Bee Gees: Children of the World: A Times Book of the Year

Bob Stanley’s biography of The Bee Gees tracks their every move from young lads on the Isle of Man through their Miami years and to current day. It’s a great story of family and music and while it’s written well, there are occasional errors here and there such as incorrect song titles or mistaken chart history. All in all, it explains the life of this talented, often misunderstood, family of songwriters and evergreen hit makers.

Probably the most underrated group everThey produced some of the greatest records ever by themselves or othersThis book covers their story so wellFrom the Isle of man( my home) to miami via Manchester and Australia. Buy this book

I've always had respect for the Bee Gees, and this book is an affectionate view into their family and musical history. I learned many things about the brothers that I hadn't heard before, and the book was a very engaging read.The Bee Gees' career trajectory is fascinating: slow-climb-up/down/up/down/way up/way down/now-respected-statesmen-of-pop. I can't think of any other band whose had a similar experience in the charts. The reader is taken along for the ride, with the brothers' songs as the soundtrack.It's unfortunate that Mr Stanley neglected to research the anti-disco movement and instead repeated the popular, incorrect narrative as to what drove it. As a teenager in Chicago in 1979, my cohort was living in a constant barrage of awful "music" and fashion, being told that this is what we wanted. We wanted to wear jeans and t-shirts, not polyester suits and blow-dried hair. We wanted music that didn't require choreography. With a minimum of research, Mr Stanley would have discovered that thousands of us discovered Chicago Blues music during this time, and we gravitated towards Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, the Chicago Blues Festival, and the "Blues Brothers" film (filmed in Chicago and not coincidentally released in 1980). We did not give one whit about "My Sharona"-- I believe it was actually the Disco Kids of 1978 who were buying The Knack's records.The author also seems to imply that the Bee Gees influenced the Moody Blues with their use of the Mellotron, when truth is more likely the other way round: Mike Pinder (Moodies keyboard player) worked for the company that made the instrument, and the band was using it as early as 1966.Despite these errors the book was a very enjoyable read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in these pop legends.

Nothing new here. A nice retelling of the story but a little too much of the author’s opinions instead of actual first person research.

It makes a change these days to read a book that is well written, and pleasingly free of clunky prose and grammatical errors. (The art of proofreading seems all but dead these days...) A teenager in the 60s, I bought the Bee Gees first album, which hit the right psychedelic zeitgeist hot spot of the time. I lost touch with their music after that, especially when they went full-on disco, a bizarre craze indeed. It took the Bee Gees decades to live it down, as amply described in the book. Their prolific output of songs, with an uncanny knack of devising new melodices and hooks for almost all of them, is up there with the Beatles oevre, in my opinion, especially when also considering the songs they wrote for other artists. There are the usual ups and downs, including those of being conned and fleeced by sheisters (a theme repeated in every single narrative of the music business I've ever read, sadly) plus the added friction caused by working with your brothers. Highly recommended.