I would like to thank the OP for having the courage to post this. I will also be sending a bill for minor cuts and bruises sustained from rolling about on the floor in uncontrollable laughter.
Yeah, they’re hip deep in it, which is why I’m still sad I once spent $2 for a Bee Gees double album.
The Bee Gees are a minor footnote to '60s pop history and a testament to '70s disco dreck. You can like them, but the Beatles comparison is silly. Hell, the Bee Gees don’t even stack up favorably to Three Dog Night.
George McCrae, “Rock Your Baby,” Billboard #1, July 1974
Hues Corporation, “Rock the Boat,” Billboard #1, July 1974
Gloria Gaynor, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” Billboard #9, late 1974
Bee Gees, “Jive Talkin,” Billboard #1, July 1975.
KC and the Sunshine Band, “Get Down Tonight,” Billboard #1, August 1975, but released in February.
So the Bee Gees were following the trend, not creating it. They did not “kick it all off” – there’s debate as to who was the first to introduce it, but it existed as early as 1973, when it was mentioned in Rolling Stone.
The Bee Gees were just following a trend. Saying they “kicked off” disco is like saying the Monkees kicked off rock.
Saying the Bee-Gees followed the disco trend is like saying The Stones followed the R & B trend.
Sure they did, but only to an extent - I certainly do not remember anyone using their close harmony high pitched vocals in disco before - and this was pretty much their trademark - almost unique selling point.
Every artist has followed something before, virtually all have done covers, but you really can’t deny them their original approach to disco - like it or not.
There was a period where you could hardly turn on the radio without their distinctive sound coming through - it was absolutely everywhere, it worked against them once music moved on, however they did adapt and change and that is a mark of great artists.
You can say that the Bee-Gees had three very good very high profile careers, all seperated in time - The Beatles had two main phases but they were not seperated in time - their early teen style followed by their psychaedelic period, then they were finished.
I would not compare the two outfit’s creativity, The Beatles are undeniably the more innovative and influential, but to say that the Bee-Gees is some third rate group is just sheer nonsense.
There are literally thousands of artists that have released covers of their songs, none of the Beatles films had a fraction of the effect of Saturday Night Fever - and the Bee-Gees were not even part of the film, but you just cannot dismiss the cultural effect of that soundtrack during that time.
In terms of chart effect, numbers of records sold, number of charting cover versions by other artists, you really are in quite a rarified field here, there are only a few artists who could be compared, Beatles among them, perhaps a dozen more.
I would not put them in the top 3 although I would not be surprised to find other people do, but there are notables who would not make it into the top 20 of influential artists, and the Bee-Gees come out a long way above them
Thier own discography is astonishing, for both its sheer size and for the length of time, but add in all the other songs performed by other artists, they might well move up from being one of the top 5 all time sellers to top 3.
How anyone can dismiss them as 3rd rate is a demonstration of startling ignorance, yet despite this, I still would not rate them above the Beatles.
I do have to say this, it took me a long time to appreciate the Beatles, but a large part of their output was rubbish - but that is always a risk when you push the boundaries so far and so hard.
I honestly think that the reason folk dismiss the Bee-Gees so lightly is because there is a perception it was not somehow ‘serious’ music, they were chart artists and not concept album types - so what? play a few Bee-Gees numbers and just about everyone will know the majority - and that is really the measure of them.
The Beatles are not even in the same state, let alone in the same street when it comes to prolific, and although quantity is not quality - they are up there with few others for company. It may not be your sort of creativity, but there will not be a charting musician today who has not been influenced by them, whether they are awares of it or not.
OK. casdave’s is a serious response, unlike the earlier ones. That’s the way a defense should be made.
I’m just going to respond to a couple of things said about The Beatles, and those are more in the way of nitpicks than of deep disagreement.
There had been bunches of rock movies, or movies using rock songs, or tortured to add a hot rock group to, in the 1950s. Most were beyond awful. A few get revived today as cultural artifacts, but nothing more.
A Hard Day’s Night changed the entire perception of rock movies. It was considered a real movie, an artistic masterpiece that also happened to humanize and individualize the group’s members. That never happened before. Adults who had dismissed The Beatles on the basis of their earliest songs and the 13-year-olds screaming were forced to take the phenomenon seriously.
*Saturday Night Fever *rode a hot fad. It was the equivalent to one of the 50s rock movies, though with better reviews. A Hard Day’s Night actually had a cultural effect - it changed the culture. It made all later serious rock movies possible. Otherwise they would be Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter. (Look it up if the name doesn’t ring a bell.)
I had no idea that the members of the Bee Gees wrote 989 songs. That’s extremely impressive. The Beatles recorded about 200 songs as a group. However, the individual members wrote hundreds more songs as individuals. That doesn’t include the tons of hit singles that McCartney wrote for others in the 60s that The Beatles never recorded. They own all records for number of cover versions by other artists, not the Bee Gees.
I wonder if the perceptive of the Bee Gees is different today in the UK than in the US. Disco tainted all of its acts after the fad faded. It’s like a permanent stain that insures that no one associated with disco can ever be taken seriously again. I don’t know if that’s the case elsewhere. But I’m pretty sure it helps explain some of the antipathy to the Bee Gees you’re reading.
I don’t think anyone here called them third-rate. Second-rate sounds about right.
And there you have it. The BeeGeeites can cite record sales, sheer number of songs churned out and the vast historical relevance of having been a big force in the Disco Revolution (where’s the damn barfing smiley when you need it?)*, and you’ll find relatively few people who think they qualify as being in the same ballpark as the Beatles.
I was driving home last night, “Lonely Days” came on the radio, and I cranked it up. Always liked that song. The rest of their output (excluding the disco stuff) rates a three-star meh in the Jackmannii discography.
*It should be noted that Billy Joel had more Top 40 hits than the Bee Gees, thereby proving that Billy Joel is a greater rock n’ roll figure than John Lennon.
Please. Doo wop falsetto dates back to the 50s. Roy Orbison was singing “Crying” in that style years before the Bee Gees came along.
They were doing to disco what they had done to pop in the 60s – sung it as the Bee Gees. “Massachusetts,” for instance. All they were doing is jumping onto the trend and singing the songs liked they always did. They hardly pioneered disco, and they certainly didn’t have any major influence on it other then the fact that their own disco
Yes, the Bee Gee were very popular in the mid-70s. So was ABBA and no one considers them musical pioneers.
I would never say they were a third-rate group. They are second-tier group – behind people like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and many others.
If you bring up Saturday Night Fever, I’ll bring up Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (the movie).
In any case, A Hard Day’s Night was far more important culturally than Saturday Night Fever. It established the quick cutting style that is by far the most prevalent movie style today. When you see any action film, it’s a descendant of A Hard Day’s Night. As Roger Ebert said: “Today when we watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at the children of A Hard Day’s Night”.
Wait a minute. Now you’re directly contradicting what you said in your OP. You’re letting popularity and commercialization speak to you. If the popularity of the Beatles aren’t a sign of their quality, then the popularity of the Bee Gees can’t be a sign of their quality, either.
Yet that is one reason why the Beatles are major and the Bee Gees minor. The Beatles – and the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, etc. – tried to do more than just songs. They tried to do more. The Bee Gees did not. That’s fine, but it puts them into the second tier.
The Beatles? Definitely. Their influence is immense. But what is the influence of the Bee Gees?
Ballads. But they hardly created this genre, and someone like Roy Orbison (“Crying”) did it long before the Bee Gees came onto the scene.
Disco. And disco is a dead end. Everyone’s moved past it.
You will of course note that Roy Orbison was one voice, not easy to see how he could sing a triple harmony, and I don’t recall many such outfits.Doo wop was never pitched that high, and anyway this was a much more rhythmic speech pattern forming a foundation for the overall rhythm of the song, the Beegees stuff was very differant - not any sort of equivalence at all.
You think the Bee-Gees stopped at disco, I think not - you need to look at their discography again.
As for not being much of an influence on disco, nah, they were the main players, and you can often hear echoes of their style in more recent material.
I am not a fan of some of their influence, but plenty of boy/girl bands have picked up on their songs or simply copied them, like it or not these groups are one of the dominant forces today.
I would not rate them in the top tier, but I also do not dismiss them as lightly as you do.
There has always been a snobbery about popularity in music, I am often guilty of it myself, I would not be putting a whole Bee Gee CD on, whereas I might well do that with Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, Saw Doctors - still, I think you underestimate them.
While they did continue to create new music, their relevance as a popular group (at least in the U.S.) did largely end at the end of the disco era.
Their Spirits Having Flown album hit #1 in the U.S. in 1979. They did not have another album reach the Top 40 album chart until 1997’s Still Waters (#11).
On a single basis, after 1979, they only had two songs make the top 40 in the U.S.: One (#7, 1989) and Alone (#28, 1997).
The Bee Gees contribution to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack were in a class of wonderful all on their own merits. I appreciate them now in a way I didn’t then. But it’s hardly comparable to the Revolver/Rubber Soul all the way to Abbey Road/Let it Be.
Well, sure. All music can be traced back (at least in part) to influences from previous or contemporary music. “Innovative” doesn’t mean “completely and utterly original”, as such a thing isn’t possible. It means, taking previous influences, and innovating on them, such that other people now want to copy you. Something the Beatles did superbly.
This is far far more a compliment to the Beatles than a detraction of the Bee Gees. If you want to talk about the Bee Gees vs. …hmmm…Genesis, you may have a discussion. The Bee Gees put out a lot of good music, and were somewhat influential. Only one or two people here are seriously downplaying the actual achievements of them. They definitely deserve praise, but…
The Beatles were contemporary popular music for decades. Nearly every single act since then felt their influence until the rise of the auto-tuned crap that passes for “music” these days. Listen to an oldies station that plays really old stuff, and it’s usually pretty clear which acts came out before and after them. And that was only the first phase of their career. They’d probably be among the most influential bands ever if they split up before Rubber Soul, and it’s those later albums that are the true masterpieces that have made them into the revered icons they are today.
I’m not even that big of a fan of them; but it’s hard to not recognize their talent and influence. It’s very very easy to overlook the Bee Gees.
While I violently disagree with the OP’s opinion of the Beatles (I’m not even all that into them, in that I’m not a hard-core fan, and I still think they’re the greatest band ever), I never took the Bee Gees all that seriously until I heard a cover version of one of their songs. Strange that a cover would make me look at a band in a new light, but that’s what happened. As my knowledge increased I now have great respect for them.
Fans who would try to build up their band by slagging a highly-respected, well-loved other band, not so much.
I would submit it’s a woeful lack of understanding by accepting such an ignorant comparison & taking it a step further by ignoring the facts. Many Beatles fans make the continued mistake that theirs was the only “revolutionary” music to come on the music scene. This is completely false, for starters, they had several contemporaries that produced sounds not heard of prior to their incarnations.
Ray Charles and Sam Cooke brought their gospel & soul roots to music for the first time and truly began to show how versatile both singing/songwriting could be. And both gave us some of the most incredible music of the 1950’s and early 1960’s which is when the music we know today truly began to take shape. Motown had it’s own unique sound which was established due to the incredible songwriting of Smokey Robinson in particular and forever changed the course of music how it would be interpreted. The Impressions, led by Curtis Mayfield, created a beautifully laden sound of R&B, Jazz & R&R songs with Curtis’ powerful and socially conscious themes and deep, heartfelt lyrically content as to make them one of the most charted groups of the 1960’s.
And Bob Dylan captured the attention of everyone with his truly masterful songwriting skills which were a heavy influence on the Beatles. These were the artists, amongst many others, who made music “popular” and laid the foundation for both the Beatles & the Bee Gees. I agree with Nostalgiascape, the Bee Gees wrote, in my opinion, the more deeply thought provoking songs such as “I started A Joke”.
Look, I love Jeff Beck - as far as I am concerned, no one comes close to his sheer virtuosity and can point to his influence up and down the guitar food chain.
However, I am not going to argue that he be considered in the same league as Clapton as an overall musical / cultural figure.
