Even the Bee Gees? Yes, even the Bee Gees

Maurice Gibb’s death was overshadowed by Pete Townshend’s arrest, but let’s take a minute or two to think about the Bee Gees. Yes, I know, I was there, and it is important to hate them for disco. It may have happened without them, and it may not have. Hip-hop may or may not have happened without disco. Hard to say. But there was some other stuff there, too, in the years before disco, and some of what they did really stood out. One of my earliest albums was Bee Gees Gold, which pre-dated all the Saturday Night Fever stuff, and was mostly simple, interesting songs sung in falsetto harmony. In the days before Walkmans, grocery store stockboys had to memorize music they wanted stuck in their heads, or else The Carpenters and other, far more insidious stuff from the grocery store muzak would creep in and invade your brain. So, I had Bee Gees Gold memorized, in song order, and could play it over and over in my head as an early form of white noise to block out the muzak. I want to make this perfectly clear: You must block the muzak, at any cost. (Joe Jackson: “In the supermarket there is music while you work / It drives you crazy, sends you screaming for the door / Work there for a year or two and you can’t get to like it / I don’t work in supermarkets anymore”).

In any event, I had long since rejected the Bee Gees, sold the vinyl, atoned for my disco sins, etc. But there was always a long, rambling, intensely ’60s rock-n-roll Eric Burdon and the Animals cover of “To Love Somebody” that I deeply enjoyed (from their way-too-much acid days, a double album with a grand total of 8 songs). Then last year I heard the Bee Gees do a live, acoustic version of “To Love Somebody” on Howard Stern, and it just blew me away. Simple, direct, beautiful (unfortunately, haven’t been able to find a copy of it). Made me rethink their songs and let one or two of them back into my head. I used to say that I loved defunct bands best because they couldn’t disappoint you (they hadn’t invented the permanent reunion tour yet then, although the Beach Boys were pioneering it) — you knew their stuff, knew when they had gone bad, and you could just stay away from the dreck. The same, then for the Bee Gees — I know their awful stuff (and really, none of that SNF stuff has any lasting merit except as background music for period movies), but there was some awfully good stuff that came before that.

Enough of that.