For quite some time, the prospect of death has held a fresh terror. The British Heart Foundation’s step-by-step guide to cardiopulmonary resuscitation advises performing chest compressions ‘to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees’. This means that the last sound some of us will ever hear is ‘Stayin’ Alive’, with our chests as the drums:
Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’
And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive!
Ah! ah! ah! ah!
Stayin’ alive! Stayin’ alive!
Despite their success, the Bee Gees have always been regarded as naff. They are to pop music what Fanny Cradock was to cookery or Julian Fellowes is to the world of letters. Bob Stanley is on a mission to rescue their reputation. ‘I’ve written this book as an attempt to give them their rightful place at the very top of pop’s table,’ he declares in his introduction: ‘I also want to explain why and how the Gibb brothers have been othered, and – unlike the Beach Boys – rarely treated with the respect they should have earned as a right.’
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