Category: Bee Gees

Pop Masterpiece: Mr. Natural by The Bee Gees

Posted on by kristen

I see the Bee Gees two best albums — Mr. Natural and Main Course — as having a yin and yang relationship. Main Course was The Bee Gee’s first foray into the R&B/disco sound that eventually made them superstars, but it still retained touch of their old vocal harmony roots. Its predecessor, Mr. Natural, is a gentler album that features a touch of soul, but still tips the scale toward the easy-listening vocal pop that had defined The Bee Gees’ career thus far. But Mr. Natural is also an eclectic album that shows the group searching for a new sound, incorporating a wider range of influences, and all the while remaining completely themselves.

The title track is easily the standout, and it’s got the kind of opening I adore. After just a few bars, Robin’s voice comes right in, warm and clear and high in the mix. He’s got that unmistakable Kermit the Frog quality that’s odd and appealing all at once. The lyrics are unique and vivid, especially the lead-in to the second verse: “Rusty rainbows/that’s how the pain goes.” The chorus is a triumph as well, featuring some gorgeous harmonies and a lovely, natural falsetto on the “cry, cry, cry” lyric. “Mr. Natural” also uses that great pop conceit of hiding one’s tears by going out in the rain. It’s one of the great mysteries of pop that a song can take something ridiculous that no real person would ever do, and make it seem so poignant and emotionally true.

“Down the Road” is probably the closest to rocking that The Bee Gees ever came, and there’s a definite Lindsey Buckingham vibe on Barry’s vocals and the guitar. There’s also a swagger to Barry’s vocal performance that really had no precedent in the group’s catalog. I love the lyric “I don’t care/I’d show my feelings anywhere.” That line might be the crux of The Bee Gees whole career for me. They’re a band who’s never shied away from being openly emotional, but suddenly on Mr. Natural, that emotion comes bursting out in new ways.

On “Dogs,” it sounds like Barry’s been listening to a lot of Elton John. This is primarily a piano ballad, and both the verse and chorus feature Barry singing largely without backing harmonies. There’s a little pre-course wedged in, though, that’s pure Bee Gees, full of glorious, intense harmonies. “Dogs” is also one of the group’s last great story-songs, describing the relationship between a son and his derelict, alcoholic father. As songwriters, they’re great that that kind of thing, turning out expressive lines like, “You now he’s lived a thousand years from day to day.”

The award for best tune on Mr. Natural goes to “I Can’t Let you Go.” The minor key melody is like a vortex, especially on the chorus, which kind of swirls around for a bit then builds to a crescendo, before circling back around like it could start all over again, and that would be just fine. It’s the song on this album that I’m most likely to wake up with in my head in the middle of the night. There’s a nice horn arrangement and some rather good guitar playing as well.

Mr. Natural contains plenty of other great tracks: the delicate love balladry of “Charade,” the folky “Voices,” the slight twang of “Lost in Your Love,” and Robin’s gorgeous high harmonies on “Give a Hand, Take a Hand.” The variety of approaches and influences makes the record work as a whole — it’s never too same-y and there’s always something to look forward too. It’s also remarkably consistent in quality. There’s only one bum note on the whole thing, and that’s “Heavy Breathing,” an attempt at the kind of R&B-influenced sound they would embrace more successfully on Main Course. You can tell it’s a bit of a clunker just from the title, and the group is probably better off sticking to singing about the chaste virgin queens of “I Can’t Let You Go” than this panting mess. I will note that I never skip it, though.

Taken as a whole, Mr. Natural is an album that is in some ways is inseparable from Main Course and in some ways its opposite. Both albums represent a group at the peak of its vocal and compositional prowess, and both were flawlessly produced by Arif Mardin. One leans more classic pop with a touch of R&B, and the other swaps the proportions, both to great success. But what makes Mr. Natural unique for me is a  freewheeling pop eclecticism that no other Bee Gees record really has. I’d have to say it’s my favorite.

Pop Masterpiece: Main Course by the Bee Gees

Posted on by kristen

There’s a class of albums that, in my mind, have been awarded the title of Pop Masterpiece. These are albums that exemplify everything that’s great about pop: expressive melodies, memorable hooks, beautiful production, and a real depth of feeling. I’d like to write about all of these albums eventually, but I’ll start with the Bee Gees’ Main Course, as they’ve been the focus of much of my recent listening and enthusiasm.

The Bee Gees Main Course album cover

The album’s opening track “Nights on Broadway” might be called the Bee Gees’ career in miniature. The verse and chorus of the song have an R&B/funk influence that foreshadows the disco craze they would embrace a couple years later. It’s also reportedly the first time that Barry began to sing in his famous falsetto.1 “Nights on Broadway” sounds just enough like the popular conception of the Bee Gees to (probably) be recognizable to a general audience. To boot, the main portion of the song is actually more satisfying than any of the Saturday Night Fever tracks, as it weaves a measured dose of falsetto into the more dominant natural vocals, maximizing the effect without drifting into self parody.

Slipped into the midst of all of this is a stunning, crystalline middle eight that — as a good middle eight should — raises the emotional pitch of the song by several generous notches. The strings come in and suddenly we’re back in 1968, all pure harmonies and wrenched hearts. The line “Somehow I feel inside/You never ever left my side./Make it like it was before/Even if it takes a lifetime” is almost pathetic in its raw desire for the return of a departed lover. And then we slide back into the chorus so seamlessly, it’s hard to believe this middle eight was even there. It’s one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever heard.

With the exception of the gentle “Songbird,” the rest of Side 1 continues largely in this proto-disco vein with considerable success. “Jive Talkin’” has a hooky stutter, a breathy vocal, and a keyboard line that wouldn’t sound out of place had it been recorded in any one of the last 42 years. “Wind of Change” is an early draft of the urban commentary to come on “Stayin’ Alive.” But the track that gives “Nights on Broadway” the best run for its money is “Fanny [Be Tender With My Love].” Main Course was produced by Arif Marden, who had produced Hall and Oates’ Abandoned Luncheonette (another Pop Masterpiece!) just a year earlier. “Fanny” has a “She’s Gone”-style build, working from an opening acoustic guitar and soft vocal, through another excellent middle eight, to a fevered falsetto scream at the end. Blue Weaver, a keyboardist who worked with the Bee Gees, even admits to stealing the key change from “She’s Gone.” The overall effect is again one of beauty and extreme vulnerability: “You know how easy it is to break me.”

Main Course Side 2 labelWhile I’ve never owned Main Course on vinyl, the concept of sides feels very much at play here. Not withstanding “All This Making Love,” with its cringe-worthy lyric and silly tiger roar sound effect, Side 2 is effectively a last hurrah for the old Bee Gees sound. “Country Lanes” is the only Robin lead vocal, and it’s classic Robin — a quavering, haunting tale of loneliness. “Come On Over” has a countrypolitan sound, and the little tag of “so bring your love around” at the end of the chorus rounds it out beautifully. “Baby as You Turn Away” is basically a full-length song built on the musical idea of the “Nights on Broadway” middle eight. Another heartbreak song, it’s melody is gorgeous and more poignant than words could ever be.

“Edge of the Universe” is the high point of Side 2 and the album’s best deep cut. It’s mid-tempo, guitar-based pop-rock — something of a rarity for the Bee Gees. Blue Weaver once again proves himself to be the album’s unsung hero, contributing a spacey synth line that defines the song musically. Like “I Started a Joke,” “Edge of the Universe” is lyrically obtuse, metaphysical even. It starts out with the intriguing line “Just my dog and I at the edge of the universe/Well I didn’t want to bring her and I know it will make her worse.” But despite the ominousness of the opening, the overall effect of the song is one of triumph and acceptance — particularly on the middle eight: “Well, here I am and here I’m staying.” The song really could be about anything from a long hike to a journey of self discovery, but the overall effect is undeniably uplifting. 2

Main Course was released in 1975, and it was the Bee Gees’ thirteen album in ten years. It marked the start of the band’s unexpected late-period transition from a moderately successful vocal harmony group to worldwide disco superstars. What’s great about Main Course is that it teeters just on the edge between these two modes and — especially on tracks like “Nights on Broadway” — manages to  meld both into a cohesive whole. Is Main Course the best Bee Gees album? I’m not sure. It’s predecessor, Mr. Natural, is the running too. But Main Course is the album that I would recommend to anyone who wants to get to know the Bee Gees a little better and experience the breadth of their talents.

Listening to “I Started a Joke”

Posted on by kristen

My husband and I were driving to Target when “I Started a Joke” came on. It’s on my Spotify favorites playlist, so the artist and song info showed up on the car display. 1

Josh: I didn’t know this was by The Bee Gees.
Kristen: Yeah, I’m loving this lately.
Josh: Really??
Kristen: You don’t like it?
Josh: No.
Kristen: Really??

Josh went on to say that the song was sappy and sounded like something Michael Scott would sing on The Office, thinking it was profound. That’s really not a bad analogy, although I take something different from it. Michael Scott is not cool, and he’s an easy mark for ridicule. But there’s a reason the character has become a cultural touchstone, and it’s because much of his behavior reveals an awkward emotional underbelly that we can all relate to on some level. Even though he’s an idiot, he evokes pathos as much as humor. Or in other words, “I started a joke/That started the whole world crying.”

The lyrics to “I Started a Joke” really are the crux of the song. While they don’t make sense in any topical way, they’re impossible to ignore because they feel so profound. My theory is that they have a cyclical construction (joke/crying, cry/laughing, died/living) that’s almost mythological, in the Joseph Campbell sense — endless cycles of joy and pain, birth and death, the old replacing in the new. The line, “I finally died/Which started the whole world living” makes me think of Jesus every time, even though I’m not at all religious. There’s something in the nature of these lyrics that touches a purely emotional, subconscious part of me. That feeling could never could be expressed in a rational way. 2

The Bee Gee's 1968 album Idea.Robin’s odd, reedy vocal is the other high point. While Barry is usually remembered as The Bee Gee’s vocalist, Robin often sang lead on the early songs, and his voice has a singularly haunting quality. On “I Started a Joke,” he comes in clear and quavering, building in power until the unsettling climax of the middle eight. The “fell out of bed” lyric suggests a nightmare, and the vocals echo a mix of despair and confusion.

Yet there’s great beauty to the song as well — the warmth of the low notes on the lead vocal, the enveloping “ahhs” of the back-up, the little string flourish at the end of the middle eight, . Getting back to the cyclical thing, this is a song of highs and lows, and musically it’s both uplifting and a little disturbing. Nowhere is that quality more apparent than on the wail that concludes the song. Does it signify despair or acceptance — or a bit of both? I think the answer is in the song, but it can’t really be spelled out here.

Listening to The Bee Gee’s Number Ones

Posted on by kristen

Recently I started getting obsessed with the various strata of compilations and what they say about a band. At the bottom level, you’ve got your “best of,” which states that this material is the best the band has to offer, but doesn’t really make any claims beyond that. Next is “greatest hits,” which implies a certain popularity based on the assertion that at least some of these songs have charted. (I realize these two are rarely used strictly in this context, but that’s what they should mean.)Then you’ve got singles compilations. This is where it starts to get impressive, because a artist with enough a-sides to fill an entire album makes some claim to longevity and consistency. And on the topmost rung, the king of compilations, is the number ones album. Only a few artists have enough numbers ones to achieve this feat, among them Elvis, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and of course (or maybe surprisingly), the Bee Gees.

The Bee Gees' Number Ones album cover

And so the first stop on my beyond-disco tour of the Bee Gees is their hits compilation Number Ones. While the Bee Gees have plenty of great albums that are worth getting into, Number Ones is an ideal gateway to the band’s catalog. Arranged chronologically, it spans the bulk of their career and range of styles from 1967 through 2001. It’s also a testament to their popularity and the echelon of the music world to which they rightly belong. (It’s worth noting that the album represents worldwide numbers ones — many of them were not U.S. number ones, and their popularity here was pretty variable. I’d be curious to know more about how the Bee Gees are regarded in the UK.)

The earliest Bee Gees songs sound a bit like the Beatles if you were to strip away every sound and image that could properly be called rock ’n’ roll. The result is the purest distillation of pop: sublime melodies and vocal harmonies set against a backdrop of string arrangements and only the politest guitars. This music is not cool, but it is good. The first number one, 1967’s “Massachusetts,” sets the tone, and its narrative of failed hippiedom is a kind of metaphor for the Bee Gees themselves, out of place among their far-out ’60s peers. The first five tracks on the album stick to the same template, but the quality of the melodies prevents them from getting too same-y. For me, this early period ends with “I Started a Joke,” a song so beautifully abstract that it demands (and will get) its own blog post.

Next up is a run of songs that demonstrate greater stylistic experimentation. This is the Bee Gee’s creative, Revolver-like mid-period. “Don’t Forget to Remember” sounds like 1950s country, and “Lonely Days” tempers a classic Bee Gees verse with an almost rollicking chorus backed by a stomping piano and even some horns. This impulse toward a less wimpy sound would lead to the magnificent Mr. Natural and Main Course albums, of which “Jive Talking’” is sadly the only track that made it to number one. This one’s got a beat, and it’s one of the earliest uses of the iconic Barry falsetto, particularly appealing here thanks to a soon-to-be-abandoned restraint.

“Jive Talkin’” was the first step on the road to the disco years, and the next group of songs on Number Ones encompasses the Saturday Night Fever period. I’ve already covered the Bee Gee’s disco sound pretty thoroughly, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it here other to say these songs are great, and it’s fun to listen to them in the context of the band’s overall evolution.

Finally the album wraps up with the Bee Gees’ adult contemporary years. These songs are not the Bee Gee’s strongest, but they’re improbably listenable. The tracks from the hugely popular Spirits Having Flown album move away from disco but retain a certain dance/soul vibe. “Tragedy” is an earworm nonpareil despite the incomprehensible delivery, and “Too Much Heaven” captures a little of heart-gripping balladry of “How Deep is your Love.” I actually quite like “You Win Again,” the Bee Gee’s last real worldwide hit from 1987. It’s similar to late-period Abba, and the Gibbs have wisely abandoned their worn ’70s trademarks, most likely in response to an aging fanbase and disco’s tarnished reputation. It’s not a triumphant ending, but it’s better than many middle-aged pop groups could pull off.

(The final song on the album is 2001’s “Man in the Middle,” which as far as I can tell was not actually a number one. I believe was included because it’s a Maurice lead vocal and the album was released shortly after his death. It’s not bad, but “You Win Again” feels like the real ending to this disc.)

Taken as a whole, the Bee Gees’ career is one of the strangest in pop. They were hitmakers despite being deeply uncool. They were defined by disco despite dabbling in a variety of genres. They made forays into styles and trends that have not aged well, yet those songs are better than they really should be, largely on the strength of their melodies. But this lack of cred takes nothing away from the astonishing number of beautiful, memorable songs they recorded. Number Ones stands as an achievement in its own right and an excellent introduction to a deep and wonderful career.

Do you know what Saturday Night Fever is?

Posted on by kristen

Here’s a conversation I had with my dentist last time I got my teeth cleaned:

Dentist: Do you know what Saturday Night Fever is?
Kristen: Yes.
Dentist: Really? I’m surprised someone your age would know that!
Kristen: [At a loss] Well, my parents had the record when I was a kid.
[Satisfied with this explanation, dentist proceeds to begin a long and not all that interesting story about seeing a really bad production of the Saturday Night Fever musical.]

This conversation raises a number of questions: Do I look so young as to not know what Saturday Night Fever is? (No.) Do today’s youth not know what Saturday Night Fever is? (Possibly, but I hope not.) Is there any good way to explain to your dentist that you love the Bee Gees? (Not in under 25 words and with one of those wands blasting air at your teeth.)

The problem with being a Bee Gees fan is that expressing a love for the Bee Gees is synonymous with expressing a love for disco. That’s because the Bee Gees are synonymous with disco. Saturday Night Fever and “Stayin’ Alive” are two things that almost everybody associates with them — along with leisure suits, medallions, and long, flowing hair. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the Bee Gees had a long, varied career dating back to 1966. During this time they experimented with a many different styles and produced some amazing songs that would be unrecognizable by most people as belonging to the Bee Gees. So when I say I love the Bee Gees, I want to express that I love them in a grand, sweeping, pop aficionado sense — not just a disco sense.

Leisure suits, medallions, and long, flowing hair.
Leisure suits, medallions, and long, flowing hair.

That being said, the disco era is an integral part of the Bee Gees’ career, and their songs on Saturday Night Fever are excellent. It can be hard to appreciate a song like “Stayin’ Alive” because it’s so ubiquitous that even when you listen to it, you don’t really hear it. But every once in a while, you catch it just right, and the brilliance comes into focus: the unforgettable hook, the funky guitar, the swooping disco strings, Barry’s falsetto joined in harmony by his brothers. My husband and I saw the music video on MTV Classic recently, and we were transfixed, both by the song itself and the undeniably striking image of the brothers Gibb. Josh must have repeated the sentence, “His hair is like a long, flowing mane,” about three times during the course of it all.

“How Deep is Your Love” might be even better, though less overtly disco. The piano and the more sparing use of falsetto give it warm tone, and I love the way that Barry’s voice gets a little low on the verse, before moving up to a falsetto on just the last word or two. The chorus — particularly the lines “’Cause we’re living in a world of fools/breaking us down/when they all should let us be” — has the kind of yearning melody that makes you feel like your heart will burst out of your chest. It’s one of my top five BeeGees songs.

The rest of the Bee Gees’ tracks on the Saturday Night Fever album are great as well — though a couple are re-releases, and pretty much all of them are better heard in other contexts. There’s also a bunch of other stuff on there, including some disco standards and what looks to be obvious filler. But to be honest, I couldn’t really get up the momentum to listen to a seven-minute song called “Calypso Breakdown.” So I wouldn’t necessarily advise listening to the whole album unless you really do love disco.

If there’s a conclusion here, it’s that I love the Bee Gees’ disco years, but I don’t only love their disco years. I’d originally envisioned this post as a guide to some highlights of the Bee Gee’s catalog, beyond the well-known disco hits, but it’s already gotten too long. So instead, I’ll plan to do a handful of Bee Gees posts over the next month or so, delving into some of my favorite songs and albums. Keep your mind open and prepare to have your mental model of the Bee Gees shattered.