The cruelest proof that the true lives of rich and famous artists are not always a bed of roses comes when tragedy repeatedly strikes the family. It’s inevitable that Bee Gees They will perform “Tragedy”.

In 1979, music videos did not yet exist as a music standard. Here you can see a recording of the Gibb brothers, wearing the same tank top, surrounded by gold and platinum records, in that perfect combination of falsetto voices that has accompanied us for decades.

Maurice Gibb, was the most gifted in music of the three. He was a multi-instrumentalist responsible for many of the group’s arrangements. He struggled with alcoholism for most of his life and died at the age of 53. Little Gibb, Andywas not a member of the group, but struggled with drug addiction and had an unhealthy relationship with an actress. Home Victory. His addiction led to bankruptcy and early death at age 30 from an infection exacerbated by his cocaine addiction.

Robin, Maurice’s twinalso dealt with perennial health problems and died at the age of 62 from cancer. Barry, the only surviving Bee Gees brother, is the one who had to endure all this pain. It is confirmed: not all happiness is always in the house of successful and world famous artists.

From folk to disco

In this Friday’s episode Best playlistmusic podcast Independentwe dove into the legacy of a band who, despite that dramatic B-side, sold 200 million records in a career that began in the ’60s. Our guest, famous music journalist Jose Ramon PardoI was lucky enough to meet them, and took one of the contributions from my notebook, which, oddly enough, playlist chosen, offers us: “New York Mining Disaster, 1941.”

Many would never say that the same people who took Travolta the pirouettes that captivated the world in the 70s were all about protest songwriting. Lasting just 2 minutes and 9 seconds, this mixture of psychedelic pop, baroque pop and folk rock had a style very similar to The Beatlesto such an extent that there were those who at the time thought it was an alias for Liverpool 4.

This was the starting point of a phenomenon that had very distinct stages and a very clear before and after, with “Jive Talking” emerging as a prelude to Saturday Night Fever.

Pardo does not hide the fact that when this song came out in the summer of 1975, and he was a famous journalist, he said about the Bee Gees that disco music was not his thing. In our podcast, he states, not without humor, that “it was successful because it was not read.” Of course, he also chose for our list the anthem that forever changed the world every Saturday night: “Stayin’ Alive.”

Walk (and dance) to stay alive

These brothers’ walks represent the “stay alive while you go” message conveyed in the most danceable song of the time. An interesting message about the way out of the crisis. In our program we had the opportunity to discuss the secret of this topic: the battery is actually a loop made from spliced ​​electrical tape hardly one measure long. Dennis Brion, responsible for playing this instrument, had to leave for family reasons, but they decided not to replace the percussionist, but to combine together some measures already recorded on tape. This precision of tempo was new and set the pace of change. A butterfly Effect In all the rules. These walks, as soon as the film that changed everything began, were interpreted by the symbol of an entire era: John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

When we wanted to learn more about our guests’ experiences with the Bee Gees in their heyday, we discovered another multifaceted facet that separates us from every successful family’s supposed bed of roses: fear. Jose Ramon tells us how he entered the studio as if it were a spy movie: through the garage and under escort. Although he thought it was a class issue, the Gibb brothers themselves admitted that they were afraid of what happened to them. John Lennon, months ago. The kind of vulnerability that so rarely appears in stadium-filling artists has been brought to Pardo’s art with his latest selection for our playlist. The theme that sounded incessantly in those minutes slow in clubs where the pounding rhythms died down, giving way to romance.

I don’t know how many of you reading this have achieved peace. managers to the sound of this ballad, which brought extraordinary warmth and sensitivity to a world that was then in turmoil almost as much as it is now. We are all vulnerable.