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Their biggest hit was “Heartbreaker,” which Dionne Warwick took to the top of the charts.īut its success further depressed Maurice. They came up with hits for Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton and others. He persuaded his brothers that they should write songs and produce albums - for other artists. He said of “Stayin’ Alive”: “We would like to dress it in a white suit and gold chains and set it on fire.” Only Barry understood their era was over. Still, Maurice and Robin wanted to keep the Bee Gees going.
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Convinced she was having an affair with her divorce lawyer, Robin broke into his own home to collect evidence. The record was a bust, overshadowed by tabloid stories about Robin’s tumultuous relationship with his estranged wife. “The exhaustion of being the Bee Gees set in, and we couldn’t see what tomorrow was going to bring,” Barry admitted.īut they made another album, “Living Eyes.” Burned by the backlash, they dropped the disco sound. Rumors swirled that the Bee Gees were going to break up.
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In 1981 he was thrown off the Concorde for drunk and disorderly behavior. Shortly after the tour ended, he checked into a private London clinic for alcohol abuse. He’d battled drugs and alcohol for years and now upped the intake. Maurice, Robin’s twin, took it the hardest. Robin said simply: “The public had OD’d on us.” The Bee Gees, with their exposed hairy chests and high voices, were now the butt of “endless comedy sketches,” Spence writes.īarry couldn’t understand what had happened: “It was almost like people were angry with us and it was more interesting to make fun of us than to actually try and understand or appreciate what we had done.” Barry called it “evil” and “censorship” - but nobody paid much attention. In February 1980, Billboard reported that American radio had adopted a “virtual ban” on disco. “The phrase ‘disco sucks’ was a clear pejorative term.” White men between the ages of 18 and 34 who loved rock “felt excluded, even threatened, by the disco scene,” Spence writes. Steve Dahl, a Chicago radio shock jock who hated disco, kicked it off with a demolition on July 12, 1978, at Comiskey Park: About 10,000 people showed up at the ballpark, many clutching Bee Gees records - which were tossed into a bonfire. “We all went a bit crazy,” eldest brother Barry Gibb recalled.Ī backlash was inevitable. As a result, by 1978, 200 radio stations in America were devoted to disco. Between Christmas and New Year’s, 750,000 copies of the soundtrack sold. “Saturday Night Fever” opened in theaters Dec. In fact, “They didn’t give the tracks much thought or care or attention,” says Spence. He effectively pillaged five of their new songs, including “Stayin’ Alive” and “More Than a Woman.” The Bee Gees were working on a new album at the time, but Stigwood insisted they scrap it to work on the soundtrack. The Bee Gees, with their exposed hairy chests and high voices, were now the butt of ‘endless comedy sketches.’
Bee gees saturday night fever live movie#
The movie - “Saturday Night Fever” - was to star John Travolta, a popular TV actor from the sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter.” He had acquired the film rights to a New York Magazine story called “Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night,” about working-class kids from Bay Ridge who become stars on the dance floor of 2001 Odyssey, a Brooklyn disco. But then Stigwood hit upon a bright idea. Their album sales were faltering by the mid-1970s. Still, they weren’t exactly winning over America as the Beatles had. With their tight harmonies and telegenic looks, songs such as “To Love Somebody” and “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” cruised into the top 10. The Bee Gees had first come to prominence in 1967 when manager Robert Stigwood, who’d had success overseeing Eric Clapton’s career, positioned the siblings as the next Beatles. “What happened to them was unprecedented in popular music.” “Nobody wanted to touch them,” said Simon Spence, whose new book “ Staying Alive: The Disco Inferno of the Bee Gees” (Jawbone Press) chronicles the group’s meteoric rise and spectacular fall. They hadn’t been shot, but they were as good as dead. The disco craze that had ruled the late ’70s had come to a screeching halt, and the Bee Gees, lords of the airwaves for two years, found themselves banned from the country’s most influential radio stations. Six months later, as the tour was winding down, nobody was laughing. And now the band was playing 60,000-seat arenas across America.ĭisco was king, and the Bee Gees - brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, clad in white suits and flashing gold chains - were its ambassadors.Īt the start of the tour, Maurice got hold of a T-shirt that made everyone backstage laugh. The year before, it spent 24 weeks at No. Months before, their “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack, featuring songs written and/or performed by the Australian trio, had won a Grammy for album of the year. In June 1979, the Bee Gees were on top of the world.