Followers who got here to see Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb on the MGM Grand in Las Vegas on November 14, 1997 knew they had been in for one thing particular. The distinctive live performance, supposed at one level to be the Bee Gees’ stay farewell (it was launched because the stay album One Night time Solely), featured hits from what was already an unimaginable four-decade span of basic songs, in addition to a visitor look by Céline Dion, and a tribute to their departed brother Andy.
Recorded for audio and video launch, One Night time Solely appeared as a highlights CD and a DVD of the whole efficiency, following a pay-per-view US screening on New Yr’s Eve 1987. Launched on September 7, 1998, the album went on to earn platinum and multi-platinum gross sales around the globe. As soon as once more, night time fever was spreading swiftly, 30 years for the reason that group’s first worldwide breakthrough.
A career-spanning efficiency
The Bee Gees carried out no fewer than 32 songs that night time in Nevada, in a set that reached all the way in which again to staples of their early worldwide fame equivalent to “New York Mining Disaster 1941,” “Massachusetts,” “To Love Somebody,” and “Words.” Hits of the early 70s featured, too, equivalent to “Lonely Days,” “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart,” and “Run To Me.” They had been joined by Bee Gees’ many smashes of the disco period, together with “Jive Talkin’,” “Stayin’ Alive,” and, each to open and shut the present, “You Should Be Dancing.”
Loads of consideration was given to their very own variations of songs that the three prolific songwriters gave to others, equivalent to “Heartbreaker” (Dionne Warwick), “Islands In The Stream” (Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton), “More Than A Woman,” (Tavares) and Barry’s duet with Barbra Streisand, “Guilty.”
Alongside the way in which, the Bee Gees acknowledged later group favourites equivalent to “Alone” and “One”; welcomed Céline Dion on stage for her soon-to-be hit that they wrote, “Immortality”; and let the recorded voice of Frankie Valli ring out as they recreated one other of their film million-sellers, “Grease.” All that with one of many Grease movie’s stars, Olivia Newton-John, sitting admiringly within the viewers.
An intense interval
With enormous poignancy, the live performance additionally had them singing one in every of Andy’s hits, “(Our Love) Don’t Throw It All Away,” written by Barry with Blue Weaver. The voice of their little brother, who died in 1988, on the age of 30, was heard on the second verse, and a packed area mourned with the three siblings on stage.
The present befell throughout an intense interval for the Gibb brothers, just a few months after the discharge of their twenty first studio album, Nonetheless Waters, and their induction into the Rock And Roll Corridor Of Fame, amongst different honours. Nonetheless Waters gave them some new signature tunes, notably the aforementioned “Alone,” which made the High 10 in lots of nations, and the next UK High 20 entries “I Could Not Love You More” and “Still Waters (Run Deep).” They carried out the latter track on a cease at The Late Present With David Letterman in September 1987.
Because the album and DVD of One Night time Solely emerged, what had began as a one-off farewell live performance became a serious tour. Starting at RDS Area in Dublin, on August 29, 1998, it then took them, in launch week, to London’s Wembley Stadium and to equally huge ventures in Buenos Aires and Pretoria. The next March introduced exhibits in acquainted territory to the Australian-raised siblings, in Auckland and Sydney.
Driving one another
“We had four Lifetime Achievement Awards in three months, from the World Music Awards to our induction in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame,” Maurice informed Johnny Black in Mojo of the season of recognition that preceded the Las Vegas live performance. “I mean, that’s quite weird. It just started turning around, and people started listening. So when the One Night Only live shows came out in 1998, there was incredible interest.”
That was underlined because the album commemorating their night time in Las Vegas made No.1 in Australia and New Zealand, No.4 within the UK and the High 5 in lots of different territories. One Night time Solely stands because the prime doc of a gaggle sharing their unmatched fraternal bond and creativity in entrance of scores of hundreds of followers, after which thousands and thousands extra on document.
“We’re all boss of this band at one time or another,” stated Barry within the Mojo interview. “If I get actually dogged about one thing and I don’t wish to do it and everybody else does, my spouse Linda will flip round and say, ‘Get your pants on and go and bloody do it and shut up moaning.’
“In fact, all the Bee Gee wives are good like that,” he went on. “They have no time for our egos. They’ll say, ‘This is that showbiz ego thing – get rid of it, act your age.’ So we’re like that with each other, as brothers. We drive each other.”
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