AND THE SINGERS SANG THEIR SONGS

MOVIE
The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
Director Frank Marshall
Review Ray Chan

This reviewer will say it here and now: the Gibb brothers rank up there among the top melody-makers in modern contemporary music history, easily rubbing shoulders with the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lennon-McCartney, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Burt Bacharach.
    While their lyrics may arguably fall short on closer scrutiny, their abilities to craft lilting tunes and gorgeous refrains are almost unparalleled.

    It’s almost criminal that the Bee Gees continue to be dismissed by self-opinionated critics who consider themselves too cool to be associated with a group whose members had more talent in the tips of their fingers than most humans. This documentary, directed by Frank Marshall, may go some way in casting the Gibbs in a more appreciative light.

    Most of us who live in Australia know the basic history of the wonder trio: how they came out here at a young age, cut their teeth on the local scene, and went back to the UK and ensuing superstardom and disco infamy.

    This revealing narrative goes a step further in exploring those developments. It’s less of the usual angle you might expect (i.e. we had them all wrong!) and more of a reckoning with the profound degree of artistry and accomplishment that should be the last word on any Bee Gees story.

    The movie is also a unique consideration of the rise and fall of popular figures, and how they learn to live with it.

    Spending almost no time on the Gibb brothers’ time in Australia, the movie instead heads straight into how success and fame was achieved through raw determination: Hugh Gibb, the father of Barry and twins Robin and Maurice, was a musician who simply believed his sons’ sublime harmonies and knack for songwriting deserved as much or more attention than, say, the Beatles.

    He audaciously wrote to and offered up his cheerfully ambitious offspring to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who then handed them over to a subordinate, Robert Stigwood. The rest is pop music history.

    Marshall’s film succeeds by featuring interviews with the musicians and producers associated with the Gibbs, as well as the brothers themselves. We get to see and hear seminal people behind the scenes, such as producers Arif Mardin and Albhy Galuten, and the oft unheralded members of the band during the golden years: guitarist Alan Kendall, drummer Dennis Byron, and the under-rated keyboardist Blue Weaver, who contributed heavily to many of the group’s offerings.

    With archival footage and music cues that will invariably lure you out of your chair (or have you choked up during those achingly perfect chord progressions in the band’s ballads), The Bee Gees insists the Gibbs’ musicianship and prolonged success is as impressive as anyone in the rock pantheon.

    Even before the mid-70s, with masterpieces such as To Love Somebody, Massachusetts,  I Started a Joke, Run To Me, and How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, their standing in the music annals was already assured. 

    The footage and music from the band’s initial dalliance with fame is indeed more fascinating than the Saturday Night Fever superstardom and unwarranted backlash that lurked ahead. The documentary features several musicians of note  – Eric Clapton, Coldplay singer Chris Martin, Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, Nick Jonas, Justin Timberlake, to name just a few – all of who share a love, admiration and respect for the Gibb heritage and legacy.

    Chronicled also is how when working with Mardin on the song Nights On Broadway, Barry was pushed to improvise near the song's end, eliciting a sonic falsetto he never knew he had. That, more than anything, put the Bee Gees' stamp on popular culture — a new sound which led to a level of fame and riches the brothers never imagined, but also inadvertently became synonymous with the disco movement, which started to become increasingly criticised.

   The brothers were hurt and confused by the sudden backlash to  Saturday Night Fever and their input to it; record companies started dropping disco acts, and everyone’s gaze was about to turn toward MTV.

    But genius doesn’t lie hidden. The brothers reinvented themselves once more, this time as master collaborators and surefire love-song wizards writing for others, including brother Andy (three No 1s), Barbra Streisand (Guilty, Woman In Love), Dionne Warwick (Heartbreaker), Samantha Sang (Emotion), Diana Ross (Chain Reaction, Experience), Celine Dion (Immortality) and Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers (Islands In The Steam, Eyes That See In The Dark).

    Somewhat inexplicably, the doco completely ignores the triumphant resurgence of the band in the late 80s and throughout the 90s, when they stormed back into the charts and found a new legion of fans (with songs such as One, You Win Again, Alone and For Whom The Bell Tolls), although there is mention of due respect when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.

    It also skims over the deaths of Maurice and Robin all too quickly, yet their occurrence certainly adds to the recurring theme of loss, poignantly wrapping up the restrospective.

    “I can’t honestly come to terms with the fact that Robin, Maurice and their younger brother Andy are not here anymore. I’ve never been able to do that,” Barry says.
    “I’d rather have them here and no hits at all.”

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