by Hector Cook
On day four they recorded ‘Your Love Will Save The World’ which was, for over 20 years at any rate, destined to remain on the cutting room floor.
Lynda Gibb also recalled those early sessions, saying, “They were in the studio putting some tracks down. Dick [Ashby] and Tom [Kennedy] and I were the onlookers, and we were looking at each other and thinking, ‘This isn’t what’s happening now. They’ve got to write something more up-tempo.’ ”
Their record company had lost patience with them as well, according to Robin. “Ahmet [Ertegun, the head of Atlantic Records] was so quick to turn off to us, to say, ‘This is it?’ We thought they weren’t even going to give us a chance,” he recalled. “They were burying us. Only Arif, of all the Atlantic people, kept faith in us.”
“When they arrived in Miami … we started to record and some of the songs were still in their old ballad style,” Arif Mardin admitted. “But The Bee Gees were listening to a lot of American groups, especially R&B groups, and since my background was R&B, I was well suited for the affair.”
“When they started the second album with Arif, I didn’t like a lot of the tracks,” Robert Stigwood said. “I flew down to Miami and told them I wanted to scrap a lot of the things they’d done, and I’d like them to start again. I would swallow the costs, not to worry, but to really open their ears and find out in contemporary terms what is going on.”
Arif urged the group to “look at what’s happening now, rather than what’s happening to you. Your minds seem to be stuck in one place … We decided to change a little bit. I suggested they listen to current R&B artists who had hit records, like Stevie Wonder and the other groups.”
Soon his faith in the group and gentle encouragement began to pay off. “They started writing different songs … and we had a fantastic rapport,” he recalled. “We spent fifteen or eighteen hours in the studio every day for two months, and it became like something out of a movie, with everybody being incredibly creative and dynamic.
“Usually, when Barry writes the songs, or actually the three brothers write them, Barry would have the electric guitar or the acoustic guitar, and the song would take shape with the instruments they used. And Maurice would go to the piano and play the chords. So it was what they thought the song needed, usually, sometimes acoustic guitar, sometimes electric guitar, that really dictated the sound … It’s not like one brother goes into seclusion and comes out with a song. They write them together. In the beginning, their process is that they have nonsensical syllables to accommodate the melody, and then the lyrics come after that. Like ‘Yesterday’ was ‘Scrambled Eggs’ for The Beatles. They do the melody first. Most songwriting teams have their own system.”
Robin credited Arif with “drawing out what we loved the most,” explaining, “He said, ‘Don’t hide what you love, don’t try and do the things you think people will love, do what you love … and stay true to yourself, and the rest will take care of itself.’ And he was right.”
As the group worked on composing the new material for the album, their new surroundings began to affect the music they were creating. “Being in America when we recorded helped us,” Barry added. “When we wrote the album, we were listening to a lot of radio, and we tried to get an idea of what people wanted to hear — from anyone. The main vein at the moment is soul — R&B — disco, so we moved into that area. There’s so much of this kind of music going on around us and we want to do it, but we want to do it better if we can.
“We’re into music now that is better than anything we’ve ever done. Therefore, it’s our ‘main course’. It also means we’re on the right track.”
“The Bee Gees have always had an unmistakable sound,” Arif explained. “It’s their collective singing and beautiful vibrato and their unique solo vocal strengths. The three all together are incredible with their melodies, and come up with hooks that will be remembered internationally. These melodies … Robin has a different distinctive vocal sound to Barry, very soulful. Maurice is mainly singing the high harmonies and being the musical instrumentalist, and he sings lead sometimes, and when he sings, he’s great, has a great sound. It’s that sibling sound — when they sing harmonies, it’s like they’re breathing it. They’re truly terrific melodists and creative harmonists.
“And what happened was that there was a happy marriage of their sound and the orchestral strings, punctuated by a strong beat, which is part of my style.”
“Quite simply, [Arif is] the best producer in the world for us,” Barry declared. “In that studio with him is magic. There isn’t any certain kind of technique or attitude that he uses. He’s totally like an uncle. He rolls in there with you.
“As far as a song is concerned, you take it to him. He says the song is fantastic; however, put that verse there, that chorus there. He’s that kind of producer — doesn’t take the song away from you, he just places it where he thinks it should be. He brought it out of us again.
“We’ve always been capable of writing that kind of music,” he insisted, “but we were too scared of having the confidence that we could play it as good or better than others. I think the main lesson we learned from Arif was that the music has to be vibrant. It has to have some magic about it.”
“We were always afraid to do this type of music before,” Maurice agreed. “People wouldn’t accept it of The Bee Gees. We had to stick to the same type of music we were known for. Now we’re finally able to start fresh.”
Although ‘Jive Talkin’’ is of ten cited as the turning point in the sessions — and of reigniting The Bee Gees’ career — Blue Weaver thinks otherwise. “The first one that we all realised that we’d hit on something that was going to develop was ‘Wind Of Change’. I knew that we were going to come away with a hit album no matter what — I mean, we all did, I think. It was just finding our direction … I mean, nobody had any doubts about things not happening.
“I expect The Bee Gees felt the pressure [to make a comeback], but on the other hand as soon as the new thing started happening, the pressure was off,” he added. “You felt you could relax because you knew there was something new there. We all knew there was no way it could not be successful. It was amazing! So it was a great pleasure to be around. Everyone was up; everyone was on a high.”
“Positive thinking means success … people have proven it over and over again,” Barry reiterated. “It isn’t just a statement. If you really hold a positive thought in your head, and you really believe in what you’re doing, and you say to yourself when you’re doing it, ‘This is going to be successful,’ when you tell that to other people, they’ll believe you. If you tell them, ‘I’m worried about this record … I don’t think it’s going to make it,’ they’ll believe that too. And the more you pass that on, the more destructive it is. That thought transfers to someone else’s head, and that person transports it on one step further and ultimately you have a flop on your hands.”
For the first time on a Bee Gees’ album, they teamed up with a musician outside the family group, collaborating with Blue Weaver on the ballad, ‘Songbird’. “Blue Weaver had a beautiful chord progression while we were in the studio cutting Main Course, and that’s how there’s a four-way collaboration on ‘Songbird’,” Barry explained. “And in the future, who ever’s there that could be creative could become collaborators.”
“Most of that melody I’d had for a long time, since just after Strawbs,” Blue recalled. “It’s a chord sequence I had for a long time and not done anything with because I couldn’t write lyrics at that time. One night, I was just sitting at the piano just playing that, and Barry walked past and said, ‘Oh, that’s nice’ and started humming along, came up with a melody, and then he sang the word ‘songbird’. He’s very quick, and usually the first things that come out of his mouth end up actually being part of the lyric and usually the hook.”
Barry explained the collaborative process further. “I started to write when I was nine — when Robin and Maurice were six,” he said. “They started to j
oin me when they were about 14. After that point, nobody ever decided exactly who was going to write what. No one ever said, ‘Go away — I’m writing this one.’ Sometimes two of us spend more time on one song; whatever, it just happens accidentally. But a collection of ideas is better.”
Main Course also introduced a new vocal sound for the group, the beginning of what would become known as “The Helium Years”. “We would try many things, like synthesizers,” Arif Mardin explained, “and probably because of my background with Aretha Franklin and all the R&B greats, I said, ‘Hey Barry, why don’t you sing a high note here?’ He said, ‘Okay, let me try it.’ And that was the first falsetto, which he sang on ‘Nights On Broadway’. It all just happened in the course of a day’s work. So when people say, ‘How did you bring it about?’ I must say we did it all together. It shouldn’t sound like The Glenn Miller Story or something, where someone discovers a new sound overnight.”
“Arif said to me, ‘Can you scream?’ I said, ‘Under certain circumstances,’ “ Barry said with a laugh. “He said, ‘Can you scream in tune?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll try.’ So he said, ‘Go out to the microphone and try some ad-libs on “Nights On Broadway” and see if you can do it in a falsetto type music, scream type voice’ … I was the one who volunteered to go out there and in doing so, sort of discovered that this voice was hidden back there. Then I started developing it and started singing real songs with the falsetto instead of doing ad-libs with it. It just developed from there.”
Arif has a slightly different version of the story. “I said to Barry, ‘Why don’t you take it up an octave? I think we need more energy,’ and Barry said, ‘But I can’t!’ So I said, ‘Try falsetto’ — Barry keeps telling it, that I said this, which, obviously if he says that, it’s true. But I remember just saying, ‘Take it up an octave.’ And the only way he could do that was to go into his falsetto. And a certain style was born after that.”
While everyone in the studio felt confident about the new direction the music was taking, it took a visit from Robert Stigwood and Ahmet Ertegun to make them recognise just what that new direction was. “We didn’t realise, for example, when [they] came to Florida to visit us at the studio, and we played them ‘Nights On Broadway’ — we were just having a great time, and it was a time to be very creative … They said, ‘Wow, this is dance music!’ And we said, ‘Is it, really?’ But it was, because we cut it to a click, and the tempo was appropriate for the club scene. So that is when we realised that we really were doing a lot of stuff, energetic music, having fun, trying to create powerful songs, that at the same time, the end product on one or two songs was danceable. We really didn’t set out to do that.”
The Bee Gees had played an early version of ‘Nights On Broadway’ for Stigwood which contained a slow section, but they had decided to drop this from the version they were recording at Criteria. Stigwood requested that they put “the dreamy part” back in to the song. Nowadays, this could be done easily with computer editing, but then it was a very different story, according to Arif. “We physically edited the track and put the slow section in there,” he explained. “It was a very cumbersome and very dangerous process. We were cutting the multi-track. It was added like an afterthought. But we hadn’t finished the record yet.”
After the ad-libs of ‘Nights On Broadway’, Barry recalled, “Arif called me in and said, ‘You know, you really should try to develop that because it’s like The Stylistics, it’s like Brian Wilson and people like that. They’re not afraid to do that. Go and think about it and expand. You know, write with that voice.’ “ Barry took his advice and sang the entire verse of ‘Baby As You Turn Away’ in falsetto. “It was a feat I was not aware I was capable of until [then],” he said.
Falsetto also featured heavily in the third single from the LP, ‘Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)’. Through the years, The Bee Gees have gone through phases with the falsetto. While the immediate reaction was positive, in the disco backlash of the Eighties, it became something of an albatross. Most recently, they have taken the defensive position again, insisting that they’ve never had a moment’s doubt about it. “I do it when I love it and I don’t do it when I don’t feel like it,” Barry said in 1998. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never had reservations about using it … When I look back it’s actually something I ought to be proud of. Brian Wilson, Frankie Valli and even Prince — they don’t make any bones about doing that. I think if you go back far enough, the first rock’n’roll record I ever heard was ‘Little Darlin’’ by The Diamonds, and that was falsetto. So I think that falsetto in a way has been an integral part of rock’n’roll, as far as doo-wop is concerned and that kind of singing. So when I look back far enough, I don’t feel bad about it at all. I feel quite good about it. I think it’s nice to be one of those falsetto voices that’s quite well known.”
Another feature of ‘Fanny’ is its distinctive change in key at the end, courtesy of Blue Weaver. He was influenced by Hall & Oates LP Abandoned Luncheonette. “The key change in ‘Fanny (Be Tender)’ was a complete rip-off from Abandoned Luncheonette from ‘She’s Gone’,” he admitted. “I only had it on tape, and I didn’t know that Arif had produced it, and I’m pinching all these ideas After we finished the session, I went out and got the album and Donny Hathaway as well, was a big influence, and Arif produced Donny Hathaway Live as well. We’re doing this thing and I’m pinching all these licks, all these ideas, and he said, ‘Well, you listened to them, you’re influenced by that, you take that and then you go on.’ ”
While all the brothers, and indeed, all the members of the Bee Gees’ band, have their own opinion as to what made the Main Course sessions different, all agree that the major factor was the influence and encouragement of Arif Mardin. Maurice is quick to pay homage to the man he refers to as both “a producer and a referee … Arif showed us the right track,” he said. “This was the track leading to R&B and hits, and that was the track leading to lush ballads and forget it. He just shoved us off that track and right up this one.”
“Arif was incredible to work with,” Robin agreed. “Especially with Maurice. He changed our style of recording. We would start with one instrument and build up from there, as opposed to all playing at once. It is a clearer process.”
“We’d say, ‘What kind of bass can we do on this?’“ Maurice explained, “and then sit down and talk about it, instead of just putting down the bass and saying, ‘That’s fine for that track.’ He’d rather sit down and ask me what I’d like to do. I’d say, ‘I’d like to do it like this,’ and he’d say, ‘Why don’t you try it like this?’ We’d sit down and put the two ideas together. If we didn’t like it, we would try something else again. And sometimes the bass went on last on some of the tracks, because I want to work around some of the other instruments — the lead guitar, bass drum.”
While there is no denying that Mardin’s production was a major ingredient in the success of Main Course, it was only that: an ingredient. Arif had also produced the previous year’s Mr. Natural, which Barry said “was an album that we made but never listened to. You know something is wrong when you don’t bother to listen to your own albums. If you’re not going to bother, other people may not bother either. There are a few nice tracks on it actually, but nothing stands out as a hit.
“After we made that album I went home, and I didn’t have a good hi-fi set-up at the time so I never put it on. A month went by, and I actually forgot to play it. The new album I keep playing all the time, and I’ve listened to it more than I’ve listened to any one before.”
Blue Weaver believes that science played a big part in the new sound. “During Main Course, the sound changed so drastically because synthesizers were used, and technology was introduced rather than just an orchestra and a piano,” he explained. “That was a change as well. There hasn’t been musically much change since then because nothing new has been invented to make such a tremendous difference to the sound as the synthesizer did, compared to an orchestra. Oh, sometim
es I’d try to make the synthesizer sound like a real orchestra. I got heavily involved in technology; days would be spent on it. With the early albums, we liked being advanced, and we liked using technology, but we were ahead of technology then. I think now technology always stays one step ahead of you.”
Another vital ingredient for the success of the album was Karl Richardson, a veteran of Miami discos and sound and light shows, who eventually moved on to become a top engineer at Criteria. During the recording of Main Course, Karl introduced the group to one of his friends, a young man named Albhy Galuten. According to Maurice, the initial meeting was inauspicious. “Karl knew this guy Albhy, who’d worked with Clapton and such,” he related. “At first, I saw him barefoot and all, eating his bloody grease tree [avocado] sandwiches, and I was a bit frightened.”
“When we first went to Criteria, Karl was the house engineer,” Tom Kennedy explained. “Albhy was a sort of hippie keyboard player who had his own studio and did a few things. He got on quite well with Barry …” Although he didn’t participate in the recording of Main Course, Albhy would soon play a major part in The Bee Gees’ story.
The first single from the album emerged from the daily drive between Criteria and 461 Ocean Boulevard. “We were on our way back from the studios, Criteria Studios, in Miami … and, as the car takes us back to the house we had rented, it was going across this bridge,” Barry said. “We’d recorded a lot of songs at that point. As we crossed the bridge, the bridge went ‘tickety, tickety, tickety tick’ and it just gave us a thought and I don’t know where it came from, I just started singing ‘Just your jive talkin’ ’. That’s a great groove, we gotta remember that groove. In those days you didn’t tape something, you never did. You just had to remember it so the next day, when we were going across the bridge again, we started singing along to it. The same night, we got back about midnight and we sat down and we wrote the lyrics to the song. We finished it in the studio, but when we played it for Arif Mardin, our producer, he asked us if we knew what ‘jive talkin’ ’ meant in America. We said we didn’t and when he told us, we had to change the lyrics so they’d make sense. That’s also why the first line of the chorus is ‘Jive talkin’, so misunderstood.’ That’s how it really came about.”
