the Bee Gees
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the Bee Gees, English-Australian pop-rock band that embodied the disco era of the late 1970s. In becoming one of the best-selling recording acts of all time, the Bee Gees (short for the Brothers Gibb) adapted to changing musical styles while maintaining the high harmonies, elaborate melodies, and ornate orchestrations that were their trademark.
- Barry Gibb (born September 1, 1946, Isle of Man)
Background and early career
The Gibb brothers’ father, Hugh Gibb, Jr., was a working musician who met their mother, Barbara Pass, in a dance hall in Manchester, England. After they married and began a family, Hugh Gibb landed a steady gig at a hotel on the Isle of Man, where Barry, Robin, and Maurice were born. The three brothers began performing together in local theaters in Manchester in the 1950s, going by the name Wee Johnny Hays and the Bluecats.
After emigrating to Australia with their parents, the Gibb brothers returned to England in the mid-1960s to further their singing careers, by this time calling themselves the Bee Gees. Their early recordings, including dramatic hits such as “Massachusetts” (1967), drew comparisons with the Beatles. The trio reached the top 10 in the United States with “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You” and “I Started a Joke” (both 1968) but split up briefly after the relative failure of their concept album Odessa (1969).
At the forefront of disco
Once reunited, they had hits with “Lonely Days” (1970) and the Grammy Award-nominated “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” (1971), but there were several hitless years before they returned to the charts with Main Course (1975). Recorded in Miami, grounded in rhythm and blues, and typified by the chart-topping single “Jive Talkin’,” the album put the Bee Gees at the forefront of the disco movement. Barry also debuted a falsetto singing voice that soon became a trademark of the Bee Gees’ sound.
Saturday Night Fever
It was their work on the soundtrack album for the film Saturday Night Fever (1977) that would popularize and in many ways define disco. The soundtrack earned several Grammys, including album of the year. The single “How Deep Is Your Love” won the Grammy for best pop vocal performance by a group. Besides writing their own hits, such as “Stayin’ Alive,” the brothers composed tracks for other artists on the album, which would eventually sell more than 40 million copies. In 2012 the U.S. Library of Congress added the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack to the National Recording Registry, a list of audio recordings deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Later recordings
More than 40 of the Bee Gees’ songs reached the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and 9 reached number one. The only groups to top that chart more than the Bee Gees have been the Beatles and the Supremes.
The Bee Gees’ subsequent albums failed to match the success of their earlier work, though they continued to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the late 1970s with such songs as “Too Much Heaven,” “Love You Inside Out,” and “Tragedy.” As late as the 1990s, they were still occasionally appearing on that same chart, landing in the top 30 with “Alone” in 1997. The group disbanded on several occasions, most notably after the death of Maurice in 2003, though Barry and Robin reunited in 2009 and made several appearances. After Robin died in 2012, Barry has occasionally performed and recorded as a solo act.
Honors
In 1997 the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2015 received a Grammy for lifetime achievement. The documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart appeared in 2020. In 2023 Barry Gibb received a Kennedy Center Honor.
