Pavarotti

Year 13, Day 217 - 8/5/21 - Movie #3,906

BEFORE: The Big Summer Music Concert series continues with some opera from Pavarotti, Ron Howard's latest documentary subject.  I kicked off this whole topic back in 2018 with Ron's documentary about the Beatles' Touring Years, and now I've come full circle once again.  Opera's really not my bag, but then neither is country music, and I watched the Dolly Parton doc...

Aaron Neville carries over from "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice" via archive footage. 

THE PLOT: Life, works and achievements of opera legend Luciano Pavarotti.

AFTER: Who's really shocked that Luciano cheated on his wife, several times over?  Not me...he's like opera's equivalent of a rock star, and we know THEY'RE not faithful.  Oddly, I'm thinking of putting this on the same DVD as "Zappa", because I think the two famous singer/musicians have a lot more in common than one might think.  Zappa sort of saw himself as a classical composer, though he was never really recognized as one during his lifetime.  And he wasn't faithful when he was on the road, either.  Both men sort of really regretted, later in life, not being present for their families, not being good husbands or good fathers, and that sort of leads to questions over why they couldn't do that in the first place, if it turned out to be so important to them in the end.  Like, why not just NOT be such a dick?  Something about the male egos of famous people, they give themselves free rein to screw around - it's why I'm not really into the documentary about Anthony Bourdain right now, who left TWO wives, successively, and a young daughter behind while he traveled the world and then checked himself out.  Sure, he may have struggled with depression, but maybe think about other people who care about you once in a while, that could even help.  Just saying. 

Anyway, we learn that Pavarotti loved to travel, loved to sing, loved to eat (duh, just look at him) and was otherwise larger than life in ways other than just his size.  But he seemed to have the talent to back all that up - and again, I'm not an opera expert, if you tell me he's a good singer, I'm inclined to believe you.  Other than a man's reputation, really, what has he got?  (Oh, yeah, the simple joys of having a loving family, screw that, there's a big concert coming up at La Scala...)

Pavarotti doesn't just remind me of Zappa here, also Dolly Parton and/or Linda Ronstadt - Luciano teamed up with two other tenors, Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, to perform as "The Three Tenors", which hadn't been done before, and was a great success - much like Dolly teamed up with Linda and Emmylou to record "Trio".  If it works, and the scheduling can be arranged, by all means, go for it. My mother tried her darnedest to get me interested in classical music, but opera never really connected with me - I know just enough to work my way through the subject if I'm ever a contestant on "Jeopardy!", though.  Like I can tell you which composer wrote which famous operas, and who Pagliacci was, where "Aida" takes place, and stuff like that.  Also the rough plot of Wagner's "Ring Cycle", but some of that comes from osmosis, with my wife also being a big opera fan.  

Pavarotti also stood accused, however, of slumming with pop and rock stars, something that just wasn't DONE by most opera singers.  How DARE he put on charity concerts. called "Pavarotti & Friends", with Sting and Stevie Wonder and the Spice Girls!  He shouldn't be associating with such commoners!  Get real, whatever puts asses in the seats AND raises money for good causes should be encouraged, at the end of the day.  Even if I don't approve of how he ran his personal life, it seems he went out of his way to raise money for sick kids.  But, umm, only after his own daughter got sick, so now I'm not sure if his heart was in the right place.  When your daughter gets sick, you should spend more time with HER, not all the other sick kids in the world, too.  

I guess it doesn't really matter now, because Pavarotti left this world in 2007 - fuck cancer, by the way.  Hey, I guess that's another thing that he had in common with Frank Zappa.  And today's fun fact is that before performing as The Three Tenors, Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras already knew each other, and even had apartments in the same building on Central Park South in NYC.  I wonder how many noise complaints came from the other tenants in that building, from all the opera rehearsals going on.

Also starring Bono (last heard in "Lost in London"), Herbert Breslin, José Carreras, Placido Domingo (last heard in "The Book of Life"), Angela Gheorghiu, Harvey Goldsmith, Vittorio Grigolo, Andrea Griminelli, Eugene Kohn, Michael Kuhn, Lang Lang, Nicoletta Mantovani, Zubin Mehta, Anne Midgette, Madelyn Renée Monti, Christina Pavarotti, Giuliana Pavarotti, Lorenza Pavarotti, Terri Robson, Dickon Stainer, Carol Vaness, Adua Veroni, Joseph Volpe, 

with archive footage of Luciano Pavarotti (last seen in "Quincy"), Kofi Annan, Jon Bon Jovi (last seen in "The Accidental President"), James Brown (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Mariah Carey (last seen in "Girls Trip"), Johnny Carson (also carrying over from "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), Jimmy Carter (last seen in "John Lewis: Good Trouble"), Enrico Caruso, Celine Dion (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Brian May (ditto), Phil Donahue, The Edge, Bob Geldof (last seen in "Quiet Riot: Now You're Here, There's No Way Back"), Sting (ditto), Russell Harty (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Clive James, Peter Jennings (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Spike Lee (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Nelson Mandela (ditto), John Major, Mike Oldfield, Prince Charles, Princess Diana (last seen in "Whitney"), Tony Randall (last seen in "The Mating Game"), Tibor Rudas, the Spice Girls, Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band"), Joan Sutherland, Suzanne Vega, Stevie Wonder (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Zucchero

RATING 5 out of 10 High C's

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice

Year 13, Day 215 - 8/3/21 - Movie #3,905

BEFORE: I hope other people can also see the progression here - Divine had hit disco records, and so did the Bee Gees, who wrote "Islands in the Stream" for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, and Dolly released the album "Trio" along with Emmylou Harris and, of course, Linda Ronstadt.  It makes perfect sense in retrospect, right?  And I didn't even plan the chain along those lines, I was just looking at the cast of each documentary, but I guess ultimately that results in putting together the most logical order sometimes, right? 

Dolly Parton carries over from "Dolly Parton: Here I Am".

THE PLOT: With one of the most memorably stunning voices that has ever hit the airwaves, Linda Ronstadt burst onto the 1960's folk rock music scene in her early twenties. 

AFTER: Way back in 2018, I did my first chain of musical documentaries, starting with the birth Beatles and going through to the retirement of Rush - and while the whole year wasn't a perfect chain, the documentaries DID form a fully-linked chain of 53 films, it even shocked me that it was possible, but come on, they tend to interview the same people, over and over for these things - and then even if the interview subjects changed, nearly all those docs used footage of the Beatles or the Stones in them at some point.  Still, considering that I went through docs on Chicago, the Grateful Dead, Black Sabbath, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, 

James Brown, Metallica, Michael Jackson and even Lady Gaga in one fell swoop, that still seems like it was an accomplishment - one of endurance, if nothing else. 

You may notice that this year's music docs haven't been about the top-tier acts, not in my book anyway, I'm really clean-up hitting now by watching docs about Joan Jett, Frank Zappa, the Bee Gees and Dolly Parton - these are not acts I tend to listen to in my everyday life.  But I'm aware of the docs, and I'm aware of these musical artists, so let's cross them off - when I'm done this year, I'll have cleared the category again, except for docs about Pentatonix and Gordon Lightfoot, which I was unable to work in based on the cast lists that I have - perhaps there's some archive footage in those two docs that would have allowed me to connect them into the chain, but how am I supposed to KNOW that without watching them?  Who gives a crap about Gordon Lightfoot, anyway?  

But watching the Linda Ronstadt doc feels a bit more important - though I've seen the other side of some of these stories back in "The History of the Eagles", how Linda hired Don Henley out of his band Shiloh to be her drummer, and then found Glenn Frey because she was living with JD Souther, who was in a band with Frey.  Then Henley and Frey went out on the road in Linda's band, and bonded over their shared love of American folk music/rock, and that's how the Eagles started - though they floundered for a while until Ronstadt covered their song "Desperado" and really turned it into something.  Whatever happened to those guys, anyway?  Oh, yeah, they're still out on the road playing "Hotel California", even though there are more ex-Eagles than current members (only Henley, Walsh and Schmidt remain, I think) and Glenn Frey Jr. is subbing in for his late father.  Anyway, this part I seen already...

But there are plenty of other facets to Linda Ronstadt's career, like that duet with Aaron Neville, the tight harmonies of Ronstadt/Parton/Harris on "Trio" (really, they're like the female CSN) and that time Linda sang with the Muppets, pretending to be Kermit's ex-girlfriend (he dumped her for some PIG, very embarrassing).  Then there was her whole venture into Mexican/Spanish music, which was part of her family's recreation when she was a child, then she re-discovered it singing back-up for Ruben Blades, then went full-on Hispanic and released her own album of Mexican folk songs, "Canciones de mi Padre", and I didn't realize Will Ferrell was riffing on that title with HIS spanish-language comedy film until just now.  

Then there was her earlier foray into operetta when she appeared in "The Pirates of Penzance", both as a live theater production and then a movie made with the same cast.  Or her three-album tour through the Great American Songbook, with help from arranger Nelson Riddle, who thankfully was still alive long enough to oversee the same arrangements he used for Sinatra's albums.  With forays into new wave, big band, jazz, country, Latin music, there really wasn't a section of the music spectrum that Ronstadt couldn't work her way into - to her it was all just singing, and singing is singing, right?  (There's no mention of how Linda covered Dolly's "I Will Always Love You", but way before Whitney Houston did...)

The film also manages to be rather coy when it comes to Linda's personal life - they never really say why she and JD Souther broke up (he claims to not remember) and then there's perhaps short shrift given to Gov. Jerry Brown, but no mention AT ALL of a relationship with a certain successful sci-fi filmmaker, and we all know that went down.  I guess you just don't want to risk saying anything negatives about multi-millionaires with teams of lawyers...  She was quite a looker back in the day, and probably got a lot of attention, thanks to the sexy (but still demure) Rolling Stone photo shoots.  She never married, claiming she could never find anyone who was musically talented but also not a moron, who could also put up with her.  She described herself as "lonely" in articles, but that's where you may end up if you never settle. Just sayin'. She did, however, adopt and raise two children (also not mentioned in the doc).

It's a bit of a bummer to see her at the end of the documentary, barely able to sing because of her Parkinson's disease - she can still harmonize with her brother and nephew, but she doesn't really count that as singing, not the way she used to belt out songs on stage in big arenas, anyway.  Again, if you're judging someone by the company they keep, who else managed to collaborate with Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Warren Zevon, Philip Glass, Neil Young, Bette Midler, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Zappa?  Plus Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, James Ingram, Aaron Neville AND the Muppets?  Nobody else, because doing all of that sounds impossible, but it somehow wasn't for her. 

Also starring Linda Ronstadt (last seen in "Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll"), Peter Asher, Ruben Blades (last seen in "Hands of Stone"), Karla Bonoff, John Boylan, Jackson Browne (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Cameron Crowe (ditto), Patricia Casado, Ry Cooder, David Geffen (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Emmylou Harris (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Don Henley (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), Robert Hilburn, Bobby Kimmel, Kevin Kline (last seen in "Life as a House"), Aaron Neville (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Bonnie Raitt, Bobby Ronstadt, Peter Ronstadt, Joe Smith, JD Souther, Waddy Wachtel (last seen in "Keith Richards: Under the Influence")

with archive footage of Nina Blackwood, Jerry Brown, Glen Campbell (last seen in "The Wrecking Crew!"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Johnny Cash (last seen in "Sound City"), Stevie Nicks (ditto), Dick Cavett (also last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Gene Clark (also last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Glenn Frey (ditto), Chris Hillman (ditto), Roger McGuinn (ditto), Felicia Collins, David Crosby (last seen in "Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation"), Neil Young (ditto), Sheryl Crow, Daryl Dragon, Anton Fig, Tim Hardin, Hugh Hefner (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Lena Horne, Elton John (last seen in "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Ringo Starr (ditto), Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "I Am Divine"), Will Lee, Anna McGarrigle, Kate McGarrigle, Sid McGinnis, Joni Mitchell (last seen in "Zappa"), Paul Shaffer (ditto), Frank Zappa (ditto), Laura Nyro, Joseph Papp, Gram Parsons, Teddy Pendergrass, Keith Richards (last seen in "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas"), Nelson Riddle, Paul Rodriguez (also last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Frank Sinatra (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Rex Smith, Harry Dean Stanton (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Toni Tennille, Tanya Tucker, Carrie Underwood (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Hank Williams (last seen in "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan"), Paul Williams (last seen in "Baby Driver"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 top ten singles

Dolly Parton: Here I Am

Year 13, Day 214 - 8/2/21 - Movie #3,904

BEFORE: August is here, and I'm hoping that a new job comes along with the new month.  Before that, however, comes the format breakdown of the movies I watched in July:

5 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Shattered Glass, The Virgin Suicides, The Onion Movie, Zeroville, Woodstock: Three Days that Defined a Generation

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Miss Firecracker, Everything Is Copy, Downhill, I Used to Go Here, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

5 watched on Netflix: Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny, Hillbilly Elegy, The Woman in the Window, The Runaways, I Am Divine,

1 watched on iTunes: The Operative
2 watched on Hulu: Bad Reputation, Zappa

1 watched on HBO MAX: Cinema Verite
19 TOTAL

That's a slow month for me, but it's intentional because I had less time to watch movies, working long shifts at the movie theater.  I'm still on track to finish the Big Summer Music series before mid-August, and I still should be able to get to the start of the October horror chain about a week before the end of September.  Netflix made a good showing in July, thanks to the music films, but it still got beat by cable, 2 to 1. 

Today's linking's easy, Dolly Parton carries over from "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", where she was seen singing "Islands in the Stream", written by the Brothers Gibb.

THE PLOT: The life, career and music of Dolly Parton are reflected in interviews with friends and companions and the artist herself, interlaced with clips of Parton's performances. 

AFTER: I'm only 6 or 7 films in to the Big Summer Music chain, and now I'm sort of getting hit with the sameness of it all - every documentary about music legends is starting to feel very similar.  It's all get famous, get rich, get stoned (or drunk), then get dead - in some cases, at least.  Joan Jett's still with us, as is Barry Gibb, and a perhaps surprising number of musicians who played at Woodstock in 1969.  But then, how boring is a Dolly Parton doc going to be when she's only completed half of the cycle, to my knowledge she never had a drinking problem or drug habit.  

She also gets pitched here as a "very smart" person, but I hear that accent, and then suddenly I've got a disconnect.  How many smart people, honestly, have a Southern drawl, do you know what I mean?  Maybe that's my Yankee upbringing, some Civil War leftover that's ingrained into my upbringing that allows me to think I'm smarter than all them good ole boys down South.  But then, I know that Dolly has donated millions over the years to philanthropic medical causes, like hospitals and cancer centers and AIDS-related charities, literacy causes and she helped fund the COVID-19 research that helped create the vaccines that are working now, or at least they would be if everyone would simply get their shots.  So Dolly basically gets a pass from me - except you can't pitch yourself both as "a very smart person" and also "a simple country girl", I'm just saying, those two things just don't go together. 

So I'm left with what is essentially a Dolly Parton concert here, arranged mostly chronologically, through her years on Porter Wagoner's show on the magic pitcher box, then a few years making movies, and of course, touring, touring, touring.  But just like a concert, you can't just play the hits straight away, you've got to save them for the encore, right?  Like the Rolling Stones can't open with "Satisfaction", they've got to make you think they maybe aren't going to play that one (as if...) so they save that one, plus "Start Me Up", and maybe "Sympathy for the Devil", for the very end, and they make you get up and cheer until you're hoarse, you've got to DEMAND those songs.  God, the Stones are such whores - but then, so is every band.  Their fragile egos just couldn't take it if there were a few people in the audience who said, "OK, I heard the big hits, the last songs are probably going to be stinkers, so let's head out and maybe we can get to the car and get on the expressway before we get stuck in a traffic jam."  Seriously, I think the Stones have enough money now, they're not losing ANYTHING if anyone leaves early after paying full price, so what's the big deal?  

The three Dolly Parton songs that everybody wants to hear are (apparently) "Jolene", "9 to 5" and "I Will Always Love You" - so they save her performance of that last one for the very end of the documentary (but they tease you with Whitney's version about halfway through...) and they dole the other ones out.  "Jolene", of course, came around a couple years after Dolly broke out as a headliner act, and then there's a BIG section of this film devoted to making the movie "9 to 5", probably because Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are both still alive and available, with a TV show of their own to promote.  Oh, sure, there's the sexual harassment angle, because that film was ahead of its time, and the topic got bigger as time passed - this was the first film where three women formed their own #MeToo movement, and ganged up against their boss.

But come on, nothing about "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", what about the plight of the sex workers in the Lone Star State?  Anybody?  No anecdotes about working with Burt Reynolds?  He was a big star back then, and that was a BIG, popular movie?  Could it be that the movie was just a big exploitative, with Dolly rocking a corset for the majority of the film?  Something to be embarrassed about?  She wore almost the same exact outfit in a social media post that she wore on the cover of Playboy back in the day, so what's the big deal?  Also, no footage from "Rhinestone", no stories about working with Sylvester Stallone?  OK, THAT she's embarrassed about, at least we know where the line is being drawn, I guess. 

Also mention of the album she made with Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris?  I remember that was HUGE...  I guess maybe that'll be in tomorrow's documentary, though.  Instead we get footage of the video for "A Hard Candy Christmas", and I guess any footage of her with Kenny Rogers would similarly have interfered with her image as a solo act, as a strong independent woman who didn't need to do a duet to have a hit.  Still, another glaring omission that makes this all feel a bit by-the-numbers.

Also starring Mac Davis (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Jane Fonda (last seen in "Whitney"), Lily Tomlin (last seen in "I Am Divine"), David Dotson, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Lloyd Green, Lydia Hamessley, Dave Haywood, Charles Kelley, Charlie McCoy, Kylie Minogue (last seen in "San Andreas"), Wayne Moss, Danny Nozell, Linda Perry, Hillary Scott, Mike Severs, Chris Stapleton, Kent Wells

with archive footage of Dabney Coleman (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Kevin Costner (last seen in "Whitney"), Whitney Houston (ditto), Miley Cyrus (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Elvis Presley (ditto) Carl Dean, Sandy Gallin, Porter Wagoner, Barbara Walters (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Jack White (last seen in "Shine a Light"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 giant wigs

The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart

Year 13, Day 212 - 7/31/21 - Movie #3,903

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