Disco Will Never Die
With money flowing and cocaine everywhere there may not have been a better place to celebrate disco. That would be Anchorage, Alaska, during construction of the pipeline in 1977.
For many of those who experienced it there the mood is “staying alive” even though two of the three Bee Gees are gone, as is disco’s queen, Donna Summer.
Robin Gibb, 62, whose fraternal twin, Maurice, preceded him in death nine years ago, died Sunday.
Summer, disco’s queen, died at the age of 63 on Thursday.
They all worked hard for their money. The 1977 film, “Saturday Night Fever,” starring John Travolta, made the seemingly never-ending dance beat a national craze.
Despite being the best-selling movie soundtrack ever until it was surpassed by Whitney Houston’s “The Bodyguard,” it was ignored by the Oscars.
Barry developed his falsetto voice to make some of the biggest hits of the film possible.
Robin had liver cancer and had briefly been in a coma, only coming out when his family sang by his bedside successfully waking him briefly.
The group’s first U.S. hits, in 1967, were “The New York Mining Disaster of 1941” and “To Love Somebody.” It was only a start. The next year came “I Got To Get A Message To You” and “I Started A Joke.”
More hits were to follow. But “How Deep Is Your Love,” “More Than A Woman,” “Night Fever,” and more seemed irrepressible though legend has it they were not written as dance music. Some were released years before the move.
Their songs and concert tours remained popular, with their last album recorded in 2001.
For a group that was born on the Isle of Man but made it big in Australia, they showed as did others, like the Beach Boys, that families have a special harmony.
Barry Gibb, three years older, is the only remaining member. Their fourth brother, Andy, who performed separately, died in 1988 at the age of 30.
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