The last surviving Bee Gees call us from their home studio in South Florida, just steps from the waters of Biscayne Bay.
“I had a big boat,” says Barry Gibb. “A boat. He called it Spirits Having Flow, after a 1979 Bee Gees album that sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. “I was walking around the bay and ideas came to me. » Sometimes he doesn’t even need the boat. One day, the manager of the Bee Gees, Robert Stigwood, called him. I was producing the film version of the musical Grease and needed a new title track. Gibb had not seen the film; it was a creative challenge.
“How in heaven’s name,” he asks, “could anyone write a song called Grease?” I remember walking along the platform and suddenly it occurred to me that it was a word and that I should just write it down. » Solved the problem and saw the light: the word was “taken”, and the word was good. Grease, recorded by Frankie Valli, was released in May 1978 and reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in late August. It was the seventh No. 1 of Gibb. 1 that year, after How Deep Is Your Love, Stayin’ Alive, Night Fever and If I Can’t Have You, all from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and Shadow Dancing and (Love Is) Thicker Than Water, single that Barry helped. he writes for his brother Andy Gibb. On the Hot 100 for the week of March 3, 1978, songs by the Gibb brothers occupied three of the top five spots on the chart.
This went on for a long time: one number hit after another, then nothing.