Multiple sources claim that Avildsen did not want the Bee Gees music in the movie in the first place and resisted their songs from the start. But the Bee Gees were Stigwood’s band and any director would have to have known going in that they were part of the deal.
Stigwood called Avildsen. The passing of time has allowed many different versions of that call to be cited, and the two best come from Stigwood. “The other night I fired the Saturday Night director,” Stigwood said. “It was a terrible coincidence, too. When I was firing him, the message came through that he’d been nominated for an Academy Award (for directing Rocky). I had to break off and congratulate him in the middle and then carry on with the foul deed.”{357} In an even better version, Stigwood claims to have said to Avildsen: “I have good news and bad news.” To which Avildsen naturally replied: “What’s the good news?” Stigwood said: “You’ve been nominated for an Oscar for directing Rocky.” Avildsen: “And the bad news?” Stigwood: “You’re fired.”
In all the universe, only Robert Stigwood gets to have such conversations.
“I’m sorry the picture isn’t going to happen,” John Avildsen told the New York Times. “Why I was fired is a matter of opinion and I’d rather not dwell on it.”{358}
John Badham replaced Avildsen. For the discerning filmgoer, Badham’s greatest claim to fame is his sister, Mary Badham, who played the unforgettable Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. Badham’s sole major directing credit before SNF was the James Earl Jones–Richard Pryor baseball farce, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings. Badham turned out to be both biddable and able to direct a cogent dance sequence. Oddly though, in the finished film, as Travolta and Gorny swirl about the floor to “Night Fever,” there remain a number of shots from below, framing the two against the disco ceiling as they turn arm in arm. Could these have been left over from Avildsen’s time at the helm? The dancers are shown only from the waist up. Travolta was right: they look ridiculous.
The sessions at Hérouville lasted for two months. When Karl wasn’t attending to all that SNF demanded, he was, at Stigwood’s behest, mixing the Bee Gees’ next release—Here at Last . . . The Bee Gees . . . Live—a double LP and the band’s first live album. It captured their December 20, 1976, concert at the Los Angeles Forum, which was broadcast live on the radio on the King Biscuit Flower Hour. A television special of the show had been planned. Wally Heider’s Record Plant mobile unit, the best mobile recording studio in the world, was on-site to capture the audio. The video proved subpar and no completed version of the show has been released. The Bee Gees finished up at Hérouville in the late spring of 1977.
Timbales and other percussion for “Stayin’ Alive” were overdubbed at Criteria by Joe Lala. The Miami String Section made Blue Weaver’s synthesizer lines more majestic. More strings were added during sessions at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles. SNF’s final mix was done back at Criteria. Post-production work finished on the album in April 1977.
With only six tracks from the Bee Gees, the soundtrack needed padding. Bill Oakes was president of RSO and is credited with “Album Supervision and Compilation.” That suggests he picked the other material and was responsible for the order of the songs on each side. Whoever chose it, the non–Bee Gees material on the record is mostly second-rate, both second-rate disco and second-rate compared to each band’s best work.
Oakes was, at the time, married to Yvonne Elliman. Elliman starred as Mary Magdalene on Broadway in Jesus Christ Superstar. Throughout the mid-1970s she sang backup for Eric Clapton on record and onstage. Her voice can be heard on his “Lay Down Sally” and “I Shot the Sheriff.” There had been talk of her covering “How Deep Is Your Love” for SNF, but Stigwood vetoed that idea. He thought more of the song than the Bee Gees did, and he insisted that their version go on the album. The band had recorded “If I Can’t Have You,” but Elliman’s version appears on the soundtrack. Produced by disco maven and Gloria (“I Will Survive”) Gaynor producer Freddie Perren, the song’s both bouncy and pallid, riddled with flute flourishes, and Elliman’s voice is no revelation. As with a lot of disco, the song has no climax or peak, only the same refrain repeated endlessly. Even so, it charted from late January until June of 1978 and spent a week in mid-May at #1. Compared to the Bee Gees’ other songs on the album, it’s weak. Their own version of the song has no more force or staying power than Elliman’s.
David Shire’s “Night on Disco Mountain” is a five-minute-thirteen-second argument for the horror of all music piggybacked onto disco by those who had no understanding of rhythm or dance music. A studio source maintains that Shire came in, picked up the assignment to create “soundtrack” filler, wrote his pieces and recorded them, all on the same day. They sound like it. There’s no telling how much money Shire made from that one day of half-hearted effort.
M.F.S.B. had strong credentials, but their “K-Jee” is not only generic material for the band, it’s generic instrumental disco. Which is a shame; there are far better M.F.S.B. tracks to choose from. Mother Father Sister Brother or, as they were better known, Motherfucking Soul Band, had a hell of a résumé. They wrote and performed the theme for Soul Train and were the house band for famed Philly producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff at Sigma Sound. There they backed Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, the O’Jays, the Spinners and the Stylistics, among many others. It’s hard to find a worse song in their catalog than “K-Jee.”
Kool and the Gang’s “Open Sesame” is another convincing argument for the reverse-Midas touch of disco. Kool and the Gang was not a disco band; they played hard-core funk. This layering of disco tropes over a speeded-up version of their signature sound is dispiriting. Like “K-Jee,” it did not chart as a single.
“Boogie Shoes,” by KC and the Sunshine Band, sounds like every KC song, which sound like every other KC song. It’s hooky, innocuous, content free and happy, reflecting KC’s ingenious whitening of the Funky Nassau sound, with its calypso influences and cruise-ship version of the rock-steady beat. “Boogie Shoes,” which charted for ten weeks in early 1978 and peaked at #35, didn’t sound like disco then and doesn’t today.
Tavares was a vocal group of long standing, whose 1975 R&B chart #1, “It Only Takes a Minute,” made the UK top 10 decades later when covered by boy band Take That. The Bee Gees liked the Tavares’ sound. Al Coury said:“The Bee Gees wrote [‘More Than a Woman’] and gave it to Tavares. We wanted to give them a shot; they said they’d bring it home.”{359} Their manager later lamented that the Tavares’ version was too disco for their more traditional black R&B constituency, but it charted for fourteen weeks, reaching #32. Later, desperate along with everyone else to escape the stigma of SNF, their manager said: “The totality of our show has nothing to do with disco.”{360}
The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” is one of the welcome exceptions on SNF. A classic dance track, and proof of how driving, funky and galvanizing good disco could be, “Inferno” combines archetypal disco arranging with old-school R&B throat clearing, grunting and soul shouting. The chicken-scratch wah-wah guitar, string charts, keyboard riffs and repetitive bass are pure disco, but the break, the harmonies and the shout-back chorus owe their sound to Stax-Volt and the traditions of southern soul. It charted for nineteen weeks and spent two weeks at #11.
“Calypso Breakdown” is uncut Funky Nassau run through a disco mixer. It’s a not much of a track, but does offer a textbook of combining preexisting sounds to make a sure-fire club hit. The unchanging cowbell gave DJs a clear metronome to guide switching from one copy to another. The bass line and unbroken cymbal riff echo—not to say copy—“Soul Makossa,” but the song never takes off. It does, however, by its inclusion, draw attention to the remarkable career of its composer and producer, Ralph MacDonald. A life-long percussionist, MacDonald joined Harry Belafonte’s band at age seventeen. MacDonald co-wrote “Where Is the Love,” which hit #5 for Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. He co-wrote “Just the Two of Us” for saxophonist Grover Washington and singer Bill Withers; that
got to #2. His New York Times obituary described MacDonald as “the ghost behind the hit records of a multitude of 1970s and ’80s pop stars.” Though “Calypso Breakdown” hardly showcases MacDonald’s true skills, it’s nice to see him get some of that SNF money.
Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” is a disco novelty cut featuring moments from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony over corny strings, bombastic horns and secondhand clavinet riffs that evoke the worst of Deodato. And what’s worse than Deodato?
The inclusion of “A Fifth of Beethoven” suggests that somebody at RSO both liked and saw the market potential in novelty tracks. Nowhere was this canniness more evident than in Stigwood’s treatment of Rick Dees, the auteur behind “Disco Duck.” Dees, a “personality” on radio and TV, wrote the track as a disco parody; it features in-rhythm quacking and is even more unlistenable than that sounds. Dees released the track on a small label, expecting little. Stigwood heard it, recognized its potential and bought the master tape for $3,500. Fueled by RSO’s promotion, “Disco Duck” went on to spend October of 1976 at #1. RSO secured permission to put “Duck” on the soundtrack of the film. Dees took the offer assuming his song would be on the album. Alas for him, “Duck” can be heard only as background music in one scene. Dees claims he lost $2.5 million by not being smart enough to insist that his cut make the record.
The Bee Gees’ tracks, save one, have not aged well. “More Than a Woman” and “How Deep Is Your Love” are pablum. A close read of the lyrics suggests that both songs spring from Robin’s juvenile sense of humor. Like Main Course’s “Fanny,” the lyrics of “More Than a Woman” seem both a wink to, and a dirty joke at the expense of, disco’s gay demographic. When asked what the lyrics to “Woman” were about, Robin said, in one of his classic retorts: “Three tits, two vaginas.”{361} What Robin meant is anybody’s guess; he loved to blow off interviewers with those sorts of quips. “How Deep Is Your Love” addresses another of Robin’s recurring obsessions, if his studio-wall drawings are any guide: penis size. Perhaps this issue stemmed from sibling rivalry. Maurice—Robin’s fraternal, but not identical, twin—answered to a long-standing family nickname: Moby.
The saccharine, unchallenging production of “How Deep Is Your Love,” “More Than a Woman” and “Night Fever” underscores, as always, the packaging genius of the Gibbs and their production team. Nightclub performers would be crooning all three for another decade. The irresistible pop power of the melodies overcomes Barry’s screechy falsetto and any lyrical content. The cuts are as hummable as the lyrics are instantly forgettable. Does anyone actually know a verse lyric to “More Than a Woman”? Has anyone who heard it once ever forgotten the chorus?
At least “Night Fever” changes between verse and chorus, but like “Deep” and “Woman,” fights against a layer of studio gloss that holds the song at a remove. That gloss deadens the funky rhythm guitar and shrouds the nice wah-wah vamping and sustained guitar drones during the breaks. That guitar work—and these three tracks—exemplify an unsolvable problem of Bee Gees music of this era: the willful mediocrity of the second-rate songs pushes away the listener. But the popcraft, production and musicianship remain compelling. These are mediocre songs that, when broken into their component parts, prove textbooks in understanding pop, how to embellish, how to build pieces that add up to a whole. Few bands present this dilemma. Most second-rate or really annoying songs eventually fade away. Not these. Simply focusing on, say, the killer guitar part on “Night Fever” keeps the listener engaged. It’s a conundrum. These songs are so part of the cultural ether, and so in everyone’s heads, that a clear aesthetic read on them proves almost impossible.
No late-period Bee Gees track offers a greater conundrum than “Stayin’ Alive.” It’s a killer song, as modern today as the day it was recorded, with that perfect funk drum-loop barely lagging the beat and the grunting chorus driving it on. Like “Jive Talkin’,” it plays as essentially raceless. The song is actually slower than it sounds, which springs from the tension between the lagging beat and the pushing bass. That tension brings the funk, and some part of your body will move whenever this song comes on. Today it carries so much cultural baggage that whenever it does come on—in a TV show, on the radio, ironically on a film soundtrack, as somebody’s ring tone—everybody smiles. “Stayin’ Alive” is beloved, and for good reason. It sounds like the Bee Gees; nothing and nobody else.
A closer listen reveals the core problem. There is something grating about “Stayin’ Alive,” and the louder the volume, the more grating it becomes. Listen to, for instance, the vocal-only tracks of the Beatles, the Beach Boys or even Little Feat—something easy enough to do these days; they’re all on YouTube someplace—and you hear music of the spheres. The vocals are lovely, heartfelt and transcendent even, or especially, when they’re not perfect. The vocal tracks for the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, and the revelations of process to be heard there, are unforgettable. The vocal-only tracks from “Stayin’ Alive” are hard, ugly and effortful. The falsetto harmonies, which worked so well on “Jive Talkin’,” sound forced and revved up, like the Chipmunks overdosing on Adderall. Barry shouts and grunts with off-putting aggression. The harshness of the vocals is a hidden time bomb in the song, making it hard to listen all the way through.
The problem with the Bee Gees’ music during this era can be summed up in one tough question: Could Barry hear the difference? Could he tell his best work from his second best? The Spanish have a proverb which translates: “Too much perfection is a mistake.” Did Barry’s mania for control and pop perfectionism stifle the soul in his soul music? “Stayin’ Alive” is a mechanistic artifact from a mechanistic genre, and tragically, soulless at its core.
Danceable as hell, though . . .
“Stayin’ Alive” spent less time at #1 than any other #1 on the LP.
The lineup of novelty cuts and second-rate songs from bands that had done much better work suggest bottom-feeding, that RSO sought the cheapest material to fill out the record, a time-honored practice with soundtracks. SNF’s success put an end to that practice, as studios discovered the earnings a well-constructed soundtrack could bring. But it does raise the question of whether, despite investing so much of his own money in the project, Stigwood was having second thoughts, whether he did not believe that the record was going to have legs. This notion is reinforced by Bill Oakes’s attitude when he mastered the LP.
In October of 1977, Bill Oakes ran the mastering sessions for Saturday Night Fever. He seems, like others, to have run out of interest in and patience for the project. He feared the cultural wheel had already turned and that SNF would be left behind. Oakes told Anthony Haden-Guest: “We started at midnight and went on till dawn, and by this time I was absolutely fried. I had been listening to disco for so long, I never wanted to hear the stuff again. I wanted to get it over with. The word was that people had had enough; the Deadheads were coming back. Heavy Metal was making a run at it. That’s it! Let’s move on. Tom Petty was auditioning for a label deal with Capitol that night. I thought that sounded interesting. But they kept calling me down the corridor with the master. ‘C’mon! We’ve got to listen to another track! Tavares, pumping away.’ Great! I won’t have to listen to it again. I was going to hand [the master tape] to the record company, and they would do what they would. It was in the back of my car. I was between La Brea and Hollywood as dawn broke, sitting behind a truck with a bumper sticker that said ‘Death to Disco.’ I was sitting there thinking, perhaps it is. It’s too boring to think of. I drove home, and left the master in the car.”80
SNF’s album packaging might not have seemed cheesy and cheap in 1976; to see the LP today is a shock. The front cover features Travolta in classic one-hand-raised disco pose, pointing upward to a shot of the Bee Gees in disco-white ensembles. The inside of the gatefold hasn’t a word of text or detail about the record. Instead, there are nineteen photographs of Travolta from the film, with a montage of his most iconic moves in the center.
The back of the jacket showcases a crop from the front-cover photo of the Bee Gees, and incongruous promo shots of Elliman and Tavares. It looks like Stigwood spent as little as possible on the jacket.
Making sure product kept moving through the pipeline, Stigwood released Here at Last . . . The Bee Gees . . . Live in May 1977. It went quadruple platinum, selling over 4.5 million copies and hitting #8 in the US. A live version of “Edge of the Universe” (from Main Course) reached #16 on the US singles charts. For any other group, this level of success would be a career milestone, proof that fans still cared enough to gobble up a live record in astounding quantities. And proof that the Bee Gees’ fan base remained, at minimum, almost 5 million strong. But given events that were coming down the pike, Here at Last in the eyes of the public, the label, the band and history proved merely a footnote.
As RSO’s formidable publicity machine geared up for the December release of Saturday Night Fever, the Bee Gees embarked on another of Stigwood’s grand adventures.
Photo Insert
Robin, Barry and Maurice in Brisbane, Australia, 1960.
Maurice, Robin and Barry, 1966.
Barry, Robin, Vince Melouney, Maurice and Colin Petersen, 1967, on The Simon Dee Show in the UK.
Barry, 1967.
Maurice, 1968.
Robin, 1968.
Barry and his Lotus, 1969.
Maurice and Lulu, 1969.
Maurice, mid-1970s.
Maurice, Barry and Robin with Hugh, Andy and Barbara, 1970, backstage at Top of the Pops.
Barry, Maurice, George Burns, Peter Frampton and Robin on the set of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1978
The Bee Gees Page 18
