19 years after writing ‘Grease,’ the Bee Gees performed it for the first time and it was amazing
The song was a massive hit for Frankie Valli, but Barry Gibb wrote it
The Bee Gees performing "Grease" in 1997.
The title track to the 1978 film "Grease," starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, brought three generations together and hit number 1 on the Billboard Charts. The song is based on a movie about teenagers in the ‘50s, sung by a legend from the ‘60s and written by one of the biggest hitmakers of the ‘70s.
"Grease" was written by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees but sung by doo-wop legend Frankie Valli. Although the Bee Gees toured in the late ‘70s and made a comeback in the '90s, they never played the song live until 1997, when it was part of their “One Night Only” concert and album featuring many of their biggest hits. What’s impressive about the song is that even though Valli does a great job singing it on the original recording, when you hear the Bee Gees sing it, it sounds exactly like something you would have heard them perform in the late ‘70s.
During the performance, Barry Gibb points to “Grease” star Olivia Newton-John, who’s seen dancing with her daughter, Chloe Lattanzi in the audience. In the third verse, Valli's vocal from the original is played so you can hear the difference.
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The magic started when producer Robert Stigwood, fresh from the Travolta-starring ‘77 hit “Saturday Night Fever,” went into production on a film adaptation of the Broadway musical “Grease.” The film promised a killer soundtrack filled with new versions of the classic show tunes, but it needed a song for the film's opening credits.
So Stigwood tapped Barry Gibb, lead singer of the Bee Gees, the band that had just launched into the stratosphere after being featured on the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack. Stigwood also happened to be the band’s manager and planned to feature them in a Beatles-based musical, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Barry wrote the song “Grease" in one day. Instead of sounding like a '50s doop-wop or rockabilly track, it was a slick-sounding dico-adjacent number about a feeling of generational confusion. The song was given to Valli, who’d had a recent comeback with the songs “My Eyes Adored You” (1975) and the 1976 nostalgia-dazed Four Seasons doo-wop disco number “December 1963 (Oh, What A Night).”
Valli had the option of recording the song or appearing as the Teen Angel who sings “Beauty School Drop-Out.” The “Walk Like a Man” singer opted to do the theme song and Frankie Avalon was given the Teen Angel role.
“I just remember that it all happened in one afternoon,” Barry Gibb recalled. "I was babysitting and my wife was out. And Robert Stigwood called up and said. 'I have two wonderful new songs by John Farrar called ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ and ‘You’re the One that I Want.’ But we don’t have a song for the film's title. Could you come up with a song called ‘Grease’?” I said, “How do you write a song called ‘Grease’? I don’t understand what direction I would take to do that.' And Robert said, 'Just Grease duh-duh-duh-duh-duh, Grease duh-duh-duh-duh-duh.' So he wasn’t very helpful. But I understood that they really wanted something that was positive and sunny. It really all happened in that afternoon. I walked on the dock for a bit…."
“Grease” was a box-office smash and became the highest-grossing film of 1978. Unfortunately for Stiugwood, his follow-up film, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” starring the Bee Gees, would be one of the biggest flops of the decade.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Grease” in 2018, Barry Gibb released the demo he originally recorded of the song accompanied by piano.
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This story originally appeared in August