The You’re Wrong About…. podcast discussed the multiple levels behind Disco Demolition night pretty well: https://www.happyscribe.com/public/you-re-wrong-about/disco-demolition-night
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I can’t help but wonder if this is also just a case of the story being told with consideration of the surviving sibling. I don’t know if Barry Gibb had any input into what was included or excluded. However, if someone was making a film about my family, I’d probably ask them to exclude painful episodes from the past.
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I don’t think the latter is entirely true. A lot of us grew up in the Disco Era, but we were kids in the seventies, the word, “butt” was considered obscene, all our cartoons had to be “educational,” and FM radio deejays weren’t into making political statements. It wasn’t until recently, when listening to some disco retrospectives as an adult, that I discovered the xenophobia and homophobia involved.
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Where I came from in the Midwest, the gay subtext of disco music was not communicated in popular media at all. Much of the disco backlash was also rooted in classism; the suits and clubbing were financially out of reach for our blue collar households. It was an alien lifestyle for Steve Dahl’s radio audience, who were marinating in what we now call classic rock.
Hell, my cohort of college roommates and I didn’t even understand that the Village People were gay. Side 2 of the Macho Man album made it perfectly clear, but none of us understood the subtext, even with song titles like ‘Sodom and Gommorah’ and ‘I Am What I Am.’
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That’s anecdotal and a matter of personal opinion. I’m also from the Midwest, and that wasn’t my experience.
There, I concur; classism and racism tend to be intertwined.
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As one person in the documentary explained, some of the backlash to disco was also in response to the absolute schlock from corporate shills & talentless band-wagoneers.
Disco fatigue was also a predictable reaction when, for example, as many as 5 of the top 10 were disco tunes. In the formulaic radio of the time, DJ’s were among the 1st casualties to it and their caustic comments affected listeners. Those who work in retail & endure repetitive holiday music will know this reaction all too well.
What the documentary showed well was how the Bee Gees kept evolving their music, and it highlighted what truly prolific songwriters they were.
There’s a snippet of Maurice mentioning that Andy’s death led to him getting sober, but I think the primarily focus is on their music, which includes Barry and Robin’s competitiveness. They delve into the sibling rivalry quite a bit, and that aspect appears to be a bit painful for Barry, too.
Overall, they did a nice job. I especially appreciated the focus being on their music, their songwriting, and the supporting musicians.
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I came of age just as disco was fading out and the next big corporate music things was kicking off. Where I grew up (suburban Alberta) disco was an alien thing.
I don’t remember any racist or homophobic hostility specifically towards disco, but why would I as a straight white kid? Certainly racism and homophobia were baked into culture in general. Plenty of hostility was expressed towards disco as a musical theme, but it was mostly comparable to current reactions to the next manufactured NKOTB/SPICE/BIEBER/BOYS2MEN phenomenon.
Orthodoxy in my town was hard rock and heavy metal or Country. I was accused of being gay for embracing punk. But any male who wasn’t explicitly and exuberantly a fan of metal or country was by default assumed to be gay in that time and place.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been back, and I’m not likely to ever go back. I hope it has improved.
I saw the HBO special on The Bee Gees and I absolutely LOVED IT. I grew up on the Bee Gees their music was phenomenal. Barry’s falsetto voice was recognized instantly!! I too loved to listen to Robins incredible voice!! I recorded the HBO special and I’ve already honestly watched it 10 times!! Like Barry I lost my family members in rapid succession including my husband! That makes me a widow and I’m 4 years younger than Barry. My husband also loved The Bee Gees every time he heard one of their songs he would start dancing with me!! What great memories, that’s all I have. Now I can watch that special and watch Barry, Robin and Maurice sing like they did when we were all still young!! What incredible voices in three part harmony!! I was never into hard screeching rock, that was for another generation! Fifty years of loving and following The Bee Gees have passed like a flash in the night! I’m so glad Barry was still performing worldwide before the pandemic and recording new albums!! You go Barry!!
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What I love most about the Bee Gees is how their early hit “Spics and Specks” inspired the East German group Pudhys to create their “Wenn ein Mensch lebt”
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Just finished watching the doc.
It really did skim over or completely ignore quite a lot. I mean I realize there is only so much that you can fit into a two hour film. I did find it baffling that there was no mention of the Sgt Pepper film, Andy Gibb’s tragic death was relegated to a footnote in the epilogue, and there was only passing mentions about their extensive early work as a child act.
That being said, it was a great doc and it was well worth a watch.
ETA One fascinating thing I did learn was that their drummer had a family emergency to attend to and was insane to play for Stayin’ Alive. The clever engineers created a loop from part of Night Fever to create the signature Stayin’ Alive beat.
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It’s the same conundrum as with text messaging - there’s no emotional cue and you can misinterpret the intent behind a plain statement. When a commenter said “You likely never noticed because of your privilege.” and nothing else, to me that seemed aggressive and unduly critical, when my whole point was “Really? Racist and homophobic? I never thought about that, and I don’t think that’s why I didn’t like the music. Was that a thing for other people in regards to the music and culture?” But I’ll admit to being very naive and unworldly at that age, and maybe there was something unconscious in it. I’m much older now (obviously) and I hope much more enlightened, inclusive and accepting, and I still don’t like disco if that means anything.
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No worries from my end on any of that, not to mention it’s just… stressful times right now.
There’s a lot of reasons not to like any kind of art/entertainment at any time. Still, people do tend to project a lot of their own insecurities and resentments onto other people’s musical tastes so that ends up amplified when the music can be associated with any group that tends to bear a lot of negative perception in general. There really wasn’t a time in the last few centuries before then where music clubs were less segregated and more accepting of gay people than disco clubs. So mainstream anxieties react accordingly. People like to bond over what they hate.
Growing up I just kind of unquestioningly accepted disco as shitty music that was popular in the past because of drugs and inferior judgement for most of my life. But then I’d end up listening to it anyway when I was alone because there’s a lot of good music in that genre really. The height of the disco scene was already in the past when I was born though.
It’s never easy to be sure what perceptions cause what with subjective things like art and music in individuals though where there tends to just be a vague sense of not being ok to like something. Unlike you however, I’m 100% sure some of the people I knew and took musical influence from were racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. And I’m fairly sure disco became shorthand for a lot of those things they already feared/loathed about themselves and others.
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