11/06/2023
Music journalist Stanley (Let’s Do It! ) aims to restore the “misfit” Bee Gees to “their rightful place at the very top of pop’s table” in this rewarding deep dive. “Inventive, shape-shifting, writers of death-haunted melodies, with voices that sounded like no one else,” the Bee Gees kicked off their career early, with English brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb recording their first single, “The Battle of the Blue and the Grey,” in 1963, when Barry was 15 and the twins just 13. After Vince Melouney and Colin Peterson joined the group, the Bee Gees climbed British charts in the late 1960s with such hits as “New York Mining Disaster 1941.” Still, they struggled to sustain their success until producer Arif Mardin repackaged their sound to emphasize Barry’s falsetto in the early 1970s, giving the music a sexier feel. In 1976, “You Should be Dancing” catapulted the group into the disco stratosphere, an ascendancy cemented by their inclusion on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in 1977. With the group considered passé by the early 1980s, the Gibb brothers worked as producers and lyricists for such performers as Barbra Streisand and Dionne Warwick. The band reunited after younger brother Andy’s 1988 death and hit the charts again in the late 1980s and ’90s. Stanley meticulously investigates the chart-busting Bee Gees’ paradoxical “outsider status,” contending that it partly resulted from a “lack of worldliness” born of their “child-star upbringing,” and gives welcome due to their idiosyncratic lyrics and lush harmonies. The band’s devotees will celebrate this definitive biography. (Feb.)
"Finally, the definitive biography of the Bee Gees. Bob Stanley tells one of the most extraordinary stories in the history of pop, epic and mythical, with tales of heart-stopping joy and sadness. Children of the World does full justice to the Gibb brothers' extraordinary musical legacy. I pretty much inhaled it in one sitting.
"A vital reassessment of one of popular music’s most chameleonic acts. Stanley takes great pains to not only explore the Gibbs’ musical growth across the decades, but to afford readers with a stirring look at the dramatic arc of the relationships and experiences that marked their lives. He is to be commended for elevating the human story at the heart of the Bee Gees’ music."
Stanley is a wonderful guide . . . showing us gems of their vast catalogue with enthusiasm, insight and wit.
"Bob Stanley’s definitive book is a nuanced exploration of a group that was praised and mocked in equal measure. Long before The Story of the Bee Gees ends, the brothers have stopped being a single pop band and become a mirror of all the musical acts covered by Stanley in his two earlier books: loved and hated, obscure and celebrated, shaped by both luck and a deathless work ethic. By the end, the brothers become a microcosm of everything that happened in the 20th century pop world."
The Bee Gees had wild success with pop hits including ‘Stayin’ Alive’ and ‘More Than a Woman,’ yet never received the respect they deserved. So argues British author and musician Bob Stanley in The Story of the Bee Gees , his biography of and passionate homage to this ‘deeply odd, and quite wonderful’ band of brothers.
Gifted and prolific songwriters, they produced a vast catalogue of hits for themselves and others, yet a certain suspicion lingered. Stanley is on a mission to right this wrong, to get The Bee Gees ‘their rightful place at the head of pop’s table.’ The Story of The Bee Gees takes a songwriter’s approach to biography. Bob Stanley makes a strong case for the Bee Gee’s impact on twentieth-century music, but his portrayal also reveals them as harbingers of the global pop of the twenty-first.
The Times Literary Supplement
A loving vindication of the band. Alert to the comedy of pop star existence but also tells a deeply melancholy tale.
The author and musician’s engaging biography of the Gibb brothers explores their idiosyncrasies as well as musical brilliance. Stanley is a highly articulate proponent of pop. Here's a summer project for pop fans: read this book, then listen to the music.
Praise for Let’s Do It : "For those who wish to enjoy a compelling musical mystery tour of the first half of the twentieth century—written with insight, thoroughly researched stories, and compelling opinions—Let’s Do It is well worth the trip. It’s a deep-dive into an era I love and know well, and in devouring this tome I learned a thing or two along the way!
"The Bee Gees are my all-time favourite band. Perhaps I love them that fraction more than any other artist because I don't think their genius—or their flat-out weirdness—has ever been fully appreciated. But they are here: meticulously researched, endlessly entertaining, written with both love and a cool critical eye. Children of the World wins again and again.
An encyclopedic introduction to the fascinating and often forgotten creators of Anglo-American hit music in the first half of the twentieth century.
"Totally delicious and [full of] why-didn’t-I-think-of-that connections. We’re incredibly lucky to have this detailed map.
"Totally delicious and [full of] why-didn’t-I-think-of-that connections. We’re incredibly lucky to have this detailed map.
The Wall Street Journal David Kirby
"An immensely entertaining pop-music survey course. Engagingly opinionated and often very, very funny. Joyful, smart, and addictive, just like the best pop songs, and a must for music fans everywhere.” - Booklist (starred) "Bob Stanley loves and finds surprising connections between a thousand kinds of pop. He makes me want to run to the nearest record store and move in.
Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields
"Tells the story of American and British pop music almost as engagingly as the songs themselves." - Glenn Gamboa, Newsday "An ambitious undertaking. Stanley’s bold positions connect pop’s many dots in fresh and fascinating patterns."
Christian Science Monitor
"Stanley does an inspired job of identifying and describing all the tangled roots of pre-rock popular music . . . a vast amount of it is far too good to be forgotten.” - The Times (London) “I know a lot about popular music. I didn't know half of this.
Magnificent! Bob Stanley is in a league all his own.” - Nik Cohn, author of Yes We Have No: Adventures in the Other England and The Heart of the World “An absolute landmark/joy/gossip-fest/door to Narnia: the history of pop music BEFORE rock’n’roll. SO fascinating. Can’t recommend enough.
★ 02/01/2024
The Bee Gees had nine number one hit songs on the Billboard Top 100 chart—more than any group except the Beatles and the Supremes. In a career that spanned more than four decades, they sold an estimated 220 million records worldwide, and they influenced groups such as the Moody Blues and Oasis. But Stanley (Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop Music ) asserts that they did not garner the respect they deserved—a situation he seeks to rectify with this well-written biography. Until the late 1950s, the Bee Gees (formed of older brother Barry and twins Robin and Maurice) lived in Manchester, England, where they were singing and recording before they were teens. The author chronicles the group's ups and downs—up in the 1960s, down in the early 1970s, then back up when Barry discovered his falsetto and Saturday Night Fever introduced them to disco. They were awarded the Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award and royal honors from Prince Charles. Sadly, their music stopped with the deaths of Maurice (1949–2003) and Robin (1949–2012). VERDICT This detailed and well-researched biography gives the Bee Gees proper respect. For fans of the group and music memoirs.—Rosellen "Rosy" Brewer
2023-12-15 A tribute to an epic yet underappreciated group in pop music history.
British music journalist Stanley, author of Let’s Do It: The Birth of Pop Music , offers a comprehensive exploration of the Bee Gees, elevating their public perception from “misfit” group to “major presence on the pop scene for four whole decades.” He chronicles the lives of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb, from poverty-stricken roots, watching their father struggle to buy food, to first harmonizing together as the Rattlesnakes on stage in 1958. Success began to simmer after the family relocated to Australia and the brothers rebranded themselves as the Bee Gees. Their first single was “The Battle of the Blue and the Grey,” recorded in 1963, when all three were teenagers, and they followed with the hit songs “Massachusetts” and “New York Mining Disaster 1941.” Stardom came calling when Vince Melouney and Colin Petersen joined the group, followed by producer Arif Mardin, whose risky rearrangement of the band’s core sound capitalized on the “heightened excitement” of Barry’s falsetto. Then came their seemingly endless string of disco hits in the late 1970s and ’80s, the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, various celebrity collaborations, and the tragic death of brother Andy in 1988. More revivals followed as the group continued to record until their run abruptly ended with the death of Maurice in 2003. Each of these meticulously researched details pops as Stanley puts his seasoned narrative flair to entertaining use, recounting the group’s evolution as a global sensation stemming from the wave of hits they wrote, produced, and performed across every decade. A lengthy discography provides a fitting closer to a fond biography intensively exploring a band who were “inventive, shape-shifting, writers of death-haunted melodies, with voices that sounded like no one else.”
A bright, informative, essential retrospective for Bee Gees fans.