The Bee Gees Essay, Research Paper

THE BEE GEES

The Bee Gees have always display a unique style of elaborte harmony

and melodic structure. Despite a career setback due more in part to a

perceived disco lifestyle and flavor percipitated by the media than to actual

mucical direction, the group persevers, reminding listeners that long before

there was Saturday night Fever, there was a group comprised of three

talentd brothers once hailed by Robert stigwood as the The new Beatles.

The group s first LP released in the United States, The Bee Gees

First, followed the succeeeful singles spicks and specks and New York

Mining Disaster-1941 in the 1967. As their record saled increased the

group tourned extensively in the Eurpe and the United States promoting a

series of hit songs such as the melodic i Stated a Joke and one of their

best sellers, Words. IN 1969, after their concept album Odessa went

almost unnoticed, Robin Gibb parted company with his brothers for a brief

solo career rejoining them in 1970 for the hit singled Lonely Days. The

folloeing years found them touring again, gromting a new album and

enjoying their number one hit on the U.S. charts, How Can You Mend a

Broken Heart.

The Bee Gees were born in england; Barry was born in 1947 and the

twins, Maurice and Robin, in Manchester in 1949. The brothers began

profoming as a Blue Cats at the early age, countinuing their musical act

when the family emigrated to Australia in 1958. After debating on

Brisbane s ABC tv channel, the Gibbs won their own weekly TV series and

the Bee Gess quickly becam the favorite group of Australia s teens and

preteens. Their first single three Kisses of love, was released by Festival

Records in 1963 and made the top 20 in Australia, to be followed by a

number of hit singles over the next few years. Retuning to England in 1967

the group signed with Robert stigwood of NEMS andding drummer Colin

Peterson to their group and having a sell out debut at the saville Theatre in

London.

The next two years were modest ones, with little changing in the

group s focus until they began to use a rhythm and blues sound that would

soon lead to the disco sound that group became associated with in the mid

1970.

THough the group s participation in Fever was casual, the immediate

success of the album, which sold over 40 million copies, linked the Bee

Gees directly to the disco sound and the white suit, gold chain image created

by the film. This image would prove more difficult to shcke after ten years

than their participation with Petter Frampton in the 1978 in the

ill-comceived and received movie version of sgt. Pepper;s Lonly hearts

Club Band. Said Barrry I think what people don t like is the whole disco

syndrome which is more about style and not about the music. A lot of

people tend to have forgotten that there more to us than that stuff. We were

probably on our fourth platinum album by the time the fever thing cam

along.