by Hector Cook
Taking his inspiration from the first four internationally released Bee Gees’ albums, Andrew elaborated on The Bee Gees’ original demo for the song to create a sound that he describes as “more a tribute than a pastiche”.
On October 21, Barry, Robin and Maurice joined Robert Stigwood at a press conference at the London Palladium for the official launch of the new Saturday Night Fever. “The timing is perfect because the Seventies are so popular again,” Barry declared. “It is about the peak period that Saturday Night Fever captures — the music and the fashion styles. I think the Seventies are still part of everyone’s hearts and minds. Young people are wanting to live through what they didn’t the first time.”
The transition from film to stage musical was complicated by the fact that Stigwood was anxious to maintain as much of the film’s storyline as possible, while cleaning up the language and the more controversial aspects to attract a broader audience. To this end, he hired Nan Knighten to write a new script, and Arlene Phillips as choreographer and director. Long-time RSO stalwart Paul Nicholas came on board as co-producer.
The Bee Gees agreed to provide two new songs for the project, ‘Immortality’ and ‘First And Last’ (the latter actually a short new Gibb composition used as an opening and closing to the 1979 hit, ‘Tragedy’), as well as sanctioning the inclusion of more of their earlier hits than were originally featured in the film. “You’re gonna have ‘Nights On Broadway’, you’re gonna have ‘Words’, ‘Tragedy’, ‘To Love Somebody’. We’re on a consultancy fee, £5 an hour,” Barry jested. “And they will call us up if they want any input on how the music is presented. But that’s basically it. These people are veterans. They’re experts at what they do. Every one of the people involved in the show, in the making of the show, is in fact a star in their own right.”
The year wasn’t to be all kudos. While in Britain, the group caused a stir with their brief appearance on Clive Anderson’s All Talk television programme. Apparently unfamiliar with Anderson’s interview style of rapid-fire comedic insults, the brothers laughed good-naturedly at the beginning of the interview, but as the jibes continued, Barry in particular grew visibly agitated. Ultimately, his patience exhausted by Anderson’s merry quips, Barry walked off in disgust before being joined by his brothers.
The response to the show from Bee Gees’ fans was mixed between outrage at the maltreatment of their idols at the hands of the baneful barrister and bewilderment at the reaction of a group who pride themselves on their senses of humour.
Defending himself later in a letter to an irate Bee Gees fan, Clive Anderson explained, “Most people, including virtually all the studio audience, were completely puzzled by The Bee Gees’ sudden departure. In the few minutes they were with me, I had praised their songwriting skills, stressed that they had been highly successful over three or four decades and mentioned their immense commercial success. However, it is a comedy show and along the way, I cracked a couple of gags about their high-pitched singing style, the clothes they wore in the Seventies and the like. Barry Gibb chose to mention they had previously been known as Les Tossers which invited, I thought, a humorous response. Or was that a serious name? At the time of their leaving, I was doing my best to praise Robin Gibb’s solo success, ‘Saved By The Bell’. Barry interrupted his brother to mention his own, ‘Don’t Forget To Remember’ and I said I had forgotten that one. A fairly obvious joke, I suppose, but not cruel enough to provoke a walk-out. But off Barry went calling me a tosser, still brooding, it would appear on my riposte of a few minutes before. Robin went straight away with him. I am not sure that Maurice immediately appreciated that his brother was being serious, but he left apparently in solidarity with his brothers rather than in any state of annoyance of his own … I am sorry to have upset you and The Bee Gees so much, but I was subjecting them to no more than light-hearted banter which … is more or less standard on my show. I was not trying to annoy them … I was very pleased to have them there. I have done much tougher interviews in the past [and] nobody else has taken umbrage and taken off like that …”
Barry’s immediate response was guarded. “With the greatest respect in the world, we’ve never commented on that story,” he said. “We don’t want to. It was a very upsetting experience and the guy was really out to sort of ridicule us if he could and every remark he made was, in a sense, created to try to ridicule us. I had just about had enough of it and walked off. And Maurice and Robin followed me. It was not a nice experience. That was it. We never commented when it happened. Apart from what I’ve just said, I don’t want to say any more. The details were not pleasant.”
Nearly a year later, he was eager to make amends. “We’d had a bad day and didn’t expect to be insulted with every line,” he explained. “I’d be happy to go for a drink with him now. I like Clive Anderson, I’m a fan.”
* * *
The question of Barry’s fitness for the rigors of a full-scale concert tour had left The Bee Gees with a bit of a dilemma.
“I did about two or three trips to Europe earlier this year, and that made me exceptionally tired,” Barry explained. “I couldn’t imagine committing to a year of touring the world. I would not be able to fulfil those commitments.”
They were, of course, in the enviable position of not actually needing to tour to earn a living, but at the same time, they craved the immediate response of a live audience. They weren’t ready to bow out yet, especially with their newly regained credibility in the music world.
Barry observed, “It seems that the past couple of years we’ve stopped being this camp joke and become a genuine part of pop culture again.”
“We’re durable, persistent little buggers,” Robin joked, “and no matter how many people have written us off, we’ve always overcome adversity. We’re well aware of the fact that The Bee Gees are the band that should never have made it, but we’ve got no plans to disappear. There’s life in these old boys yet!”
Still, he admitted, “Performances can be gruelling. If you do them back to back, you are not always on form.”
“We don’t feel that we should be constantly touring now,” added Barry. “We have all got families and children and they take priority.”
They needed a new way to bring their music to their audience, and the solution was summarised in three words: One Night Only. Rather than taking their concert tour to 20 or 30 cities across the country, they decided to play one major concert, to be initially televised in the United States as a cable Pay Per View special.
On November 10, Barry, Robin and Maurice were given a warm welcome to their mother’s adopted hometown of Las Vegas. They were presented with the keys to the city by the Mayor. The Governor of the state of Nevada declared it Bee Gees’ Week, and Las Vegas Boulevard was renamed Bee Gees Boulevard for the week.
Years earlier, with the arrogance of youth, Barry had declared, “My greatest fear is that we’ll always be The Bee Gees. You can’t go on past 40. I don’t want to end up in Vegas.” In his wildest dreams, he could never have imagined that Las Vegas would be the scene of triumph some 30 years after The Bee Gees’ first international hit, with the group’s first major American concert since 1989. The One Night Only concert at the MGM Grand Hotel’s Grand Garden Arena was a far cry from the nightclub appearances that Barry had wanted to avoid all those years ago.
At age 51, Barry, the man who had once thought that 40 was the optimum retirement age, now enthused, “Right now, we are at the best part of our lives in regard to what we do best!”
When the familiar driving beat of ‘You Should Be Dancing’ filled the air at the MGM Grand, the audience of more than 15,000 seemed to agree. They surged to their feet as the brothers, dressed in black, took the stage amidst riotous applause. A smooth segue into their latest hit single, ‘Alone’, received an equally warm response.
Accompanying Barry on vocals and rhythm guitar, Robin on vocals, and Maurice, alternating between keyboards and guitar and vocals, were a backing band of Matt Bonelli on
bass, Steve Rucker on drums, Ben Stivers on keyboards, Stephen Gibb on guitar and, as Maurice introduced him, “the man who’s been with us longer than we have,” Alan Kendall on lead guitar.
Barry greeted the audience, saying, “Thank you very, very much. Good evening to all of you. Thank you for coming so far — many of you have come a long way and we really appreciate you caring and it means the world to us.”
He added, “Now we’re gonna shoot back 30 years — if we can remember that far back — and try and bring you up to date slowly but surely. It starts here.”
‘Massachusetts’ and ‘To Love Somebody’ represented 1967, followed by 1968’s ‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You’ and ‘Words’. They then “shot back” to the present with Maurice’s featured spot, ‘Closer Than Close’, from the Still Waters album. Their own version of ‘Islands In The Stream’ followed.
Barry introduced the next number with a simple, “This is our song for Andy.” As video footage of Andy through the years was projected on the screens behind them, The Bee Gees began ‘Our Love (Don’t Throw It All Away)’, with Barry taking the lead. The footage on screen changed to Andy in concert as his voice took over for the second verse of the song, with his brothers providing backing vocals to his taped lead vocal.
It was an emotional moment that the brothers all admitted wouldn’t have been possible in the first few years after Andy’s death. Although Maurice vehemently declared, “All I can say is thank God we’re lucky enough to have records and videos and films of Andy that will always remind us of him — there are not many people who lose someone that young and have those sorts of memories,” it had taken time before the hurt had healed enough that they could watch the videos. The idea of a posthumous duet would have seemed unthinkable in those early days.
As the brothers and their audience surreptitiously wiped away the tears, it seemed to be time for another change in mood, and a medley of ‘Night Fever’ and ‘More Than A Woman’ brought the necessary light-hearted relief.
Bee Gees classics like ‘New York Mining Disaster 1941’, ‘I Can’t See Nobody’, ‘Lonely Days’, ‘Nights On Broadway’ and ‘How Can You Mend A Broken Heart’ mingled with songs written for other artists, such as ‘Heart-breaker’ and ‘Guilty’.
A highlight amongst an evening of highlights occurred when Celine Dion joined the brothers on stage for a heartfelt rendition of ‘Immortality’. ‘Tragedy’ got the crowd back on their feet, before another abrupt change of mood with ‘I Started A Joke’.
It was then time for another duet. ‘Grease’ alternated Frankie Valli’s taped vocal with The Bee Gees. In the audience, the film’s star, Olivia Newton-John, laughingly covered her daughter Chloe’s eyes as footage of her from the now 20-year-old film flashed on the screen behind the group.
‘Jive Talkin’ ’, ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ and ‘Stayin’ Alive’ followed, with the evening coming full circle to end as it began with ‘You Should Be Dancing’. There could be no doubt that The Bee Gees were back.
The initial Pay-Per-View broadcast on New Year’s Eve, 1997, achieved top ratings, as did the edited version which made its début on HBO on February 14, 1998, and in Britain on BBC One on May 31, 1998.
The success of that single concert became the impetus for a series of One Night Only concerts that would take The Bee Gees around the world. “We wanted to do something a little special,” Maurice explained, “and … rather than do a back to back city tour, this was the sort of idea we came up with.”
“This way they will be more of an event,” Robin added.
“I’d like for us to continue the road we’re on and hope that that happens,” Barry mused. “I really love doing the gigs. The isolated stage show here and there is where the fun is for me … We’re actually in our prime, believe it or not. I think vocally and mentally, we’ve managed to stay intact, somehow. We’re very strong. Two of us don’t smoke at all. Maurice still smokes, but Robin and I stopped years back. I think that’s made an enormous difference to the strength of our throats and our muscles. So we’ve maintained our voices. I’m the eldest at 51, and I think if the Stones can drag themselves around the country one more time … As long as you’re having fun, that’s the key. It’s got to be fun. The moment it becomes a grind, it’s over.”
* * *
On Christmas Day, listeners to Manx Radio in The Bee Gees’ birthplace, the Isle of Man, were treated to a radio special, The Bee Gees Come Home To Ellan Vannin. Disc jockey Bernie Quayle spoke with Barry, Robin, Maurice and Barbara Gibb about their memories of life on the island, as well as The Bee Gees’ career. Knowing that they had once recorded a demo of ‘Ellan Vannin’, the “unofficial national anthem” of the Isle of Man based on Eliza Craven Green’s original poem printed in the newspaper The Manx Sun on July 22, 1854 and later set to music, Quayle asked the brothers if they would record a new version of the song in aid of Manx Children In Need.
The Bee Gees immediately replied in the affirmative. “When it comes to children, there’s no argument,” Maurice explained. “Being parents ourselves, we’ve been very blessed with our kids. We just don’t take it for granted, and there’s a lot of children out there that need a lot of help, and as I say, when it comes to children, there’s nothing too great.”
The result was a CD single in a limited edition of only 1,000 copies, featuring Robin’s distinctive voice against a Celtic background of Maurice’s synthesized bagpipes and James Kelly’s fiddle. The brothers slightly altered the lyrics to the original song. They signed 10 copies of the CD, which were auctioned on the Internet for The Lion’s Club annual Dial-A-Lion Appeal, raising £15,000 for the children’s charity.
Maurice phoned in to Manx radio to tell listeners about the recording of the track. “Oh, I tell you something, it was wonderful doing it,” he exclaimed. “It was such a proud moment for us. I’m playing the pipes on it as well. We wanted to do something that was very patriotic; we wanted to do something that was warm, well, heart-warming; something that would be really pleasant to listen to, and the melody of ‘Ellan Vannin’ is so gorgeous, so we had to do it in the original way that we visualised it. That’s what we wanted to do, we just wanted to give it a beautiful, wonderful, Isle of Man touch, whatever.
“Doing this particular track brought us very close to home again, and it brought back a lot of memories. It was just a wonderful thing to do, especially for the kids. Believe you me, it was wonderful to do something for home.”
Plans were also announced to create a Bee Gees museum on the island; a project which is still in development.
On January 31, 1998, The Bee Gees joined Yvonne Elliman, KC & The Sunshine Band, Tavares, Kool & The Gang and The Tramps for a special Saturday Night Fever Reunion Concert at Madison Square Garden in New York. An earlier outdoor Reunion Concert had been planned by radio station WKTU for the previous November 1 but had been cancelled due to rain. Not limiting themselves strictly to their Fever hits, The Bee Gees performed ‘Night Fever’, ‘More Than A Woman’, ‘I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You’, ‘To Love Somebody’, ‘Jive Talkin’’, ‘How Deep Is Your Love’, ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘You Should Be Dancing’. They received the same enthusiastic response as they had in Las Vegas. It was still a bit mystifying to the group.
“For about 15 years, we had some kind of leprosy,” Barry mused. “There was many a single, many a record which we put out in the last 15 years that the radio stations wouldn’t even listen to, never mind play. I don’t know, but where I’m sitting it exists and has existed, and now I think the veil is falling slowly because of this new obsession with the Seventies. So suddenly The Bee Gees are not so bad after all and I’m bewildered again. Now it’s okay to like us. ‘Stayin’ Alive’ has been in fifteen movies since Saturday Night Fever so, for a song that was so shunned or from an album title that was so shunned, why is it that everybody wants it?”
That same shunned title drew standing room only crowds when Saturday Night Fever, the stage show, opened at the London
Palladium on March 5. A standing ovation greeted the Gibbs as they arrived with their wives for the premiere. Robert Stigwood arrived with the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, who told reporters, “I have seen the film and really enjoyed it. Now I am really looking forward to the stage show.”
Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the former Abba music men, were also on hand. “This is not just a swing in fashion,” Ulvaeus insisted. “These are classic pop songs. Lennon and McCartney and The Bee Gees are the best and most consistent songrwriters. I am green with envy.”
Five hundred tickets and other donations raised £50,000 for Childline that evening. With £4 million advance bookings, producer Paul Nicholas could easily afford to gloat, “The Seventies are alive and kicking. We brought Grease successfully to the stage, and we have done it again with Saturday Night Fever.”
After the performance, Maurice raved, “Adam [Garcia] was fantastic! What energy! He is a great dancer.”
Barry agreed, “He looks like Travolta and moves like Travolta. He is one of the best dancers I have ever seen. You cannot take your eyes off him.”
The original cast recording, featuring Adam Garcia in the role of Tony Manero, with Anita Louise Combe, Simon Greiff, Sebastian Torkia, Michael Rouse, Tara Wilkinson and Adrian Sarple, was released later in the year, with Adam Garcia’s version of ‘Immortality’ and Simon Greiff’s ‘First And Last/Tragedy’ of special interest.
A new tribute album entitled We Love The Bee Gees, a collection of new cover versions done mainly in hip-hop, rap and techno styles was released in Germany in December 1997 and in Australia in February 1998 with a slightly different track listing. Take That, Boyzone, N-Trance, ’N Sync, Nana, C-Block, Masterboy and Vivid were among the artists included on the album.