Number 526 - Bee Gees

Number 526

Bee Gees

"Night Fever"

(1977)

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Genre:Disco

art by bleedlikeme2
Break out the White Suit, throw on the gold medallians and put on ya winklepicker dancing shoes, its .......... DISCO TIME. I imagine all the Guitar Hero worshippers have just left the building. Disco ruled the world between 1975 to 1979 mainly thanks to the mega hit film "Saturday Night Fever" (1976) and this was much disgust to the Punk Brigade also from that time period. Punk vs Disco was one of the themes in the film "Warriors" (1979) that is, if your old enough to remember that sleeper of a film.

So, the Bee Gees, love em or hate em, are one of the 20th century most influential/selling artists of all time with a staggering 220 ² + million albums sold. Nuff said.

art by draketex

Every so often, a piece of music comes along that defines a moment in popular culture history: Johann Strauss' operetta +Die Fledermaus did this in Vienna in the 1870s; Jerome Kern's +Show Boat did it for Broadway musicals of the 1920s; and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album served this purpose for the era of psychedelic music in the 1960s. Saturday Night Fever, although hardly as prodigious an artistic achievement as those precursors, was precisely that kind of musical phenomenon for the second half of the '70s -- ironically, at the time before its release, the disco boom had seemingly run its course, primarily in Europe, and was confined mostly to black culture and the gay underground in America. Saturday Night Fever, as a movie and an album, and a brace of hit singles off of it, suddenly made disco explode into mainstream, working- and middle-class America with new immediacy and urgency, increasing its audience by five- or ten-fold overnight. The Bee Gees had written "Stayin' Alive" (then called "Saturday Night"), "Night Fever," "How Deep Is Your Love," "If I Can't Have You," and "More Than a Woman" for what would have been the follow-up album to Children of the World, and they might well have enjoyed platinum-record status with that proposed album.

art by dylankok

Instead, Robert Stigwood asked them in early 1977 to contribute songs to the soundtrack of a movie that he was financing, a low-budget picture called "Tribal Rites on a Saturday Night." More out of loyalty to him than any belief in the viability of the film, they obliged; the group's involvement even survived the decision by the original director, John Avildsen, that he didn't want their music in the film -- instead, Stigwood fired him and brought in the very talented but much more agreeable John Badham, the movie's title was changed to Saturday Night Fever, the Bee Gees' music stayed, and the result was the biggest-selling soundtrack album in history, a 25 million copy monster whose sales, even as a more expensive double-LP, dwarfed the multi-million units sold of Children of the World and Main Course.

Testicular cancer? Mythbusted

Strangely enough, for all of the fixation of the movie and its audience on dancing, the Bee Gees' new songs were weighted equally toward ethereal ballads, which may be one reason for the soundtrack album's appeal -- it delivers what its audience expects, plus a "bonus" in the form of the soaring, lyrical romantic numbers that were, as with most ventures by the Gibb Brothers in this area, virtually irresistible. Despite the presence of other artists, Saturday Night Fever is virtually indispensable as a Bee Gees album, not just for the presence of an array of songs that were hits in their own right -- and which became the de facto soundtrack to a half-decade of pop culture history -- but because it offered the Gibb Brothers as composers as well as artists, their work recorded by Yvonne Elliman ("If I Can't Have You"), and Tavares ("More Than a Woman"), and it placed their music alongside the work of Kool & the Gang and MFSB; in essence, the layout of the soundtrack release was the culmination of everything they'd been moving toward since the Mr. Natural album.

Extremley young BG's

Even the presence of David Shire's "Night on Disco Mountain" and "Salsation" and Walter Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven" don't hurt, because these set a mood and a surrounding ambience for the Bee Gees' material that makes it work even better. Heard on CD as 79 minutes of music, Saturday Night Fever comes off like an idealized commercial-free radio set of late-'70s dance music (and, in that regard, the decision to leave Rick Dees' "Disco Duck" off the soundtrack album was a good one for all concerned, except Dees). The album has been out several times on CD, including a Mobile Fidelity audiophile disc that's rarer than hen's teeth and 1995 remastered, newly annotated audiophile edition from Polydor. ~ [Bruce Eder, All Music Guide]

For John Travolta see Number 890

What does Rolling Stone think about Bee Gees?

In a career now in its fourth decade, the Bee Gees have sold over 120 million album²worldwide. At several points throughout their career, Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibb have borne commercial dry spells, and critics have chronically dismissed them. However, with the passage of time, the Bee Gees legacy is less defined by the phenomenal disco crossover success of their Saturday Night Fever era than by their enduring pop appeal and the modern standards they created ("To Love Somebody," "Words," "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"). If anything, the Bee Gees’ versatility and undiminished knack for creating hits have earned the group a belated if sometimes grudging critical respect.

omg .. baggy clothes

In 1976 Stigwood’s RSO label broke away from its parent company, Atlantic, rendering Mardin unavailable to the Bee Gees. Engineer Karl Richardson and arranger Albhy Galuten took over as producers, and the group continued to record with Miami rhythm sections for hits such as “You Should Be Dancing” (#1, 1976) and a ballad, “Love So Right” (#3, 1976), which recalled the Philly-Motown influence. By this point, the brothers had relocated to Miami. Stigwood, meanwhile, had produced the film versions of Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy, and asked the Bee Gees for four or five songs he could use in the soundtrack of a John Travolta vehicle about the mid-1970s Brooklyn disco scene, Saturday Night Fever. The soundtrack album, a virtual best-of-disco, included Bee Gees chart-toppers “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” and “How Deep Is Your Love,” hit #1, stayed on the album chart for over two years, and eventually sold 30 million copies worldwide. Barry, with Galutan and Richardson, also wrote and produced hits for Yvonne Elliman, Samantha Sang, Tavares, Frankie Valli, and younger brother Andy Gibb [see entry] as well as the title tune for the film version of the Broadway hit Grease.

Tuba power

In 1997 the Bee Gees were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They also released Still Waters (#11, 1997), which produced the minor hits “Alone” (#28, 1997) and “Still Waters (Run Deep)” (#57, 1997). A live album, One Night Only (#72, 1998), was the soundtrack to a live concert, which was filmed. Tomorrow the World and This Is Where I Came In (#33, 2001) followed. The group has twice received Britain’s Ivor Novello Trust for Outstanding Contribution to British Music (1988, 1997) and the BRIT Award (1997), all in recognition of their outstanding contribution to British music. In 1994 they were inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. The Bee Gees continued to tour occasionally until January 2003, when Maurice Gibb died of cardiac arrest while receiving treatment for an intestinal blockage.~ [from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)]

² (7 year difference in sales)

For Frankie Valli see Number 690

Artist Fact File

Name:Bee Gees.....................Related to³:No-one

Yrs Active:1958 to 2003...........Site:http://www.officialbeegees.com/

Best Song¹:Staying Alive .........#1fan:http://www.beegees-world.com/

Best Album²:Saturday Night Live...Grammy Awards:7

Albums Sold:220 Million +.........Next best thing:Abba

¹Number of downloads WINMX ²Artistdirect choice ³Associated acts or collaborations

Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs ranked this song at Number (Stayin' quiet) and the Album ranked at Number 131

This song has a crowbarred rating of 74.4 out of 108 pts

Bee Gees: Night Fever
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Lyrics to the song

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