The Bee Gees in the 70s


Book Description

The Bee Gees’ music and image have long been synonymous with the 1970s, and the career trajectory of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb in those ten years meanders between dizzying highs and devastating lows. In 1970, the band was bitterly split after succumbing to the pressures and excesses of their first wave of international fame in the latter part of the 1960s, but by 1979 they were one of the most successful music acts on the planet. In between, the brothers crafted timeless works that defied genre, transcended societal boundaries, and permeated generations of listeners. The Bee Gees would go on to sell over 200 million records, making them among the best-selling music artists of all time; they would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Australian Recording Industry’s Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and receive lifetime achievement awards from the British Phonographic Industry, the American Music Awards, World Music Awards and the Grammys. According to Billboard magazine, the Bee Gees are one of the top three most successful bands in their charts’ history. In the 1970s, The Bee Gees established themselves as innovative and versatile artists, and their songs scored a turbulent decade of global cultural change and discovery.




The Bee Gees in the 1970s


Book Description

For better or worse, The Bee Gees' music and image has long been synonymous with the 1970s, and the career trajectory of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb in that ten-year span meanders between dizzying highs and devastating lows. The Bee Gees began 1970 as non-existent - bitterly split after succumbing to the pressures and excesses of their first wave of international fame in the latter part of the 1960s. By 1979, they were one of the most successful music acts on the planet. In between, the brothers crafted timeless works that defied genre, transcended societal boundaries, and permeated generations of listeners. The Bee Gees would go on to sell over 200 million records, making them among the best-selling music artists of all time; they would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Australian Recording Industry's Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and receive lifetime achievement awards from the British Phonographic Industry, the American Music Awards, World Music Awards and the Grammys. According to Billboard magazine the Bee Gees are one of top three most successful bands in their charts' history. In the 1970s, The Bee Gees established themselves as innovative and versatile artists, and their songs scored a turbulent decade of global cultural change and discovery.




The Bee Gees in the 1960s


Book Description

In April 1967, the Bee Gees launched themselves onto the international music scene with the release of 'New Yok Mining Disaster 1941'. Whilst that haunting classic would be the first of many hits, the Bee Gees consisting of brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb had been releasing records since 1963. As extraordinary as it sounds, with more than ten years of performing and four years of recording behind them, the Gibb twins, Robin and Maurice, were just seventeen while elder brother Barry was only twenty. In an incredible career the Bee Gees would go on to sell over 200 million records, making them among the best-selling music artists of all time, they would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Australian Recording Industry's Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and receive lifetime achievement awards from the British Phonographic Industry, the American Music Awards, World Music Awards and the Grammys. According to Billboard magazine the Bee Gees are one of top three most successful bands in their charts' history. Few musical groups have provided the soundtrack to our lives like the Bee Gees, and it all started in the fascinating decade that was the 1960s.




The Bee Gees


Book Description

The first narrative biography of the Bee Gees, the phenomenally popular vocal group that has sold more than 200 million records worldwide -- sales in the company of the Beatles and Michael Jackson. The Bee Gees is the epic family saga of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb, and it's riddled with astonishing highs—especially as they became the definitive band of the disco era, fueled by Saturday Night Fever and crashing lows, including the tragic drug-fueled downfall of youngest brother, Andy. In recent years, a whole new generation of fans has rediscovered the undeniable grooves and harmonies that made the Bee Gees and songs like Stayin' Alive, How Deep is Your Love, To Love Somebody, and I Started a Joke timeless.




The Ultimate Biography Of The Bee Gees: Tales Of The Brothers Gibb


Book Description

The definitive biography, now updated to include the death of Robin Gibb in May 2012. The Bee Gee's journey from Fifties child act to musical institution is one of pop's most turbulent legends. Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb somehow managed to survive changing musical fashions and bitter personal feuds to create musical partnership that has already lasted four times as long as The Beatles. Described by the authors as their objective tribute, this unflinching biography chronicles everything - the good, the bad... and the bushed-up. Youthful delinquency, disastrous marriages, bitter lawsuits, gay sex scandals, serious drug problems and the death of younger brother Andy have sometimes made the personal lives of the Brothers Gibb look as bleak as the low spots of a career that once reduced them to playing the Batley Variety Club. Yet every time the Bee Gees roller coaster seemed derailed for good, they recorded and went on to even greater triumphs. Today they are revered among pop music's all-time great performers, producers and songwriters. But the true story of their success and the high price they paid for it has never been fully revealed... until now. This new edition of The Ultimate Biography incorporates a complete listing of every song written or recorded by the Gibbs.




Staying Alive


Book Description

'We didn't know what the film was about. We didn't know there was a conflict of image that could perhaps hurt us later on. It sort of grew, blew out of proportion.' - Barry Gibb In the late 70s, the Bee Gees spectacularly revived their career and, with their soundtrack to the Saturday Night Fever film, became the biggest disco group in the world. But when the disco boom crashed they went from icons to punch lines overnight. The band was inescapably frozen in time: all long, flowing manes, big teeth, falsettos, medallions, hairy chests, and skintight satin trousers, one finger forever pointing in the air. The Bee Gees would spend the next forty years trying to convince people there was more to them, growing ever more resentful of their gigantic disco success. 'We'd like to dress "Stayin' Alive" up in a white suit and gold chains and set it on fire,' they said. Stayin' Alive finally lifts that millstone from around their necks by joyfully reappraising and celebrating their iconic disco era. Taking the reader deep into the excesses of the most hedonistic of music scenes, it tells how three brothers from Manchester transformed themselves into the funkiest white group ever and made the world dance. No longer a guilty pleasure but a national treasure.




Precious and Few


Book Description

Precious and Few is a lively and nostalgic look back at the forgotten era of pop that gave us "Hooked on a Feeling", "Dancing in the Moonlight", "I Am Woman", "Seasons in the Sun", and more. The early 1970s brought a "Convoy" of popular rock music--everything from cheesy to the classic. The authors of Precious and Few, Don Breithaupt and Jeff Breithaupt, true-blue '70s fanatics, have put together this irresistibly readable book to transport readers back to a time when people wore smiley-face buttons, went to singles bars, and heartily sang along with Mac Davis.Illustrations throughout.




Bee Gees


Book Description




100 Best-selling Albums of the 70s


Book Description

From the Bee Gees to Pink Floyd to Supertramp, you’ll love this stroll down memory lane! From singer-songwriters like Billy Joel and the Bee Gees to folk artists like John Denver and James Taylor to the rock legends Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, you won’t find a more complete list of albums that defines the '70s music scene. Each listing features the full-color, original sleeve artwork, and is packed with information about the musician lineup, track listings, and number-one singles that resulted. A celebration of this funky era, this book will help you shake your groove thing!




Stayin' Alive


Book Description

An epic account of how working-class America hit the rocks in the political and economic upheavals of the '70s, Stayin' Alive is a wide-ranging cultural and political history that presents the decade in a whole new light. Jefferson Cowie's edgy and incisive book - part political intrigue, part labor history, with large doses of American music, film, and TV lore - makes new sense of the '70s as a crucial and poorly understood transition from the optimism of New Deal America to the widening economic inequalities and dampened expectations of the present. Stayin' Alive takes us from the factory floors of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit to the Washington of Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Cowie connects politics to culture, showing how the big screen and the jukebox can help us understand how America turned away from the radicalism of the '60s and toward the patriotic promise of Ronald Reagan. He also makes unexpected connections between the secrets of the Nixon White House and the failings of the George McGovern campaign, between radicalism and the blue-collar backlash, and between the earthy twang of Merle Haggard's country music and the falsetto highs of Saturday Night Fever. Cowie captures nothing less than the defining characteristics of a new era. Stayin' Alive is a book that will forever define a misunderstood decade.