RSO 3041
Producers: Bee Gees, Karl Richardson, Albhy Galuten
Track Listing: Tragedy / Too Much Heaven / / Love You Inside Out / Reaching Out / Spirits Having Flown / Search, Find / Stop (Think Again) / Living Together / I’m Satisfied / Until
March 3, 1979
6 weeks (nonconsecutive)
“We had three or four songs in the top 10 when we were recording Spirits Having Flown,” says singer/guitarist Barry Gibb. “We went to pop heaven for about two years. There’s a good side and bad side to that. The good side is that you get a hit no matter what, which can be unhealthy. The bad side is you can’t answer your own phone, you can’t go to a or a restaurant, and you have people climbing over your walls. That’s not the life I wanted to lead.”
Indeed things had changed dramatically for Brothers Gibb with the success of Saturday Night Fever. Between March and Noevember 1978, while the group was recording Spirits Having Flown, five singles recorded by or written by one of group’s members hit the top spot on The Hot 100, including Andy Gibb’s “(Love Is) Thicker Than Water,” the Bee Gees’ own “Night Fever,” Yvonne Elliman’s “If Can’t Have You,” Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing,” and Frankie Valli’s “Gease.” Meanwhile Saturday Night Fever occupied the Number One spot on the album chart from January 21 until July 8.
“We were just reflecting what was going on around us,” Barry Gibb says. “We were suddenly living in a goldfish bowl and we couldn’t perceive real life. We couldn’t go and hang out like we used to and go sit in a club where we used to get our ideas… Writing became different.”
On Spirits Having Flown, the Bee Gees attempted to sidestep disco, which had exploded into a worldwide phenomenon with the success of Saturday Night Fever. “It was at the time of when we had discovered the falsettos and we were experimenting with that,” Barry Gibb says. “It was really an experimentation of us trying to move away from Saturday Night Fever. We were trying to follow up such a mammoth album, but not really knowing how to do that, and we were trying to get back to the mindset we had before Saturday Night Fever. It was sort of a scatterbrained scenario. We were looking for a focus and Spirits Having Flown as a title reflects that.”
By 1979, the Bee Gees had already been veterans on the roller coaster of fame. The group of brothers — Barry, and twins Robin and Maurice — first performed publicly in 1955. Their 1967 debut album, Bee Gees 1st, climbed to number seven, fueled by the top 20 hits “New York Mining Disaster 1941” and “To Love Somebody.” In the late ’60s, the band temporarily split. A series of hits and misses followed until the group staged a successful comeback in the mid-’70s with the Number One single “Jive Talkin’.” Says Barry Gibb, “We had been written off by the early ’70s as being has-beens. By 1975, we were looking at making a comeback. If Eric Clapton hadn’t suggested that we try to make an album in Miami, we might not have come back at all.”
The group returned to Miami to record Spirits Having Flown at Criteria Recording Studios. Apparently, the city once again reignited the group’s creative spark. “Too Much Heaven,” was released as a single to benefit UNICEF in advance of the album. It climbed to the top in seven weeks, setting the stage for Spirits Having Flown. The second and third singles, “Tragedy” and “Love You Inside Out” also hit the top spot, giving the Bee Gees six consecutive Number One singles, tying a record set by the Beatles.
THE TOP FIVE
Week of March 3, 1979
1. Spirits Having Flown, Bee Gees
2. Blondes Have More Fun, Rod Stewart
3. Cruisin’, Village People
4. Dire Straits, Dire Straits
5. Briefcase Full of Blues, Blues Brothers