In fact, it already had - they had already more than dipped their toes in the water with 'Jive Talking' in 1975, which was ahead of the game as it also appeared on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Already songwriters of note with an impressive back catalogue of hits written for themselves and other people, in turning to disco they weren't about to abandon their craft to adopt the pure dance trance of Giorgio Moroder et al. Which is ironic in one way, but fair enough in another the Bee Gees in 1978 were no musical virgins. Listen to 'New York Mining Disaster 1941' or ' Massachusetts' now and you still picture the trio singing them in their disco get up on a multicoloured dancefloor.
The brothers had always sung falsetto true, but their work on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack ramped it up to a level that was borderline parody, and along with their open shirt/gold medallion look they managed to define not only what the average 'disco man' should aspire to when he scrubbed up on the weekend, but also sealed an image of themselves in aspic that came to define not only all their work that was to come, but also everything that had already been. Inescapable enough to puzzle me anyway as to what scenes of X rated raunch and violence could be soundtracked by those squealing, pants too tight vocals if Kate Bush's voice was a prime target for lazy mickey taking in the seventies, then the Bee Gees were the absolute bullseye. Apart from the music, which was pretty inescapable in 1978. Hence, all my eggs of interest marked 'Travolta' were placed firmly in the basket marked Grease Saturday Night Fever and everything surrounding it barely caused a blip on my radar. I'll go into my love of 'Grease' in the next post but one, but suffice it to say that Saturday Night Fever was far more a piece of forbidden fruit to me than that film Grease was racy enough, but Saturday Night Fever came with an X certificate which put it way out of my reach. Most people were really - with two major films cleaning up in the cinemas and his profile going supernova, Travolta and his grin exuded an air of easy cool that I could only aspire. Two facts to start with - John Travolta was a big star in 1978 and I was a big fan.
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