Bee Gees took North America by storm

FLASHBACK RADIO with Chuck Reynolds

As mentioned last week, the Bee Gees started off their North American and world-wide career with big numbers from the middle of 1967 through early 1969, having seven out of their first eight singles released break into the top 20 with the last two peaking at #8 and #6 on the Hot 100.

However, for the next year and a half, after “First of May” stalled at #37 on April 19, 1969, the next four singles never even broke into the top 50. It was certainly not what they expected, but it opened their eyes to how tough it was getting airplay in North America.

Fortunately, after that dry spell, the Bee Gees released “Lonely Days” in December of 1970. With its thunderous shifting from string orchestrations to piano and percussion and strong vocal harmonies, it sounded like the Beatles. Something that couldn’t hurt record sales.

Better yet, while it peaked at #3 on Billboard, its follow up, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”, in 1971 became their first #1 hit, racing to the top in just seven weeks, spending four weeks there and was, at the time, their longest lasting single ever on the charts.

After that, in 1972, the Bee Gees managed a couple of more ‘string enhanced’ ballads, “My World” and “Run to Me”, that reached the top 16 on the charts before having a single, “Alive”, stall at 34 and two more (“Saw a New Morning” and “Mr. Natural”) that disappeared in a few weeks.

However, although Arif Mardin had produced the Bee Gees album, “Mr. Natural”, with a few R&B songs on it, the head of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun, suggested that they record a dance-oriented album with more emphasis on up-tempo soul music. At the same time, Eric Clapton told the Bee Gees they should move to Miami, Florida and record at Criteria Studios where they can record that up-tempo dance music.

While the album, “Main Course” has its share of ballads and mid-tempo songs, the boys did work on some truly up-tempo disco dance arrangements. One of those, “Nights on Broadway”, changed everything while it was being recorded. Barry Gibb was singing at a higher pitch and raised his voice to a whole new level when it simply cracked open and shrieked! Everyone stopped and Robin asked, “What was that?” Well, Barry had suddenly found a new falsetto voice he never knew he had.

Their first catchy single off the album, “Jive Talkin’”, bounced all the way up to #1 for two weeks in August of 1975, while “Nights on Broadway” hit the top 7 spot in December. The third single, “Fanny (Be Tender with My Love)”, with Barry’s falsetto melodies swirling about in its final minute, reached #12 in March of 1976.

But it was their next hit, “You Should Be Dancing”, which opened with a thumping tom-tom delivery and truly carried that punchy falsetto voice above the instrumentation that found its mark reaching #1 in September 1976 with “Love So Right” right behind it, hitting #3 two months later.

Along with recording many songs for the movie “Saturday Night Fever”, on an album that since 1977 has sold over 40 million copies, the Bee Gees went out with an incredible flurry hitting the #1 spot with their next six releases: “How Deep is Your Love” (Dec. 1977), “Staying Alive” (Feb.1978), “Night Fever” (Mar. 1978), “Too Much Heaven” (Jan. 1979), “Tragedy” (Mar. 1979) and “Love Inside Out” (June 1979).

With this run of major hits, many soon forgot about the disastrous comedy musical film in the summer of 1978 called “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” that the Bee Gees and Robert Stigwood were heavily involved with in 1978 that tanked in a hurry.

After that, from 1981 until 1999, they released only 10 singles and just three of them broke the Top 30. No doubt, the disco era was a phenomenal success for the Bee Gees and helped them become one of the richest singing groups of all time, but it may have also hastened the end of their careers.

The irony here is that while there may have been many stations or programmers who blacklisted the Bee Gees music, the success and money they generated afterwards from the recording, writing, production and sales of the songs they did on the three multi-million selling albums for other singers, “Eyes That See In The Dark” (Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton),

“Guilty” (Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb) and “Heartbreaker” (Dionne Warwick) far outweighed any losses felt by many Bee Gees songs no longer being aired.

Sadly, Barry Gibb is the only Bee Gee alive today to look back at this incredibly successful career. Maurice Gibb died of heart failure on January 12, 2003 and Robin Gibb died of cancer on May 20, 2012. Even kid brother Andy Gibb – who had his own very successful career from mid-1977 through mid-1981 with three consecutive #1 hits and another five top 40 songs – passed away 24 years earlier from heart failure in 1988.