Disco, that bugbear of close-minded rock purists (including yours truly, I’m sorry to admit) everywhere, was perhaps the biggest cultural phenomenon to come along since the Beatles. One minute the earth was turning around the sun, and the next it was turning around a disco glitter ball that cast shafts of multi-colored light over a brave new world, one where people in all-white suits with foot-long lapels did dances like the Hustle to a music that combined elements of funk, soul, pop, and salsa. And who were the kings of this new and whirling universe? Why, that would be the Bee Gees, they of the thick chest pelts and positively impossible vocal ranges.
Disco Mania reached its apotheosis with the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever, which in addition to turning John Travolta into a superstar expanded the audience for the dance-based genre beyond its pioneering gay, African-American, and Latino bases. Saturday Night Fever became Thee Official Soundtrack of disco people of all colors and sexual orientations everywhere, as its 15x platinum certification amply demonstrates. The double LP featured 6 contributions by the Bee Gees and 11 contributions by others that ranged from the great (The Trammps’ “Disco Inferno”) to the unspeakable (David Shire’s three mostly orchestral offerings, including “Night on Disco Mountain,” which with a title like that should have been great, but isn’t).
In short, the LP is a mixed affair, short on songs by such disco immortals as Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, the Hues Corporation, Carl “Kung Fu Fighting” Douglas, Barry White, Van “The Hustle” McCoy, the Jackson 5, and LaBelle, and long on the type of filler (Shire again, along with Ralph McDonald’s “Calypso Breakdown” and Walter Murphy’s abominable “A Fifth of Beethoven”) you often find on soundtrack LPs. I mean, why does the LP include only one song by KC & the Sunshine Band? And where the hell are ABBA? And why, oh why, does Saturday Night Fever include only ONE song by a woman?
All of that aside, the soundtrack has its share of gems by people other than the Bee Gees. Token female Yvonne Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You” is irresistible, Kool & the Gang’s “Open Sesame” has an exotic feel thanks to its weird vocals and horns, KC & the Sunshine Band’s “Boogie Shoes” is a sheer delight, MFSB’s “K-Jee” has a Shaft-like vibe and is pure dead brilliant, and The Trammps “Disco Inferno” is ten-and-a-half minutes of disco nitroglycerin guaranteed to burn your dance floor down. As for Tavares’ take on “More Than a Woman,” I don’t know what it’s doing on the LP in the place of innumerable better alternatives, as the Bee Gees’ version on the soundtrack is definitive.
So yeah, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack is hardly a one-band affair. But the Bee Gees are on the album’s cover along with John Travolta for a reason; this was their finest hour, and more than any other group they represented the best that disco had to offer. Whether you preferred the hustle or the bump, they were the band for you. Barry Gibbs’ R&B falsetto is one of the wonders of the world; you can’t hear it without wanting to duck. Robin’s vibrato, ditto. As for Maurice, while it’s tempting to label him as the John Oates of the Bee Gees, it’s a scientific fact that you can’t sing gorgeous three-part harmonies with only two people.
As for the Bee Gees’ contributions to Saturday Night Fever, let’s run them down. First, there are few song openings as instantly recognizable as the introduction to “Stayin’ Alive,” a superfunky strut across the lighted checkerboard dance floor on which John Travolta strikes his iconic “disco finger” pose on the soundtrack’s cover. Brother Barry hits and sustains notes heretofore thought unreachable by the human voice, the bass lopes along like a panther, and the group’s three-part harmonies are as tight as the song’s lock groove of a beat. “How Deep Is Your Love” is a slow and mushy ballad that nevertheless shows off the trio’s otherworldly harmonies; sure, I’d have replaced it with the more animated “Boogie Child,” but that said there’s no denying that “How Deep” is a song for the ages. “Night Fever” is a funky paean to the night, when you forgot about work and headed off to the disco for an evening filled with cocaine vials worn on chains around the neck, poppers, and doing the YMCA, to say nothing of the promise of doing the bump with your very own dancing queen.
“Jive Talkin’” is pure disco bounce with a scratchy guitar tossed in to complement the great bass riff, and if the synthesizer doesn’t rock your boat, you’re not the Hues Corporation, baby. “You Should Be Dancing” is a call to arms and a directive from on high, or “higher” as Barry Gibbs sings in his impossible falsetto. A cool guitar riff, repeated, and some fantastic horns make this song, and the guitar solo in the middle makes me ecstatic. And meanwhile the boys are telling you to get out there, girl, and be your bad self on the dance floor. Free your mind and the hustle will follow! Finally, the Bee Gees go the strings and bright keyboard route on “More Than a Woman,” and their vocals on the chorus are as lush as the bed of superplush moss I once plopped myself down on in the vastness of the Michigan wilderness. Meanwhile Barry hits a few notes that prove he’s an extra-terrestrial, as the song shuffles its way into your central nervous system like an alien virus. Beautiful, boys, beautiful.
Despite its myriad faults, the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever still possesses an almost talismanic power; it brings back the seventies, even to a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan like me, in a way that virtually no other album does. I’ve long since stopped chanting “Disco Sucks!” and changed my mind about the Bee Gees, who (in my opinion) stand above such other disco greats as Donna “Queen of the Simulated Orgasm” Summer, ABBA, the Trammps, and KC & the Sunshine Band. Me, I regret I’ll never be able to do the electric slide. No, I blew my opportunity, and I’ll have to live with that failure for the rest of my days.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
(A for the Bee Gees)
