The Bee Gees 1973 'unplugged' medley of Beatles songs is blissful harmony
The '70s legends were inspired by the greatest band of the '60s.
The Bee gees playing a medley of Beatles hits in 1973.
By 1973, the Bee Gees’ career had hit a low. After a series of hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including "To Love Somebody," "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," and "I Started a Joke," the band was in a rut. Their latest album, “Life in a Tin Can,” and single “Saw a New Morning" sold poorly, and the band’s popularity declined.
On April 6, 1973, the Gibb brothers (Barry, Robin and Maurice) appeared on “The Midnight Special,” a late-night TV show that aired on Saturday mornings at 1 a.m. after “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” Given the lukewarm reception to their recent releases, the Bee Gees decided to change things up and play a medley of hits from their idols, The Beatles, who had broken up 3 years before.
The performance, which featured 5 of the Fab Four’s early hits, including “If I Fell,” “I Need You,” “I'll Be Back,” “This Boy,” and “She Loves You,” was a stripped-down, acoustic performance that highlighted the Bee Gees' trademark harmonies.
“When you got brothers singing, it’s like an instrument that no one else can buy. You can’t go buy that sound in a shop. You can’t sing like The Bee Gees because when you got family members singing together, it’s unique,” Noel Galagher, who sang with his brother Liam in Oasis, said according to Far Out.
Beatles Medley - Bee Gees | The Midnight Special
A year later, the Bee Gees performed in small clubs, and it looked like their career had hit a dead end. Then, at the urging of their management, the band began to move in a new direction, incorporating soul, rhythm and blues, and a new, underground musical style called disco into their repertoire. Barry also adopted a falsetto singing style popularized by Black singers such as Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye.
This unlikely change for the folksy vocal group catapulted them into the stratosphere and they became the white-satin-clad kings of disco.
In the late ‘70s, the band had massive hits, including songs featured on the 40-million-selling “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack: “Stayin’ Alive,” How Deep is Your Love,” More Than a Woman,” Jive Talkin’,” and “Night Fever.”
In 1978, the band made a significant misstep, starring in a musical based on The Beatles' music called “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” produced by Robert Stigwood, the man behind “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease.” The film was a colossal bomb, although the soundtrack sold well.
Beatle George Harrison thought the Bee Gees film was about what happens when you become successful and greedy.
"I just feel sorry for Robert Stigwood, the Bee Gees, and Pete Frampton for doing it because they had established themselves in their own right as decent artists,” Harrison said. "And suddenly… it's like the classic thing of greed. The more you make the more you want to make, until you become so greedy that ultimately you put a foot wrong."
Even though the Bee Gees’ Beatle-themed musical was a flop, former Beatle John Lennon remained a fan of the group. He sang their praises after the public’s growing distaste of disco resulted in a significant backlash.
"Try to tell the kids in the seventies who were screaming to the Bee Gees that their music was just the Beatles redone,” he told Playboy magazine in 1980. “There is nothing wrong with the Bee Gees. They do a damn good job. There was nothing else going on then."
The Bee Gees historic career ended when Marice passed away in 2003 at 53. Robin would follow in 2009 at 62. Barry is the final surviving member of the band.
This article originally appeared in June.
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