THE BEE GEES – "Night Fever"

I’ve never seen Saturday Night Fever either. I suppose that was an acknowledgement that “my” pop had now been left well behind and although some of the music was very enjoyable, the dance scene that went with it left me rather cold. It was largely concerned, I felt, with macho posturing. And I never really saw much in John Travolta – well not at that time anyway. That came later when he’d mellowed into something closer to My Kind of Man (whatever that might be)

As for the makeover the Brothers Gibb gave themselves, well that was the turnaround of all time. From gloomy balladeers to the epitomes of disco chic – well, it was a good move for them. The old Bee Gees churned out some perfectly acceptable tunes but they were never anybody’s “one of us”; I can’t recollect a time when they were “cool” for anybody; not in the circles I moved in.

Anyway, this is pleasant, workmanlike, disco stuff, and very much of its time, but nothing that gets me terribly excited. No more than a 5 from me.

Oh, there were some fantastic disco records up until this point.

From the Philly soul sounds, the GTO/Casablanca stuff, etc.

Then the Bee Gees came along, and suddenly any old UK sessionista guitar player, left behind by Punk and/or prog, could revive their glam clobber and make nice polite disco records into their dotage.

Killed the disco.

And led to the frankly racist “Disco Sucks” movement. You don’t like rubbish disco records? Hey, stand next to this guy who hates black music and black everything…

Still, “Disco Inferno” was on the soundtrack, so it wasn’t all bad.

“On the waves of the air, there is dancing out there;
If it’s something we can share, we can steal it.”

The Bee Gees’ gradual conversion to soul and R&B may have had its genesis in the feelings and emotions which their songs provoked when reshaped and reinterpreted by black artists; thus Nina Simone turns “To Love Somebody” into a formidable roar brimming with subtexts (“YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE!” – and never likely to know, either) while Al Green converted and deepened the post-flower power doowop-lite of “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?” into a six-minute-plus elegy of quiet but intense grief-stricken torment, as though he had only just embarked on his forty days and nights in the wilderness.

There wasn’t much of a buyers’ market for melodramatic psychedelic ballads in the early ’70s – not that the Gibb brothers stopped writing or recording them, they simply updated their surroundings (see their next number one for proof) – but, astute as ever, Arif Mardin gradually persuaded the group of the merits of absorbing and refracting the kind of blue-eyed soul which Hall and Oates had already begun to perfect. Certainly 1974’s Mr Natural, though yielding no hit singles, is worthy of balladic comparison with Abandoned Luncheonette; but it was with the following year’s Main Course, and its attendant comeback smash single “Jive Talkin’,” that the Bee Gees found a new lightness of touch – they were by now resident in Florida, and the influence of the Miami sound cannot be understated – and a new environment in which they could thrive more prosperously than they had done before.

The fact that “Night Fever” was the only UK number one single which the Bee Gees had, either as performers or writers, during 1978 seriously underestimates their near-total domination of that year’s charts; the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack dominated the album chart for most of 1978, and in the singles chart they were omnipresent, as themselves but also as writers and producers of hits for Yvonne Elliman (“If I Can’t Have You”), Tavares (“More Than A Woman”), Samantha Sang (“Emotions”) and even Frankie Valli (“Grease”). In America the number one single slot was more or less continuously occupied by the Bee Gees, or by doomed kid brother Andy (who had some reasonable success in Britain that year, but nothing approaching his status of idolatry in the States). They ruled pop and knew it; in terms of the pure mechanics of constructing a pop song and a pop record, Abba were their only serious competitors.

Moreover, their work for SNF, though not, strictly speaking, initiating the disco boom, certainly brought it into sudden and sharp focus; so while there was some criticism, encapsulated in the two lines quoted above, about white boys yet again stealing the thunder of the black folks who invented the damn thing (but then, think of Moroder and Kraftwerk; the traffic was two-way). Nevertheless the Gibbs and Travolta opened the gates of flood, paving the way for a river of classics which I loved and still love – the lithe and sprightly lament of the full-length 12-inch version of Evelyn “Champagne” King’s “Shame” (which managed to sell 300,000 copies despite never climbing higher than #39), the sunny synthesised paradise of Sylvester’s immortal “(You Make Me Feel) Mighty Real,” Donna Summer’s astonishing 17-minute-plus reclamation of “Macarthur Park” and, best of all, the discreet yet divine emergence of Chic, the Beatles of disco and one of the greatest and most artful of all pop groups.

With due respect to all of this, “Night Fever” is a relatively subdued record; from its key-turning-the-lock wah-wah intro it moves into a room of limelit classy elegance. The Bee Gees do not emphasise the beat, but rather relax in it, hold back on it, in the full knowledge that they know exactly where they are driving the vehicle. “Stayin’ Alive” was a startling loop of urban torment, and itself showed that the days of Odessa were not quite behind them (“I’m going nowhere/Somebody help me, yeah!”). The record sums up the grim and unrelenting tenor of the film (which my parents took me to see in Glasgow at the time, despite its X certificate status; fortunately at 14 I was tall enough and just about nonchalant enough to get in there); again there is something of the Aspergic about Tony Manero – he cannot realistically or usefully communicate with anyone (family, employer, would-be partner) on a workable level. As a consequence he is treated with undisguised contempt by the Real World, and it is only when he dons the costume and dances that he becomes alive; he only truly lives during these transient moments – suddenly he is transformed from no-hoper to god, revelling in the one thing in life he can do right. Even this holds no refuge, though; before the film ends, one of his friends has committed suicide and he has surrendered his competition prize to the black couple whom he knows have outdanced him. In the end he crawls back, via the circular nocturnal subway (“How Deep Is Your Love?” in this context is like his conscience demanding to address him), to a future…but will that continue to dwindle in concentrically decreasing circles until he has no option left other than to become Vincent Vega?

“Stayin’ Alive” was a huge hit in Britain – it peaked at #4, behind the aforementioned holy trinity of “Wuthering Heights,” “Denis” and “Baker Street” – but “Night Fever” was the one which went all the way, and it bears the calm restraint of someone who knows that they have made it, have penetrated the citadel. Even here there are unexpected key modulations from verse (and within verses) to chorus, and from middle-eight to chorus, sudden changes of focus from Barry Gibb’s forceful falsetto to dreamier, two-octave-down harmonies. It might be the ideal at which Abba’s dancing queen was aiming; sophisticated and utterly assured. The video, such as it was, consisted of the sequence from SNF where Travolta is line-dancing, coolly swivelling hip and finger at crucial moments, like Elvis in one of those corny old barn-dance hoedown routines in his first films; ostensibly part of a group, but not even needing to know that he is king, with or without that Kane/Kafkaesque capital K.

I did go and see ‘Saturday night fever’ at my local fleapit cinema and found it surprisingly enjoyable – the first 18 or X film that I had seen legitimately – I agree that Staying alive’ is a more compelling song – this has a bit more of a soundtrack quality to it but still has a pleasant groove. And the A list weren’t too far behind, with ‘Miss you’ by the Stones released only a few weeks later.

Sorry. Angus Deyton, back in yr box!

Sorry, its all tied up for me! But its time will come.

Here, have a video of Night Fever from Saturday Night Fever. Ladies, beware of Tony Manero’s pants. Imagine him playing Musical Bumps!

Green is much better than Gibb.

It even goes for Toothpaste as well.

I have no idea what that means!

(Punctum: the couple was Puerto Rican, not black)

not the best bee gees on snf (which you should see if only as a representation of how pop works in most peoples’ lives as well as a representation of how disco probably actually was experienced by most people in america and how/why it got SO huge in the us – disco’s huge success (w/ snf lifting it into another stratosphere beyond the years of hits the us had already seen from george mcrae, the o’jays, donna summer, kc and the sunshine band, etc) being at least as big a stimulus for the ‘disco sucks’ movement as the obv racism and homophobia (ie. the eagles and the doobie brothers hated donna summer for the same reason frank sinatra hated elvis)) but dear god that bridge may be the best moment on the whole album.

Probably my least favourite of their “disco” singles, a bit too smooth and swishy compared to the more funky ‘Jive Talking’ or ‘Staying Alive’ but Lordy, how many great songs were pouring out of these guys back then? I remember reading a review of their ‘Spirits Having Flown’ album which said that with their voices and image they should be ridiculous but the songs were so strong they made you forget all that.

Another thumbs-up for the SNF movie here too, it’s got all the urban grit of the best 70s cinema. Like ‘Mean Streets’ in tight polyester shirts.

This was the bit where the Bee Gees stopped singing like sheep and began offending our lugs with their girly squawks. I could never understand why this was supposed to get women excited and I’m saying this without the benefit of hindsight, something which any cynic, coward or fool can hide behind. Basically, the Bee Gees had become tarts and deserved to be lampooned to friggery, which they of course were. That’s all very well but this was 1978 and this was the Disco craze gripping the UK and particularly the US. Some of the music spawned from this new genre was excellent but I thought the Bee Gees were a joke. Without the umbilical cord of the popularity of Disco, they could not possibly have lived. I looked on with a mixture of incredulity and contempt, thought that the Gibb brothers were actually in fancy dress (dressed as dickheads), now looked not unlike The Banana Splits (Barry was a ringer for Bingo) and qualified for a good toeing from Regan and Carter before being hurled bloodied and beaten into the back of a piggy van and driven back to the factory for another quality seeing-to from the Squad.

Prats.

Oh, and I haven’t seen SNF either.

Green toothpaste? There’s a PiL/BEF-style product branchout that he hasn’t considered yet!

B Gibb’s voice being better than Green is like saying that Ernesto Lecuona cuts Mary Lou Williams.

“He hit my hair!”

Except that was “Stayin’ Alive.”

The Stayin’ Alive sequence is unforgettably recreated by Tim Brooke Taylor in a 1980 episode of the Goodies.

No, that was before.

That “SatNightFever/Grease” take off did feel like “Oh, we never did this one”, and it’s not bereft of ideas, just that the whole idea was way after the event.

1980 was the last BBC series (it features a memorable parody of a 1979 number one, too). They couldn’t make one in 1981, because they were the most expensive comedy show to do, and the lion’s share of that year’s comedy budget went to The Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

Garden and Oddie both had expensive alimony payments to pay at the time, so they got a better deal at LWT. The ITV series was in early 1982, but they didn’t take up the option to make a second one, and because they were under contract to LWT, The Goodies couldn’t do any more shows for anybody else.

The ITV series has its moments, but is pretty patchy. And you’re very aware when you see it that LWT didn’t have the same resources to achieve funny effects and stunts that the BBC did.

Funnily enough, the Christmas special, which was the first ITV show, was the last one they filmed together.

Yes, I’ve got the book. £5 in “The Works” back last year…

Frank Skinner, his chat show particularly.

“Stayin’ Alive” (too bad Maurice didn’t) was also ripped to threads on one of the Airplane movies, of course. I’m sure there are others. The Goodies’ dig was indeed particularly memorable.

And cheers, lex. I’m glad I’m not out on a limb here over these pillocks.

Re: 44. Not comedy, but you could make a plausible claim that 1979’s ‘Six Plays by Alan Bennett’ is his best work for television.