THE BEE GEES - “I Gotta Get A Message To You”
(#257, 7th September 1968)
In a curious way this song feels ahead of its time, anticipating a strain of 1970s pop - “Seasons In The Sun”, “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” - that slathered tracks with melody and melodrama. At its best the style smuggles something affecting inside its padding of hokum - or makes the hokum so outrageous or pretty that you don’t care. “Message” doesn’t do that for me, I can’t find a reason to care about the singer’s crimes or dilemmas or backstory or whatever the hell is going on: the hand-wringing vocal just feels contrived, and after a portentious intro the record drags. People looking for the dark side of 1968 may find the Bee Gees’ doomed pleadings strike a chord, but in almost any year there are better gathering storms than this. 4
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FT's Doctor Mod on August 25th, 2006
Yes, it does anticipate that 1970s melodramatic narrative song craze–but the Bee Gees had been doing that since their arrival (”New York Mining Disaster 1941″) and carried it on for a bit (”Odessa”). But this song also looks backwards, sharing a common theme with “The Green Green Grass of Home.”
And although I seem to be acquiring a reputation for “looking for the dark side of 1968″ (but hey–I lived through it), the Bee Gees’ little story songs are always too, too focused on protagonist’s own emotions to be concerned with contemporary events “out there.” The title suggests an urgent “message,” but all that the lyrics reveal about the message is “tell her I’m sorry” and otherwise aren’t about a message at all–personal OR political–but rather a repeated “one more hour and my life will be through (oh no-o, oh no-o).”
A song that is “about” execution for a crime (but here only in the sense of the protagonist’s emotions about it happening to him) could make a political statement, but as capital punishment was abolished in the UK in 1965, this would seem unlikely. A more probable explanation is an attempt to invoke some sort of “romantic” vision of the past in some never-neverland. Remember “Cucumber Castle”?
Tom on August 26th, 2006
:)
Actually Doctor Mod the “dark side of ‘68″ thing was a little tweak at Robin C, who (I felt) over-weighted this particular track in a recent posting.
Chris Brown on August 27th, 2006
What I find odd is how few Bee Gees songs I actually know. This isn’t one of them. I suppose it’s because they carried on having new hits so far into my own lifetime.
FT's Doctor Mod on August 28th, 2006
The shoe fit and so I wore it . . .
Chris, I find that little is said about the two seemingly separate career periods of the Bee Gees. What is remembered is the second period, the “Disco Bee Gees,” all high falsetto, chest hair, and white polyester–and vastly more successful commercially than their earlier incarnation. “Gotta Get a Message” is from the first period in which the Bee Gees were a quintet (a drummer and guitarist in addition to the Gibb brothers) who were at first promoted as a successor to the Beatles (the first of many, including Badfinger). Their lyrics were a bit obscure and imaginistic and thus confused with meaningfulness. Even then they seemed a bit twee–or, more kindly put, quaint. Because the group members couldn’t get along with one another (and their disputes, often reported with a great deal of soap opera dramatics, got a lot of attention in UK music press), they broke up (or nearly broke up) frequently. Their work became more and more self-indulgent and obscure, and they’d rather disappeared from the radar by 1970-71. Later they emerged, reformed and disco-fied, in the mid-70s, by which time many had forgotten their earlier (and much different) work. It’s only been in the past ten years or so that the earlier works have been “resurrected.”
Further thoughts on my previous comment–I want to clarify that a song with this theme has the potential for making an anti-capital punishment statement, yet this song does no such thing. I actually gave it a listen–the first in a long time–and must conclude that the protagonist doesn’t protest his fate but actually accepts it as just punishment: “Well I did it to him / Now it’s my turn to die.”
Chris Brown on August 28th, 2006
Yeah, that’s the sort of lines I was thinking along - obviously I knew they had all these hits back then, and I have actually heard ‘Mass’ often enough to know the chorus - but on the whole the Seventies material (and beyond; my personal memories of their music come mainly from the Eighties) has largely obliterated the earlier material from actually getting heard.
The only song of theirs from this era that I know all the way through is ‘To Love Somebody’, and that of course is largely from other versions. There was a sort of Bee Gees revivial c. 1998 when they got their Brit Award and ITV sponsored a big tribute series/album and that was dominated by the white suit stuff.
FT's koganbot on August 28th, 2006
Mod OTM in regard to the fundamental irrelevance of the Bee Gees to any actual external zeitgeist - until, inexplicably, “Nights on Broadway,” “Stayin’ Alive,” “Tragedy,” where the zeitgeist swirled into them, emanated from them, reflected from them. And then, back to inconsequence. The thing about their early work is it was very good and then suddenly it wasn’t. The sentimental songs were basically white soul done with flair and agony, then suddenly they were replaced by insipid quavering sap. The Beatle harmonies were dramatic (don’t recall offhand what malarkey “Cucumber Castle” was about [though the alb is several feet away from me if I want to find out], but the harmonies left a shivery sting in the back of my neck), then it became mush. And then “Nights on Broadway” came, and they were good again. (Probably not so simple, but since I couldn’t stand the singles starting with “Massachusetts,” I never explored the associated albums.
Marcello Carlin on August 30th, 2006
Odessa to be listened to urgent and key, also Mr Natural from ‘74, the first record with Mardin producing, no hits but one of the great blue-eyed soul albums.
FT's bramble on September 6th, 2006
Its easy to forget how good some of the early Bee Gees stuff was. ‘To Love Somebody’ was covered by Nina Simone and Janis Joplin and Morning of My Life was a gem in the right hands (Esther Ofarim). I dont know if it was Maurice Gibb or a session player who played bass on Gotta Get a Message but its worth listening to just for that
Alex K on December 25th, 2006
This is one of the most underrated sngs ever. Yhe fact they lyrics ae a little vague just makes the song more universal, like it could be about Nelson Mandella. Yhe melody is awesome and the vocals are great, even though the song lends itself to a thousand cover versions. If it was the only song they ever wrote and recorded, the Bee Gees would not be forgotten.