Bee Gees documentary a reason to revisit their legacy

Sometimes, we have a visceral reaction to something and think, “That just sucks.”

That was my reaction to disco. But first impressions are often worst impressions, and conclusions jumped to are often at the bottom of a cliff.

I’m not saying I’m a fan of disco, but after watching the HBO documentary Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, I was reminded once again that the cliff is very real for all of us. Fans tried to push the Bee Gees off it when the British Invasion ended and again when disco died, but they proved resilient both times, and that should count for something.

One thing touched on in the documentary was disco’s origins in the gay club scene.

Growing up in still predominantly white suburban Los Angeles in the late 1970s, I knew nothing about that. I was just a young teen, for one thing, and lived light years away from Studio 54. I just knew I didn’t like disco, and neither did any of my friends.

I knew the Village People were gay, but they were campy, so, somehow, they got a pass (kind of) from homophobic suburban culture — probably because they seemed to be making fun of themselves by being caricatures, the way straight white teenage boys wanted to make fun of them.

And it wasn’t as though rock ’n’ roll was without gay superstars. Elton John. Freddie Mercury. Rob Halford of Judas Priest. Styx bassist Chuck Panozzo. All gay. The homophobia thing is pretty idiotic, not to mention bigoted.

On a personal level, I couldn’t dance, so it the whole Saturday Night Fever craze seemed idiotic to me. Music was meant to be listened to, not as an excuse to dance, I thought. If you want to have dance music in the clubs, that was fine, but why inflict it on radio listeners? Besides, if I’d wanted to dance, I could have done so to a driving hard rock beat just as easily. But I didn’t. I wanted to spend time holed up in my bedroom listening to Kiss and Aerosmith and Queen and Billy Joel.

Oddly, it never occurred to me until watching the HBO special on the Bee Gees that the whole “death to disco” backlash was fueled by racism (most disco music was made by Black artists) and homophobia. But it made sense to me as soon as I heard it. That was never my motivation; I just didn’t care for the music and — more than that — how pervasive it was. Honestly, I got just as sick of hearing Pink Floyd’s “Money” on album rock stations as I did of listening to “Night Fever,” because both were more overexposed that a sunbather who falls asleep on a hazy 90-degree day in Malibu.

Ancient history

But no, I didn’t like the Bee Gees then. I was too young to know this was the same band whose first hit, “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” had been mistaken for the Beatles. Their 1970 song “Lonely Days” sounds like a lost track from Magical Mystery Tour.

I was also too young to know they were responsible for some of the greatest ballads being played as “oldies” by the time disco came along. “I Started a Joke.” “Words.” “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.” “Massachusetts.” “To Love Somebody.” Change up the orchestration, and some of them could have been played as metal power ballads. Not that I’d recommend doing so; they’re still brilliant as they are. But they set a standard for ballads that few people give them credit for.

In fact, the Bee Gees had nine top 20 U.S. singles (including four in 1967 alone) in eight years before they had their first disco-infused hit.

All these songs are classics, and a couple of things mentioned in the documentary rang true: first, that the brothers wanted to be remembered first and foremost as songwriters, and second that they brought a sense of melody to disco that was otherwise largely lacking. (“Stayin’ Alive” is a lot more of a complete song than, say, Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”)

In fact, the Bee Gees never wanted to be known as a disco act. They just happened to be experimenting with R&B at the same time disco hit, and their association with the movement was sealed when they contributed five songs to what became, at the time, the top-selling record of all time: the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, disco’s musical bible.

It was so enormous that it overwhelmed just about everything else about the Bee Gees’ success and legacy, which is a shame. They also became associated with Barry Gibb’s falsetto, which he discovered by accident while recording “Nights on Broadway” and became part of their signature sound.

(An aside: When Barry Gibb — the lone surviving Gibb brother — speaks in the documentary, close your eyes and see it he doesn’t sound a bit like Sean Connery. I know one’s an Aussie and the other’s a Scot, but still...)

Don’t get me wrong: Barry Gibb’s a great singer, and his use of falsetto is brilliant, but the Bee Gees leaned on that sound so often during their disco years that it became almost a gimmick — and one they didn’t need. Their songwriting was so good that, if they’d used it more sparingly, they might not have been pigeonholed.

As it was, they were.

The magic of melody

I was cheering at age 16 when disco imploded (or exploded during Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park). I was a rock fan then, and I’m still one today. And, no, I wouldn’t want a disco revival. I’ve been waiting in vain for rap to implode in the same way for three decades now — but not because it’s largely driven by the Black community. It’s for the same reason I didn’t care for most disco or a lot of speed metal: the lack of melody.

Melody’s a universal principle. If you doubt that it transcends race, listen to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Supremes, or the Temptations, just to name a few. Black R&B was the basis for every rock and metal band from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin. A lot of disco didn’t have much of it, but the Bee Gees had it in spades. Yes, I prefer their pre-disco material (by quite a lot), but I can recognize it in their disco-era tunes, too.

The HBO documentary left a few holes. I would like to have heard more about the early ’70s, and there wasn’t any mention of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band debacle, a Beatles movie without the broken-up Beatles, whose places were taken by the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton. It was as big a bomb as Saturday Night Fever was a hit.

I was also disappointed that the documentary overlooked “Words,” which has always struck me as one of their masterpieces. Yes, it only hit No. 15 in the States, but it was No. 1 in four countries and hit the top five in two others.

In all, however, it’s worth watching as a reminder that the Bee Gees were much more than disco’s torch-bearers. If judged alone by their singing, songwriting, and innovation, they were among the best in the business.

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Featured photo: The Bee Gees from left, Maurice, Robin, and Barry Gibb, by John Shebalso, Creative Commons 2.0