The Bee Gees – You Should Be Dancing

26th September 2021 · 1970s, 1976, Disco, Music

In the mid-Seventies I didn’t like The Bee Gees. In fact I thought they were awful: a bunch of buck-toothed bouffant-haired bearded brothers with ridiculous clothes and silly high voices singing disco.

I thought it was hilarious when Kenny Everett did his famous spoof of them on TV – and a mock interview – and so did everyone else. Including, allegedly, The Bee Gees themselves.

Much later, I realised how wrong I had been. I even softened my stance on Saturday Night Fever once the punk wars were over and I had to accept that some songs with more than three chords were quite good after all.

I came full circle and actively applauded the Gibbs when they walked out on the insufferably arrogant and pompous Clive Anderson after enduring an onslaught of supercilious “jokes” at their expense on his chat show in 1997.

And I once interviewed Robin Gibb at his amazing house – an old 13th century monastery, as I recall, in Thame – and found him to be a friendly and generous host, as well as a pleasingly eccentric rock-star stereotype.

His wife Dwina was a druid priestess with her own stone circle in the garden, and who enjoyed bringing young women home for threesomes (though not, disappointingly, while I was there). But I digress.

This was The Bee Gees’ first chart topper to feature Barry singing falsetto (not to be confused with his blue-eyed soul style on Jive Talking), though he had used it on the top ten hits Nights On Broadway and the awkwardly-titled Fanny (Be Tender With My Love), which I must have missed.

It was also the start of their disco period, which obviously reached its apotheosis in Saturday Night Fever a year later.

Apparently, Maurice wrote the bass line and sang the horn parts to the brass players, while Barry sang parts for keyboard player Blue Weaver to play – and guitarist Alan Kendall just manages to get in a short solo of his own in the instrumental break.