4 / 5 Stars
'The Story of the Bee Gees: Children of the World' (391 pp.) was published by Pegasus Books in February, 2024. Author Bob Stanley has written two books on the history of pop music, and is a musician (keyboards).
[ I should note that 'Story' does not provide citations or sources, just a general bibliography. Stanley did not interview Barry Gibb, nor any members of the band, or other acquaintances in the Bee Gee's wider circle. The book's reliance on secondary sources means that a lot of familiar, previously printed quotes and anecdotes get recycled. ]
'Story' covers the brother Gibb and their musical endeavors from their childhoods in the postwar UK, to the 2010s, when the deaths of Maurice and Robin led to the dissolution of the band.
Unlike Simon Spence's 2017 biography 'Staying Alive: The Disco Inferno of the Bee Gees,' Stanley is intent on showcasing the Gibb's music, less so the melodramas surrounding the band. There is considerable exposition on each of the LPs released by the Gibbs, either together or individually, with Stanley making a vigorous effort to argue that much of the Bee Gees catalog was highly influential on other artists of the 60, 70s and 80s, and should be acknowledged for steering the direction of popular music in those decades.
This sort of advocacy can be a heavy lift, and often is unconvincing; for example, Stanley declares that Robin Gibb's solo album How Old Are You "....was one of the best albums of 1983." Given the quality of the competition in that year (Thriller, Synchronicity, Let's Dance, Colour by Numbers, etc.) it's not surprising that How Old Are You didn't chart in the USA or the UK. On listening to it nowadays, I find it a competent album, but certainly not one to stand alongside the better LPs of 1983.
Going through 'Story,' it is recommended to have your phone or tablet at hand to access YouTube and keep up with Stanley's comments and observations on every album the band released, either jointly or as solo acts. So doing exposed me to some tracks that I otherwise was not aware of, but deserve attention.
In discussing the Bee Gees fall from favor in the early 1980s, Stanley adopts the conventional wisdom that "homophobia and racism" fueled the collapse of disco and the subsequent backlash against the band. In reality, it was the failure of the Bee Gees - and primarily, Barry Gibb - to consider any departure from the falsetto histrionics that had begun to pall by 1980, that set the band up for a massive comedown. Indeed, the second side of the 1979 LP Spirits Having Flown, and tracks like 'Stop (Think Again),' exemplified the over-indulgences that soon were to torpedo the Bee Gees sound.
It's also true that it was the rampant commercialization and overexposure of disco, and the resultant diminution of the quality of the music, that drove the genre's fall, not Steve Dahl's 'Disco Demolition' on the night of July 12, 1979.
Where 'Story' was informative to me was in its overview of the Bee Gees LPs of the 1990s and early 2000s, a time when the band tailored their music for the adult contemporary / middle of the road listenership. I didn't pay much attention to the Bee Gees output at the time, but the book shows that the band produced some quality material, such as Maurice's 2001 song 'Man in the Middle.'
Some of the more important incidents in the life of the band simply aren't addressed, such as the 1983 Selle Vs. Gibb plagiarism trial, in which the jury found for Selle. The Bee Gees appealed, and overturned the verdict; the so-called 'striking similarities' ruling has had considerable impact on how courts interpret accusations of plagiarism. It's an important enough legal event to be included in a Bee Gees biography.
Summing up, 'The Story of the Bee Gees' is a serviceable biography of the brothers and their music. It's engaging without necessarily bringing much that is new to the table. It's probably best to pair it with Simon Spence's 2017 biography to get the most complete picture of the Bee Gees and their time.
