by Kevin Burton
Looking back, The Bee Gees’ “Jive Talkin’” seems like an obvious, inevitable number one smash. In its day, it was anything but.
Fifty years ago today the song was in a two-week run at the top of the Hot 100. It pretty much saved the Bee Gees.
There was a time in the 70s when the world completely ignored the brothers Gibb, and that’s no jive. The band was as cold as it would later be hot, in the era of the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack.
What do you think of the Bee Gees 1973 album “A Kick in the Head is Worth Eight in the Pants?” You say you’ve never heard of it? Well, that’s because Atlantic Records refused to release it.
RSO Records did release one cut, “Wouldn’t I Be Someone” from the album as a single in 1973, with no chart success.
“”Jive Talkin'” was a comeback song for the group. They were very successful as contemporary singers in the late ’60s and early ’70s, but the two albums they released before Main Course flopped, and it looked like their careers were over,” according to SongFacts.
“The Bee Gees were as cold as absolute zero and there was not much chance that radio stations would get excited about a new single from the Gibbs,” wrote Fred Bronson in the Billboard Book of Number One Hits.
“Knowing that a new Bee Gees single would be met with skepticism by radio programmers, their label sent promotional singles to stations with plain, white labels, giving no indication as to what the name of the song was, or who it was by.” SongFacts wrote.
DJs would learn what the song was and who played it only when it was placed on the turntable; as RSO did provide the song with a label on the record itself, according to Wikipedia.
The Main Course album was delicious for listeners in the mid-70s thanks to a big assist from producer Arif Mardin, who moved the group from Los Angeles to Miami and “had them concentrate on what was happening at top 40 radio and discos,” Bronson wrote.
Main Course also included chart hits “Nights On Broadway” (my favorite Bee Gees song) and “Fanny (Be Tender With My Love),” but Jive Talkin’ was the hottest tune. It hit number 1 on Aug. 9, 1975, four years and two days after their previous chart topper: “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?”
The song was called “Drive Talking” in its early stages. There are multiple accounts of how it morphed into Jive Talkin’, including one in which the Gibb brothers changed drive to jive, with jive meaning “to dance.”
“We played it to Mardin, and he went ‘Do you know what ‘Jive Talkin’ means?” recalled Maurice Gibb, quoted in Wikipedia. “And we said ‘Well yeah, it’s, ya know, you’re dancing.’ “
“And he says ‘No, it’s a black expression for bull****ing” And we went ‘Oh, really?!? Jive talkin’, you’re telling me lies…’ and changed it.”
Though driving was removed from the title, it was a key element in the shaping of the song.
“The rhythm was inspired by the chunka-chunka-chunka sound of a car rolling over a bridge crossing Biscayne Bay near Miami; the Bee Gees went over it on their way to Criteria Studios, where they were recording the Main Course album,” according to SongFacts. “
“We’d already thought up the title for this song, but it wasn’t until Barry, Maurice and I drove from Biscayne Bay to Miami that we realized what the tune was going to be,” Robin Gibb told The Mail On Sunday “We had the idea as we passed over a bridge. Some tar noises made a rhythmic sound on the wheels of our car, which created the feel to the type of song we wanted to write. We finished the song at the Criteria Studios that day.”
Barry Gibb sings lead on this track, taking out his frustrations on a jive talkin’ woman telling him lies. This was the first big disco hit for The Bee Gees. They became icons of the era, singing in falsetto harmonies over dance beats. They had seven more number 1 hits in the disco era.
Recording for “Jive Talkin’” took place on 30 Jan. 30 and Feb. 2, 1975, according to Wikipedia. The scratchy guitar intro was done by Barry and the funky bass line by Maurice. The pulsing synthesizer bass line, which was featured in the final recording, was one of the earliest uses of synth bass on a pop recording.
Producer Mardin show up prominently in all these accounts. He could have been called the Fourth Bee Gee at that time. I sure hope the band was good to him after they reached stratospheric heights with Saturday Night Fever.
On Wikipedia, Maurice goes on to describe how Mardin gave them “the groove, the tempo, everything.”
Robin Gibb mentions that, because they were English, the Bee Gees were less self-conscious about going into the “no-go areas,” referring to musical styles that were more black in styles. “We didn’t think that there was any ‘no go’ areas, it’s music!”
You can hear the Jive Talkin’ influence in several contemporary recordings, the best example being “Second Hand News” by Fleetwood Mac from the Rumours album.
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