Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb has died aged 62 after a lengthy battle with cancer.
I have been expecting this for quite some time after recently seeing him in a an interview. He was always a very thin guy, but his recent weight loss was clearly the result of a serious illness.
As I mentioned in the title I grew up in the 1970's, specifically attending high school in the late seventies when the Bee Gees became the most popular singing group in the world. It is NO exaggeration to say that there music was EVERYWHERE.
It was featured in the most popular films (Grease Saturday Night Fever, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), and was so omnipresent on the pop radio stations that if you did not immediately hear one of their songs after turning on the radio, one would surely play within the next fifteen minutes.
I was the generation that found ourselves identified by the Disco era so, being cool and all, I rejected the dance music out of hand right after it completely saturated our pop culture. For me it was just overkill, and the Bee Gees were the worst offenders by far in my opinion.
However I started to hang out with a group of kids at school that had bonded together over gymnastics.
They practiced after school across from the weight room where I spent an hour a day after school three times a week, and one day I wandered over out of curiosity after spotting one of the kids from my typing class.
After years of martial arts training I was very flexible, while the weightlifting had made me quite strong, so the very first thing I did was jump up on the rings and press into a handstand, which unbeknownst to me at the time was a rather advanced gymnastics maneuver. After they saw that, I was in the group whether I wanted to be or not.
Besides gymnastics the other love they all shared was a love of the Bee Gees music. Of course I immediately had to give them shit for listening to that "fucking disco crap." But they explained that THEY were fans of the Bee Gees earlier music and lent me an album called "Best of the Bee Gees."
I was hooked, and started buying up their older stuff everywhere I could find it.
Essentially it became the soundtrack for those last few years of high school. (Of course over the years my prejudice against disco softened and today I enjoy hearing "Jive Talking" almost as much as I enjoy hearing "I Started A Joke.")
It was sad enough when Maurice died back in 2003, but now with Robin gone it really does feel like the end of an era.
Well anyhow for all of you who may not know just how talented this trio was, or perhaps over the years have simply forgotten, let me share with you one of my favorite songs. (And yes of course it WAS written before they turned their considerable talents to disco.)
