♪
♪ We would play there ♪
♪ Beneath the sky ♪
♪ ♪
♪ For I loved you ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Butterfly ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Butterfly ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ I dream about you ♪
♪ Lonely without you, butterfly ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Butterfly ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Each night I'm sleeping ♪
♪ Your face comes creeping, butterfly ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Butterfly ♪
♪ ♪
["Words"]
[soft piano ballad]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Smile an everlasting smile ♪
♪ A smile can bring you near to me ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Don't ever let me find you gone ♪
♪ 'Cause that would bring a tear to me ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Talk in everlasting words ♪
♪ And dedicate them all to me ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And I will give you all my life ♪
♪ I'm here if you should call to me ♪
♪ ♪
♪ You think ♪
♪ That I don't even mean ♪
♪ I single word I say ♪
♪ It's only words ♪
♪ And words are all I have ♪
♪ To take your heart away ♪
♪ ♪
♪ It's only words ♪
♪ And words are all I have ♪
♪ To take your heart ♪
♪ Away ♪
♪ ♪
[bright tone]