THE BEE GEES – “Night Fever”
Never having read Wuthering Heights may be philistinism, but never having seen Saturday Night Fever comes close to dereliction of duty. Of course, I’ve heard the soundtrack plenty of times, and SNF has become such a cultural cornerstone, so open to reference and pastiche, that I feel like I’ve seen it. But honestly I haven’t. Luckily, the Nik Cohn essay it was based on was completely made up anyway, so in that pioneering spirit I can safely say that “Night Fever” encapsulates the film’s vision of disco and dancing: anonymous glide punctuated by breathtaking, desperate release.
Barry Gibb’s addictive, unnatural falsetto gave the Bee Gees a fantastic USP, but it also made their music weirder – the high register garbles his vocals, turning the opening lines of “Night Fever”‘s verses into compressed bat-squeak bursts. The effect is thrillingly urgent – here, as on “You Should Be Dancing” and “Stayin’ Alive”, Gibb sounds unearthly, speaking in hedonistic tongues – it’s similar to the helium effects and timestretching tech used to create the druggy pleasure-boost vocals on rave hits.
For me, those two are better songs than “Night Fever”, which after the initial rush of each verse settles into a confident shagpile groove but doesn’t seize me like the best Bee Gees, and the best disco does. It’s a fine, fine record, but far from my favourite on the soundtrack. The Bee Gees’ huge success – in the US they’d eaten the singles charts alive at this point, we got a mere echo of that – was the crest of the disco wave, the imagery of the film and their videos a potent mix of neon and chest hair which defined a moment in popular culture. (“Medallion Man” – applied knowingly to certain teachers – was half playground insult, half sneakily admiring sobriquet.)
The Bee Gees’ disco makeover had another effect, of course. To the rock establishment they were, after all, one of us or something close to it – chart semi-regulars with reasonable pop pedigree, they’d paid their dues and had the Pepper-imitating concept album to prove it. And here they were, not only adapting to this new music but dominating it completely, and becoming staggeringly rich in the process. If they could do it, many a rock star must have thought, why can’t I?
7
I ventured back to see what response my earlier comment had prompted, and was pleasantly surprised to see that I did not get the bollocking I probably deserved.
Tom, you and all the regular posters are doing a grand job – if you weren’t I wouldn’t keep coming back.
“Before the pub…” “After the pub…” What do these expressions mean? I have no concept of them. Only “IN the pub”.
# 167 – Don’t be silly, Mark. Your contributions are never stupid and long live conversational drift.
Ken Bruce occasionally plays ‘Fanny Be Tender With My Love’ and you can probably guess which joke it tends to lead to.
At the risk of joining in consensus here, I tend to prefer Bee Gees songs sung by other people – Al Green being the great and surprising-to-me non-spoiler example – but those falsettos don’t half make the ballads painful. Even so, however, the fact that they wrote so many hits, and on a finite template, makes the whole thing quite wearing after a few days radio listening. And I got very tired of them during that wave of hype after they won the Brit Award (1997?)
All that said, I think I get more enjoyment from this one than ‘Stayin Alive’ now, possibly because it’s less over-familiar. Or maybe it’s the strings. BTW, I’m pretty sure I’ve started watching the film on telly once or twice but never seen the whole thing.
“Aye, these bonnie wee popmasters the Bee Gees…”
Ken: “Och, The Reverend Al Green with ‘Let’s Stay Together’. What was the wee rascal doing with Miss Scarlett in the ball room just there? Errrmmm…”
Lynne Bowles: “Let’s not go there.”
Ken: “No. Let’s do ‘Tracks of my Years’ instead. All this week, we have Neil Diamond…”
Blimey, away for a week or two and this site got seriously feisty, didn’t it? No point in weighing in with my views on the spats after all this time, but I hope peace has broken out.
Briefly FWIW, my thoughts on the Bee Gees – it’d be churlish not to admit they’ve written some top songs, such as “To Love Somebody”, “Words” and even the likes of “If I Can’t Have You” on SNF. But their disco years and their image at the time just grated with a capital G. Not to mention their complete sense-of-humour bypass. Sorry, but I’m with Clive Anderson as far as the Bee Gees are concerned – they’ll always be Les Tosseurs to me! (Can’t believe nobody has referred to that incident yet…)
And I’m with the Bee Gees as far as Clive Anderson is concerned, viz. “you’re the tosser, pal.”
Yes, I *hearted* the Gibbs for giving Anderson the come-uppance he so richly deserved. He was a dreadful chat show host.
Granted, he wasn’t exactly God’s gift to chat shows, but they did look like pillocks trailing off one after the other. Is it possible to do a walkoff and keep one’s dignity?
Michael Hestletine certainly looked like a flouncing ninny on Channel 4 News, whereas I always end up with a certain amount of respect for John Nott’s cussedness in walking out of Robin Day’s 1982 Nationwide interview: “I don’t have to put up with this!”
Albeit losing points for the time it took him to unhook the microphone.
Maurice did walk away with dignity.
And now, the Bee Gees are back.
xxxxxxx. xxx xxx xxxxx.
That’s all I’m saying.
Ah, John Nott! A “here today and, if I may say so, gone tomorrow, politician”. Indeed. And there may well be another of these coming along quite shortly.
yeah, which was a ridiculous thing for RobinDay to say, as politicians tend to hang on for ruddy decades.
Ironic, though, I don’t recall John Nott at all after that!
He had already announced his intention to retire to spend more time with his directorships, hence Day’s impertinent question. John Nott wrote a peculiar book a few years ago, about being an old man in search of lost youth by visiting nightclubs and lap-dancing establishments.
Re 187: Mark G, what exactly are you alluding to? Back?? Please don’t tease!
Yes, the walk-off said a lot about the brothers. Barry flouncing, the slightly less touchy Robin feeling obliged to follow, Maurice shrugging to camera as if to say “what can you do with these guys?” before exiting stage right.
If any other star was called a tosser on live tv, I wonder how they’d react.
Also, at one remove:
xxxxx xx xxxx
and
xxxxx xxxxxxxx
not to mention
xxxxx
and
xxxxxxx
and
xxx xxxx xx xxxx xxxx
What is this, Ask The bleedin Family??
Re 191: ‘Clive Anderson: All Talk’ was prerecorded, not live.
I was in the studio audience for his first ever Channel 4 show, in 1989 in Teddington, the series when he had Tony Slattery as second banana. His guests were Ben Elton and a penguin.
Either way, being called a tosser by Clive Anderson on tv, in front of cameras and an audience (presumably including a fair few people you know), how would most people react? I think I’d probably say “and you’ll always be a c*** to me, Clive”.
I once hailed a taxi in Islington and Clive Anderson tried (and failed) to pinch it from me. He was taller than I expected.
In the interest of full disclosure, for people who have never seen the Clive Anderson piece, its here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdvfmGPDVkk
For even more full disclosure and from way on up, here is the most famous Kenny Everett Bee Gee sketch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpEkugItKQI&feature=related
For anyone who can’t access YouTube, the context of the “tosser” bit was that Barry Gibb told Anderson the band had once, back in Australia, gone by the name of Les Tosseurs. Hence Anderson’s “you’ll always be Les Tosseurs to me”. Earlier on he’d called them “hit songwriters – well, only one letter out”. Many guests would give as good as they got in response to this – it was the trademark of the show after all – but not Barry. “Ah, we’re getting on a storm, aren’t we Clive? In fact I might just leave…”
Senility’s a terrible thing. That’s not how I remember it at all. I thought the ‘tossers’ line was immediately before the walkout. I mean, I can’t stand Clive Anderson but you’d really think Barry would get the gag about Don’t Forget To Remember.
Yes, they look stupid.
It was a bunch of rubbish jokes pitted at the Bee Gees, to be fair. Barry at least looked like he’d actually had enough, Robin always looks like he should be treated with maximum respect at all times, Maurice was tempted to stay on…
Clive Anderson’s treatment of the Bee Gees singlehandedly turned me off him and everything he stands for. What really left a bad taste was his inability to grasp that their work had any musical merit. Even though two decades had passed, you suddenly sensed the anti-pop snobbery of a coterie of Oxbridge-educated Genesis and ELP fans (remember Anderson’s chums The Heebeegeebies?) attempting to reassert itself in an era when those musical battle lines were far more irrelevant than he believed the Bee Gees music to be.
The sad thing about it was that it probably made the Bee Gees think that the world’s attitude towards their music was pretty much the same as it had become in the post-‘Disco Sucks’ early 80s. Perhaps the surprising thing here is that Barry was the first to walk out. Robin is usually the more volatile character – and has walked out of at least two interviews since the Clive Anderson thing, perceiving slights where (unlike the Clive Anderson show) none were intended.
I think they were absolutely right to walk off. There’s good-natured ribbing and there’s calling someone a tosser and expecting them to sit there and take it. It would hardly have been funny if he’d adopted that tack with a Big Brother evictee, but in 1978 alone, Barry Gibb made a far greater impact on the world than most of us make in a lifetime.
The Kenny Everett thing was fairly good-natured whimsy by comparison, and interviews with them suggest that they found it pretty funny. Mass-a-chew-sets indeed.
Re 198: “Yes, they look stupid”
I think that once you’ve been on the receiving end of a huge backlash, you’ll never be able to lose that brittleness (bordering on chippiness) that comes of never quite knowing if the world is laughing with you or at you.
You’re right, Visitor. The youtube clip skips the “hits with one letter missing” line, which – like the tossers line – isn’t a joke in anybody’s book, just a poke at a very soft target. It seems that Barry had just calmed himself down and was joining in the conversation again, when he finally lost his rag over a very innocuous joke.
I saw the Bee Gees at the start of the nineties and they did a medley of SNF-era songs as if it was comedy relief, getting them out of the way as quick as possible. Very sad.
200, I agree wholeheartedly. Anderson thought he’d found a soft target, belittling talented and successful, albeit terminally uncool, musicians.
Shame he didn’t interview Grace Jones…
Not seeing SNF is entirely reasonable, it is a miserable and depressing film, totally out of synch with the uplifting music it spawned.
On an altogether different tack, Night Fever indirectly reminds me of a disco anecdote from me dear ol’ mum.
When I was old enough for the telly to babysit me, my parents would go off into town with a younger crowd and dance the night away at the local disco. It was usually her, my dad and a few of his mates that were about 10 years younger and part of the clubbing/disco scene. All dressed up in their finery, or what passed off as finery in the ’70s (I fear I have a mental picture of The Osmonds in full pastel pimpery on their “Love Me For A Reason” sleeve pic).
On this one occasion, substances were being passed around the disco, and one of Dad’s young pals thought it would be a hilarious laugh to spike my mum’s rum & coke with speed. After a while, Mum felt the urge to gyrate uncontrollably in the middle of the dancefloor, for hours, one song after the next, all the time her young tormentor looked on grinning wickedly. My mum believes to this day that Dad was in on the joke although Dad continues to protest his innocence. The only song Mum remembers dancing to with any clarity was EWF’s “Boogie Wonderland”. At the end, she was so drenched with sweat, her top had become see-through (that bit always makes me shudder), and for weeks after, she was the main topic of conversation among the regulars. Night Fever indeed.
Regarding Barry Gibb’s “unnatural falsetto” according to every internet site posting the lyrics to Night Fever, the song opens:
Listen to the Ground
There is movement all around
There is something goin down
And I can feel it
On the waves of the air
There is dancin out there
If it’s something we can share
We can steal it
Okay fine, I can Gibb say “There is dancin out there” and I can hear him say “We can steal it” but I can’t hear him say “If it’s something we can share”
Is anyone skeptical that the lyrics are correct for the Opening to Night Fever?
There is a weird pause between “something” and “we” that ruins the cadence of the sentence, but I do hear those words.
I like this track a lot. I agree with the consensus here that it’s not *quite* top-notch – I’d rate it about the same as More than a Woman and Emotion but below ace dance tracks Jive Talkin’/You should be dancing/Staying alive/If I can’t have you and ace ballads How deep is your love/(Don’t throw it all away)our love/Love you Inside and Out.
7 or 8 is about right I guess.
I agree with the consensus here too that the film’s worth seeing. I caught it on a re-release in the ’90s and was surprised, even shocked by its harsh edges.
The ‘Night fever’ scene in the film importantly isn’t the key dance scene: the one performed to ‘You should be dancing’ is. Apparently Travolta chose the music for that scene – it was originally supposed to be done to the new-for-the-soundtrack Night Fever but Travolta had trained on YSBD, and he was right that the latter is just higher energy and right for the scene. Travolta also had a large say in how it was shot and edited. The director (and maybe the studio – the story varies) wanted lots of cutaways to close-ups, but Travolta insisted on the number being shot much like an old-time MGM studio dance number. Travolta’s instincts were correct. Travolta’s timing in the scene is so precise that the scene works great with any number of dance music soundtracks, and there’s a thriving industry on youtube devoted to this. One of the best is this.
The Bee Gees certainly hit a rich vein of form from “You Should Be Dancing” onwards – I was also pleasantly surprised when I finally saw ‘Saturday Night Fever’ for the first time when it was first shown on telly in the 80s -it defintely has a raw edge and the setting was timeless and universal for anyone who lived for Friday and Saturday nights in their late teens/early twenties.
PS the office I worked out of on a contract for a few weeks around Christmas in Chorlton, Manchester was literally 4 or 5 doors from the Bee Gees’ childhood home and where I believe Barry used to have run-ins with the law as a young ‘un (I think Chorlton was a bit more run down then than the trendy place for aspiring professionals that it is these days). Robin and Barry bought the house a couple of years ago and rent it out but you’d never guess as it looks slightly run down.
The second verse of this is indecipherable. You can mimic the sounds coming out of Barry Gibb’s mouth but “speaking in hedonistic tongues” is exactly right. The muted first half of the chorus isn’t much clearer (“big city woman with jewels in her eyes”??). It’s a much stranger record on headphones than it sounds wafting out of a cafe radio. The backing is SO lush and restrained, it counters the urgent vocal beautifully.
Those second verse lyrics in full:
“In the heat of our love
Don’t need no help for us to make it.
Gimme just enough to take us to the mornin’.
I got fire in my mind.
I got higher in my walkin’.
And I’m glowin’ in the dark,
I’m givin’ you warnin’.”
So was this song an uncanny prophecy of Three Mile Island?
To 198 #wichita lineman † on 12 August 2008 #
Yes! That’s how I remember it too, for some reason. I remember the host (can’t remember who) calling them ‘tossers’, and even Barry saying ‘Pardon me?’ or something of the sort, and then all of them getting up and walking out. If there isn’t another interview like this, somewhere, I must be going bananas.