by Hector Cook
Part of the film included the Lonely Hearts Club Band jumping and tumbling on a trampoline, but the film’s insurers refused to allow its highly paid stars to participate so stunt doubles were employed. Peter Frampton was annoyed as he had been the first in his school to do a double somersault on the trampoline. Robin Gibb was simply bewildered by the uncanny likeness of his counterpart. “He looks like me. Nobody told me about the doubles. I was in the bog and came out and saw me on the bandstand. I thought, ‘They don’t need me — I’m already there,’ “ he said.
An early scene, in which the Lonely Hearts Club band is leaving Heartland in a hot air balloon, nearly turned serious, when Barry was almost burnt. He was rescued by the prompt action of Paul Nicholas, who managed to extinguish the fire before Barry suffered any injury.
The filming of Sgt. Pepper paused for Christmas and the New Year, resuming on January 2, 1978, for the final two weeks. The film’s finale was to be an all star reprise of the title track, in an effort to recreate the original Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band sleeve. Robert Stigwood invited 400 major and minor celebrities to participate, providing each with a first class plane ticket. He hired rock impresario Bill Graham to organise the accommodation for the stars, who weren’t paid a penny for their services, but had all their expenses paid and limousines at their disposal round the clock. Graham booked every available suite in Los Angeles and organised for more limousines to be shipped in from other cities, as there were fewer than a hundred in LA. The total cost for the single day of filming was over half a million dollars, and that didn’t even take into account the bill for the hugely extravagant party held later that evening.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was launched with a gala premiere at the Palladium on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on July 18, 1978. All the movie’s stars were present, with the exception of Peter Frampton, who was hospitalised in New York after he was seriously injured in a car accident. More than a thousand guests celebrated at the Beverly Hills Hilton afterwards.
The film’s East Coast premiere took place just three days later at the Radio City Music Hall in New York. With excitement running high, it was declared Sgt. Pepper Day in New York, and the city’s Police Athletic League benefited once again, as all proceeds from the premiere were donated to the charity.
Robin Gibb’s solo single of ‘Oh! Darling’ and the much anticipated soundtrack album were released in conjunction with the film. Never had an album received that sort of promotion — the film even shows the production and packing of the two disc-set. The album was a guaranteed smash hit. It did seem likely — from Christmas of 1977 through May 20, 1978, RSO Records had retained the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. No other record label had ever before managed to score six consecutive number ones, and by the end of summer, RSO had attained an additional 11 weeks at number one. A Hollywood insider predicted, “Even if the movie sinks like The Titanic, Stigwood will still make a fortune from the soundtrack album.” The prediction couldn’t have been less accurate.
Barry Gibb laughed, “There’s a good story about the Sgt. Pepper album … They shipped about two million and then found about a million of them by the side of the road. In those days, you could actually go platinum based on your shipping. You can’t do that these days. The mechanic doesn’t work anymore. They had shipped all these albums to stores, but there was no demand. So somebody had dumped a million albums by the side of the road.”
Rumour has it that the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band soundtrack was the only album in history to ship double platinum and return triple platinum, meaning that even the counterfeit copies of the two LP set were being returned by retailers.
One quirk of the album’s distribution was that, in Britain, it was released on A&M, the label to which Peter Frampton was contracted. A&M’s marketing department scored a minor victory over their RSO counterparts, who had distribution rights elsewhere in the world, by issuing an extremely limited edition pressing of the double album set on pink vinyl. While black vinyl copies soon became “10 a penny,” the pink vinyl ones were quickly snapped up by collectors and are virtually impossible to find nowadays.
Of the nearly 30 songs on the soundtrack, only two charted on the American Top 20. Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ reached number nine, and Robin’s soulful take on ‘Oh! Darling’ achieved the number 15 spot.
Everyone involved in the project went into it with high hopes, but little more than a year later, all were singing a different tune. In an industry dominated by sales, no one dares to admit they actually might have enjoyed something which turned out to be a monumental turkey of the scale of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but The Bee Gees’ road manager, Tom Kennedy, insisted, “They did enjoy it at the time. The camaraderie of all the people who worked on it and the whole carnival atmosphere was excellent. Whether it was sound financially, whether it was the wrong time or just the wrong film, it was a fairy tale in the making. I took reels and reels of photographs, and there were all these smiling faces. They might not have enjoyed it in retrospect, but at the time they did enjoy it apart from the long hours — it was hard work, having to get up at 6.00 a.m.
“George Burns [was] a lovely man; Peter Frampton, a great, fun character; Paul Nicholas — all these people, it was like a circus atmosphere all the time.”
Alice Cooper is one of the few involved in the film who readily admits that he had no idea that the film would be a disaster, but he also reveals that he was only on the set for three days, including the time it took to record his track, ‘Because’, for his role of Father Sun. “The crazy thing about it was that I was in the hospital at the time undergoing treatment for alcoholism. They arranged for a three-day pass for me to leave the hospital to do the filming,” he said.
He especially enjoyed his work with George Martin. “When I did the first take of the song, I did it in my best John Lennon impersonation. George said it was fine, but then told me to do it like Alice Cooper would do it. He seemed really happy with it.”
The director, Michael Schultz, said, “When I read the script and saw it was one great fantasy, then I knew how much trouble I was in for.”
Robin Gibb said, “It wasn’t a terribly pleasant experience because we were between albums at the time, and we had finished recording Saturday Night Fever, and it was a contractual commitment for everyone at that time, including our manager, Robert Stigwood, which we had to complete. It was a very undecided venture, nobody really knew where we were going with it.”
Barry calls it, “The movie that should never have been made. If somebody said to you, ’I want to make the film Sergeant Pepper, and I want you to play a member of the band, you wouldn’t say, ‘No’. You’d say, ‘Wow, fantastic.’ You wouldn’t imagine for a second it would turn out quite as bad as it did. I think the movie Sergeant Pepper should have been The Making Of The Sergeant Pepper because I thought that was where the real story was going on. The craziness of Hollywood, all those pop artists thrown together making a movie where they weren’t allowed to speak, it was just madness.”
“It should have had more excitement poured into it,” Robin added. “As we were making it, I was thinking, ‘I hope they are going to put some visual effects in here.’ When I saw it, it was exactly as we shot it; nothing was improved. On the set, the camera is pointed at you and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘It’s gotta be more than just me sitting here in this room ’cause nothing’s happening.’ But then you see the film and that’s all there is.”
Tom Kennedy probably summed it up best when he said, “It was a great film to make. When you see it up on the screen, it was a different thing — sometimes when you live something, you can’t record it. It’s like not being able to take a picture of the Grand Canyon. It was more fun to make than it was to watch.”
* * *
When the Academy Award nominations were announced early in 1978, there was a curious omission — the biggest selling soundtrack album of
all time hadn’t even received a mention. Saturday Night Fever received only one nomination for John Travolta in the Best Actor category.
The Bee Gees and their manager were stunned. Robert Stigwood lodged a formal complaint with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ music branch, stating, “Music critics and audiences have responded to the fresh sounds of The Bee Gees’ compositions in unprecedented numbers … Furthermore, the music is hand and glove with the script’s development and is completely integral to the action of the film … We emphatically insist that a serious omission has been made which would seem to reflect an unwillingness on the part of the music branch to recognise the more innovative and popular currents in the music world today.”
Months later, Robert Stigwood was still unwilling to put it behind him and live with it, as Oakes had suggested. “I was shocked and still am shocked,” he declared. “I think the governors of the music branch of the Academy were out of their minds because I don’t think there has ever been a more perfect marriage of music and movie together. I know in the heart of everyone in the world who is a movie goer, they agree with me, and I think by popular consensus that The Bee Gees won the Academy Award for their music.”
Back in Britain, the 23rd Annual Ivor Novello Awards were presented at Grosvenor House Hotel in London on May 12, and The Bee Gees’ contribution to film was given the acknowledgement Stigwood sought. ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ scooped the awards in the categories for Best Pop Song and Best Film Music or Song.
The group also collected their third AMPEX Golden Reel Award for Saturday Night Fever. This time The Bee Gees donated their $1,000 award to The Bertha Abbess Children’s Center, a mental health facility for severely mentally disturbed children.
In August, Molly Gibb travelled to Germany to receive awards for Saturday Night Fever on behalf of The Bee Gees.
Molly, six-year-old Spencer and four-year-old Melissa had also joined Robin in the States for a visit to Sesame Street. As both children were fans of the Public Broadcasting System’s award winning television programme, Robin had agreed to participate in the recording of the Sesame Street Fever album, with the stipulation that his son and daughter be allowed to meet the Sesame Street characters they loved. Robin found himself sharing vocals on the title track with The Count, Grover, Ernie and Cookie Monster, and providing a spoken intro to ‘C Is For Cookie’. His song, ‘Trash’, was released as a single in October and remains a novelty favourite for many Bee Gees’ fans today. As Robin put it, “How of ten does one get the chance to work with Cookie Monster?”
The LP went gold less than four months after its release, and Robin and his family travelled to New York to be presented with the award by none other than Big Bird.
* * *
In May, 1978, The Bee Gees held a press conference with Robert Stigwood and David Frost at the United Nations General Assembly Building. While all three Gibbs admitted that they were “not very political,” all felt the importance of UNICEF’s work in helping needy children, whom they referred to as “the most defenceless people on earth”.
“The idea came up when Robert Stigwood and David Frost were on holiday in Miami spending some time with us in one of our homes,” Barry explained. “What really went down was a long conversation and a lot of laughs about what the year had given us, and how hard everyone had worked and of course, Robert’s enormous success apart from ours. It was just a very happy time for us; we were sort of celebrating. The idea came up from us that we should give something back, we should form some sort of charity or form something that gave something to kids, and we suggested donating the proceeds of a song or donating a song, which we found out later you could not do. You can’t donate a physical song, but you can donate the all the proceeds, and this was how the idea came about.”
As The Bee Gees left the United Nations General Assembly Building following the press conference, their limousine was immediately surrounded by fans, who slowed the car’s progress down the street. Barry related, “One called, ‘Put your window down! I want to shake hands with you.’ It was pouring, but she kept saying, ‘Please, please,’ so we rolled down the window. The rain came in, we shook hands, then put the window up again. A few yards farther, the girl rushed back and shouted, ‘Where’s my watch? You guys ripped off my watch!’ So she had us lower the window, then she found it on her. That’s New York. First, ‘I want to shake your hand’; next, it’s ‘Get the police!’ “ he laughed.
The Bee Gees had begun recording their follow-up to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack at Criteria Studio in March. Following their summer holidays and the Sgt. Pepper premieres, they returned to Criteria to complete the album in late July.
The success of Fever had not made The Bee Gees complacent about the future. “We’re scared of the next album,” Barry admitted. “We’re scared of whatever we do. We’re the same desperate, worried, insecure songwriters we’ve ever been.”
The Bee Gees’ return to the studio kept things interesting for the Criteria staff, who likened the group’s popularity to that of The Beatles. “We get about 20—25 Bee Gee fan letters a day. They call up all day. I don’t know what it is that they’ve got in their heads, but they’re really crazy,” said the studio’s receptionist, Patti Romano. “I remember one day when we had 25 girls out here screaming.”
The group’s new high profile meant round two of the pressures of super-stardom which had spelled disaster for the group in the late Sixties, but this time around, the brothers were older and wiser. The competition between them had gone, even as Andy’s single looked set to replace his older brothers’.
“So now our baby brother’s sneaking up to knock us off. I’ll kill him, I will!” Maurice joked. “It’s funny; years ago, we’d have been furious if Andy bumped us from number one. Jesus, the three of us were fighting amongst ourselves to be the biggest star. Now, like Barry says, it’s all in the family. Barry wrote and produced the bloody song, anyhow.”
Even as the press tried to instigate another family feud by focusing on Barry as the group leader and sex symbol, they refused to be drawn into it, although Barry confessed, “I think this sex symbol talk affects Robin and Maurice more than it does me. They see that I get more attention and there’s nothing they can do. They know it gives me more … opportunities.
“There was an adjustment period five years ago, but all the little hassles and hang-ups have disappeared. We began to relate to each other as brothers. For a while, when we came back together, and I’m talking about five or six years ago, we weren’t working at full capacity. The personal crisis we went through provided extra incentive and the records we put out now, especially the last few, are full of drive and ambition. We can feel it.”
Robin agreed, “I know what people think of me. I used to be very insecure. There was a lot of pressure around me, and I had trouble coping with initial stardom and touring. That’s changed, as I’ve come from this boy-to-man period over the last five years. A new era has started. I feel great about the people around me.”
While the brothers had put the quarrels of the past behind them, there was nothing they could do about the growing intrusion of their adoring fans into their private lives. “You can’t go to a cinema or restaurant without being chased for autographs,” Maurice complained. “We can’t even take a commercial plane.”
As the group went back into the studio, Lynda Gibb observed, “Soon Barry will disappear again. The studio is his drug. During the last album, Stevie asked if he was getting a new daddy.”
“Stevie tells me he’s going to get three daddies — he says he needs more than one,” Barry admitted, adding, “We need some time with our families. I see Lynda and the children about two hours a day. I think it’s wrong. I’m always working; even when I’m home, my mind is somewhere else. As far as she’s concerned, it’s no good. We don’t get a chance to talk, to be husband and wife.”
The group’s workday usually started about three o’clock in the afternoon and carried on until midnight
, which did preclude spending much time with the family. “You’re not a slave to the music,” Albhy Galuten said, “but you’re very dependent on their inspiration at the moment, or maybe even your own. In other words, if you’re excited about something and something is working, you can’t leave.”
“Success creates energy,” Barry explained, “and we were very fortunate that … we were pretty much number one in the charts the whole time we were making The Spirits Having Flown album from previous material, including material from Andy, Samantha Sang, Yvonne [Elliman] … There were a lot of records that we made around that period, not just the Fever album, that were very successful.
“We went to pop heaven for about two years. There’s a good side and a bad side to that. The good side is that you get a hit no matter what, which can be unhealthy. The bad side is you can’t answery our own phone, you can’t go to the cinema or a restaurant, and you have people climbing over your walls. That’s not the life I wanted to lead.
“We were just reflecting what was going on around us. We were suddenly living in a goldfish bowl and we couldn’t perceive real life. We couldn’t go and hang out like we used to and go sit in a club where we used to get our ideas … Writing became different.
Maurice. (Harry Goodwin)
Reunited – the three brothers phone the press with the news that Robin is back in the band, evidently a tiring day’s work. (Barry Plummer)
Barry welcomes Aussie pop star Ronnie Burns to London. (Courtesy Ronnie Burns)
Drummer Geoff Bridgeford with Maurice and Robin. (LFI)
Barry’s wedding to Lynda Gray, September 1, 1970. Left to right: George Gray, Barbara Gibb, Lynda, Barry, May Gray and Hugh Gibb. (LFI)
