BEFORE: Today's film is the last one for July (and after this I'm working for a couple days, so I'll be back here on Tuesday) but maybe it's time to check in to see who's had the most appearances in films so far this year. The unexpected appearance of both Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow in "I Am Divine" lifted both of them into third place with 6 appearances, and they're tied with Toni Collette, Adolf Hitler, Lyndon Johnson and Michelle Obama. (Right there, I can tell you it's already been a very weird year...). Tied for second place right now, with 7 appearances each, are Chris Messina, Ronald Reagan, and Oprah Winfrey. Yeah, I'd say Chris Messina's had a very good year so far. Out in the lead, with 8 appearances each, are Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Luther King, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. OK, so I watched a bunch of political docs earlier this year, can you tell?
The musical documentaries are their own animal, of sorts, so you never know, a lot of films use footage of the Beatles and the Stones, so there could be a rally coming up for those band members. But also, as I've said before, keep your eye on Oprah, she could easily take the prize this year - plus there's a documentary about MLK coming up, so things are bound to change at the top level.
Elton John carries over from "I Am Divine" via archive footage, for his fourth appearance in 2021. And a birthday SHOUT-OUT today to the late Ahmet Ertegun, president of Atlantic Records, born on July 31, 1923.
THE PLOT: An exploration of the history of the Bee Gees, featuring revealing interviews with oldest brother Barry Gibb and archival interviews with the late twin brothers, Robin and Maurice.
AFTER: My wife got to watch this one before I did, which is pretty rare. I came home one day and she said she'd watched it, and it made her quite emotional. "Uh oh", I thought, "this ones a real tear-jerker..." but it wasn't for me, I think maybe she just is a bigger fan of the Bee Gees than I am, so she had more of a connection to the subject matter. Plus, I've watched at least three dozen documentaries about musicians by now, and I'm fairly accustomed to the formula. The life expectancy of everyone and everything, over time, is of course zero, so many of these docs tend to end with an update on "where are they now", and that news is often, well, not good. And of course we all know going in that three of the four Gibb brothers are no longer alive, so yeah, that ending was bound to be a downer.
I'm just not that big of a Bee Gees fan, but these chains are all about learning, right? Besides, I already watched all the docs about The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Chicago, The Eagles, David Bowie, The Who, even Quiet Riot and The Beach Boys. I literally covered rock music from A to Z - Alice Cooper to Zappa - back in 2018, but I've returned to the topic each year to catch what I missed the first time, and now I feel like I'm doing the clean-up work. Last year it was Bob Dylan, The Band, David Crosby, Motown and a second look at John Lennon and Whitney Houston, and now I'm down to the acts that I sort of tangentially know about, or know just a few songs from, or don't even like much, but I know them because they just loom large in pop culture.
So I didn't know that the Bee Gees wrote over 1,000 songs over their career, for themselves and others. But the flip side of that is, I wonder how many of those songs actually had a second verse. It feels like most of the time, they couldn't be bothered - instead of verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, the Bee Gees songs I know all repeat the first verse in place of a second. And "How Deep Is Your Love" only has a chorus that loops around indefinitely, it doesn't even HAVE a verse. How lazy is that?
I also didn't know they'd been around THAT long, performing as teenagers on Australian TV, before there even was a Beatlemania wave to ride. So when the Fab Four hit in 1964, the Bee Gees were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the hoopla, they were already a band, unlike the thousands of guitar acts who formed very quickly and took similar animal names with one tiny spelling error. But was it just a coincidence that the Bee Gees' name was alphabetically NEXT after the Beatles, at a time when most records stores organized their vinyl in that order? I mean, come on, anyone who was looking through the Beatles section for a record they didn't own yet might get to the end and then the next record they saw would be a Bee Gees one, assuming that section was properly organized. Then the Beach Boys came along with a name that would naturally go in FRONT of the Beatles ones, that had to be a jab at the Fab Four. It's a slick move, but also a dick move.
The Bee Gees also had a few different chapters in their lives, they tried the folk music thing in the late sixties when it seemed that guitar groups were maybe on the way out, and then of course they had the biggest disco hit record of all time when the movie "Saturday Night Fever" took the songs they were working on for their new album and blew them UP on the big screen. Then just a few short years later, disco music fell out of vogue, and that Chicago DJ was blowing up disco records at a baseball game, to the chants of "Disco Sucks" from the crowd. The Bee Gees tried in vain to disassociate themselves, but the damage was done. You can't have it both ways, you can't enjoy the success of releasing the biggest disco album of all time, and then say, "Oh, we're not a disco group" when the crowd's sentiment turns. It's a bit like James Cameron saying that "Avatar" isn't a sci-fi movie, after the film became so successful that it suffered some backlash. Some things just do a bit TOO well, and then people, on the whole, start to reject it, it's just a thing that happens. (It happened to folk music, grunge music, boy band music - just deal with it.)
I did like seeing how "Jive Talkin'" and "Staying Alive" came together musically, even if I'm not a big fan of the songs, it's always fun to see a song develop from bits and pieces and turn into a finished work. It's a bit like watching small brushstrokes turn into a famous painting, here's one case where I do want to see how the sausage is made, even if I don't like sausage. I also didn't know that Maurice Gibb was married to Lulu (yes, THAT Lulu), or that the band broke up for a year or so in 1969-1970, that seems like just a thing that might happen if you form a band with your brothers. Oasis, Hanson, even the Jonas Brothers probably had to work out some family issues, it's a trade-off for getting that harmonious sound that only comes when you sing with siblings with similar voices (but ones that are also conveniently in a slightly different range).
For me, personally, I thought it was a shame that there was no mention of the Bee Gees work shadowing the Beatles, they recorded some cover songs in 1975, like "Golden Slumbers" and "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" for the ill-fated movie "All This and World War II", then their manager and head of their record label, Robert Stigwood, produced the so-bad-it's-good (no, wait, it's not good at all) movie "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", with Peter Frampton as Billy Shears and the Bee Gees playing musical brothers in that same fictional band. Yes, it was a blatant cash grab to make a film out of a record that didn't need to be a film, and it's so horribly cheezy that (for me) it loops around bad and almost comes back to good again, but why no mention of it in this documentary? Or on the Bee Gees' Wikipedia page - but it's STILL a thing that happened. Without this movie, we might not have Aerosmith's version of "Come Together" or Earth, Wind & Fire's cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life", and those are both good, right? Hell, track this movie down just so you can hear Billy Preston singing "Get Back" near the end, but you will have to endure Steve Martin singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and a few other clunkers, but it's umm, maybe worth it? The Bee Gees' harmonies on Beatles songs are ON POINT, and it's the only project of theirs that I genuinely care about.
But as far as today's HBO documentary is concerned, that never even happened. All that really matters is that the Brothers Gibb sort of went into hiding for a while (some blame the "Disco Sucks" movement, but in my heart I know it was because of the "Sgt. Pepper's" movie...) but they never stopped, they kept writing songs for other people, like Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Dionne Warwick, and then they wrote "Islands in the Stream" for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (that could be important to my next documentary in the chain...) and finally they were allowed to come back and tour again, this time on the nostalgia circuit. So yeah, then Andy Gibb died and then Maurice a few years later, then Robin a few years after that, but I don't really feel sorry for the Bee Gees, they changed with the times and enjoyed more comebacks than most bands have. Look at REO Speedwagon, they never really changed their sound, fell out of favor, but they're still working on the State Fair circuit. (Hey, where's the documentary about REO Speedwagon - any takers? Anybody? Hello?)
There's another wave of Bee Gees nostalgia going on right now, with the Foo Fighters covering their songs for an album titled "Hail Satin", under the name the Dee Gees. (It took me a minute to realize D.G. stands for "Dave Grohl"...). OK, so they can't possibly have a real comeback, but Barry's still "Stayin' Alive" and performing once in a while, so their music will live on. I just don't have to listen to it if I don't want to - I've done my due diligence now by learning all about the band and their songs. I didn't care for their music when I was growing up, but now at least I can give them some respect.
Also starring Barry Gibb (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond"), Peter Brown, Dennis Byron, Eric Clapton (last seen in "Zappa"), Noel Gallagher (last seen in "Exit Through the Gift Shop"), Albhy Galuten, Yvonne Gibb, Nick Jonas (last seen in "Midway"), Alan Kendall, Vince Lawrence, Lulu, Chris Martin (last seen in "Greed"), Vince Melouney, Bill Oakes, Karl Richardson, Mark Ronson (last heard in "Spies in Disguise"), Nicky Siano, Charley Steiner, Justin Timberlake (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Blue Weaver,
with archive footage of Maurice Gibb (last seen in "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child"), Robin Gibb (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story"), Andy Gibb, Barbara Gibb, Hugh Gibb, Linda Gibb, Jane Asher (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, John Belushi (last seen in "Zappa"), Alice Cooper (ditto), George Harrison (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto),Lindsey Buckingham (last seen in "Sound City"), Mick Fleetwood (ditto), Richard Burton (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Sid Caesar (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Imogene Coca (last seen in "Under the Yum Yum Tree"), Steve Dahl, Neil Diamond (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Celine Dion, Richard Dreyfuss (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019)), Brian Epstein (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond"), Ahmet Ertegun, Aretha Franklin (last seen in "Da 5 Bloods"), David Frost (last seen in "John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky") , Merv Griffin (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Bob Harris, Arif Mardin, Marcello Mastroianni, Brian May (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Meat Loaf (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Dolly Parton (last seen in "Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic"), Colin Petersen, Otis Redding (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Smokey Robinson (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Diana Ross (ditto), Kenny Rogers, Ed Sheeran, Tom Snyder (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Robert Stigwood, Barbra Streisand (last seen in "An American Pickle"), John Travolta (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Dionne Warwick (last seen in "Whitney") and the voice of Casey Kasem.
RATING: 6 out of 10
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