The Official Story Of The Bee Gees  

(Previously issued as “This Is Where I Came In”)

 

Picture: C-     Sound: C     Extras: C-     Main Program: B

 

 

What is the true value of The Bee Gees?  Rock fans tore them down during the backlash against the original Disco movement of the later 1970s, radio only plays them in spots, few claim any influence from them, and their music is rarely remade.  Despite this, they had not totally gone away, often referenced as a joke musically.  However, with the bizarre recent death of Maurice Gibb at a major Florida hospital, the act is through for good.

 

Before this unfortunate incident, Eagle Vision decided to reissue their This Is Where I Came In DVD under a new title.  The Official Story Of The Bee Gees is an extended version of what has been seen on cable about the vocal band, adding a nice block of extras comments in the body of the documentary, as well as in a supplement.  Of course, Eagle Vision might have delayed this if Maurice’s passing was around the time of the switch, but the DVD seems a bit out of date either way.  One reason for the change in title and packaging is simply so the then-new single the DVD was named after would not misrepresent the DVD itself.

 

Either way, this is still a good program, tracking a great majority of the history of the band, their family, some of Andy Gibb’s life, commercial success, fallouts, and more.  Even if you are not a fan of the music, the story of their survival is remarkable unto itself.  There are hardly any music groups in history who have such a rich, long-running history.  They would have continued further if Maurice was still around, so this was a group of music makers that had no intention of quitting.

 

Everything from family films, to materials especially made to promote their music is offered throughout, and the footage is mixed in quality.  The full-screen 1.33 x 1 image is odd.  One expects a documentary to have a wide-ranging selection of quality, but the new interviews (and only those new interviews) tend to have a ghosting seen too often in Eagle Rock/Eagle Vision DVDs that seems like a mastering problem.  This comes from some problem in the digital mastering process, creating digititis images of anything (usually talking heads) that move for a split second.  This is annoying, even more so when it did not look like this on TV, nor that it does not happen to the other footage!

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is average, but represents the music adequately, while voices are just distinguishable enough.  Too bad this was not updated and redone for 5.1 Dolby & DTS.  The other extras include a nice photo gallery, some biographies, and a weblink.

 

The question then remains as to what went wrong with the band’s huge commercial success. The answer might just go this way.  The Bee Gees had some big-selling albums, but they were essentially a singles band like a Chicago or Three Dog Night.  After the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack became the biggest double-set of all time and biggest selling soundtrack until The Bodyguard, they followed up with the Spirits Having Flown album.  When it was too much more of the same, despite three good #1 hit singles, they left their selves open for an attack they would never recover from.

 

The material and talent was there, but they spent it too much on high-profiles projects for other big name artists like Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Kenny Rogers, and Diana Ross, the last of which was a disappointment despite a non-U.S. #1 hit.  Solo projects did not work out, then that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band film could not be laughed off by enough people, despite some in-jokes many seemed to have missed.  Now, Universal has issued a DVD in DTS of the film!

 

In all this, The Bee Gees had influence in allowing more R&B (however lightly) into mainstream Pop and Adult Contemporary music.  Even this is a problem for many, but there is something of value and importance here that marks an era, which this program begins to figure out.  Only time can tell what their final legacy is, but at least they could write and sing their own material, something too many manufactured artists will never be able to claim.

 

 

- Nicholas Sheffo