Like a number of other music artists featured here on Friday Night Jukebox, the Bee Gees are larger than life and their success is much too great to be summed up in a single paragraph. Their history has been chronicled by writers much better than I and I will leave it to you, dear reader, if you're truly interested to check the link to Wikipedia above. That being said, the Brothers Gibb for me personally are much like Rod Stewart (though I liked Stewart's early work much better than the Bee Gees)--after the mid-seventies their music (the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack changed the trajectory of their career and music both--and neither in a particularly good way) went in a direction that was exceedingly successful commercially...but was most definitely not one in which my aural sensations were even remotely interested. Despite my lack of interest, though, the Bee Gees will go down in history as the third greatest selling band behind only the Beatles and the Supremes, and the Gibb brothers have been surpassed in songwriting success only by Lennon and McCartney. Unsurprisingly, the band has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and has won five Grammys. Their discography shows 22 albums and 83 singles released, but that hardly does justice to their career--they literally had chart success that at times even bettered the Beatles. But for my money--and here I bolster my old fart cred--the first 20 years of their career was where the best of their talents were shown. Sadly, only Barry Gibb remains with us today--Maurice passed in 2003 and Robin in 2012.
Fun Fact: Many people--myself included--though that the letter words Bee Gees stood for the "Brothers Gibb" but they do not. It actually stands for Bill Goode (with a nod to Barry Gibb who shared his initials), a speedway promoter who gave them a big break very early in their careers and let them play at his racetrack in between races. They did not have a name for their band so Goode graced them with his initials.
"I Started a Joke" was released as a single in 1969 from their album of the same year Idea. It would reach #6 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100. It was not released in their native U.K. (born there, though their career got its start in Australia) so as to try and sell more albums--which worked quite well as the album hit #4 on the U.K. charts but peaked at #17 on the Billboard 200.
The Bee Gees admit that the song has very little meaning--it was written at a time when psychedelia was popular and the brothers put together a few somewhat odd lyrics and listeners found their own meanings in the song (and is my reason for being glad I chose this song as I noted above). The tune is a good reminder of the music of its era--it's a prime example of sixties pop (reminiscent to me of the Mersey sound), and while a bit on the self-indulgent side, it's a hell of a song. While Barry's falsetto punctuated much of their late 70's success, in their early days it was Robin's soulful vibrato that carried their music, and he uses it to great effect on "I Started a Joke." The music is soft and melodic--though multiple instruments are used, the strings lovingly smooth the way for the other instrumentation and Robin's vocals. All in all, it makes for a song that takes me back to a time when peace, love, and dope seemed to be enough to hope for, and the world seemed still to be ours. Time and tide may have proven that unattainable...but this week's tune is a nice reminder of when it all still seemed possible.
Lyric Sheet: "Till I finally died, which started the whole world living/Oh, if I'd only seen that the joke was on me..."
Enjoy:
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