This Day in Pop Music History (Bee Gees in 1st Intl. Hit with “NY Mining Disaster”)

April 14, 1967—Just before psychedelic rock gained irresistible momentum with the Summer of Love, a last beachhead was secured by the British Invasion with help from a group from the far side of the Commonwealth: the Bee Gees, who released their first international hit, “New York Mining Disaster 1941.”

A running joke in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories involves fans telling his filmmaker protagonist Sandy Bates, “I like your early, funny ones.” You’ll find similar, perhaps even more, divisions among pop music aficionados. Do you prefer the Moody Blues through Seventh Sojourn, or after? Eric Carmen as part of the power-pop group The Raspberries, or mellower all by himself? Bruce Springsteen before or after discovering The Darkness on the Edge of Town?

The mid-to-late 1970s success of the Brothers Gibb, climaxing with the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever—which, for a time, held title as the bestselling LP of all time—would seem to resolve any such disputes decidedly in favor of the group’s disco-era sound. Perhaps there are even those who like all of their music. 

Maybe it’s just me, but am I part of an underground but hardly unsizable contingent that prefers their early work—a string of hits stretching over five years, including “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “Massachusetts,” “I Started a Joke,” “Words,” all the way to “Run to Me”? You can keep “Stayin’ Alive,” “Night Fever,” and most of the hits from 1975 on. They’re all just jive talkin’ to me. 

I’ll stick with the early songs, thank you very much. You can keep the disco beat they rode to the top of the charts. I’d rather play a CD of their greatest early hits and leave the rest to whoever wants them.

It surprised me to learn that the Bee Gees, like the Rolling Stones, celebrate their golden anniversary in show business this year. True, there is an age differential between the Bad Boy Brits and the band of brothers (Watts, Jones, Jagger and Richard were born between 1941 and 1943; Barry Gibb was born in 1946, and twins Maurice and Robin three years later). But the real reason why I associate the Stones with a (somewhat) earlier time owes to when the world took notice of them. Even though the Bee Gees had recorded since 1962, their work had been covered overwhelmingly by fellow Australians, not the outside world. It was this situation that they aimed to rectify in late 1966 when they contacted Beatles manager Brian Epstein and planned to move to the U.K. 

Epstein passed along the request to friend and colleague Robert Stigwood. The youths’ father might not have been crazy about their journey from Down Under, but their great commercial success starting in 1967 triumphantly bore out their hopes.

There are a few noteworthy things to remember about “New York Mining Disaster 1941”:

·        *  The group was not inspired to write by an actual mining disaster. The song came to life as a metaphor, with the brothers sitting in the dark on stairs at the studio of Polydor Records and likening it to a mine. 

·         * There was no “New York” disaster in 1941.  There was in 1939, but changing the year made no sense historically or in terms of the song structure.

·       *   If there was a mine disaster referred to, it was Aberfan mining disaster in Wales, less than six months before the song’s release. The death toll in that incident reached 144, 116 of whom were children. Emotions were still raw. Displacing the event to a moment in the past enabled the Bee Gees to write, from the perspective of a trapped miner, without being accused of exploiting tragedy.

·         *The song’s instrumentation evoked the Beatles at an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, stage of their career. With the John Lennon-penned “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the Fab Four had already taken a step toward psychedelic rock, and not long after “New York Mining Disaster 1941” they would move even more forcefully toward this trend with Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Stigwood’s marketing strategy for the Bee Gees’ first British single was clever: "New York Mining Disaster 1941" featured the kind of unusual instrumental experimentation the Beatles began to employ with "Yesterday"--in this case,  the use of a string quartet, jew's harp, and a guitar with Hawaiian tuning. Stigwood sent the tune to record stations with a white label with only the song title—no group name. Deejays assumed it was made by the Beatles and played the song continually until it became clear that the Beatles hadn’t made this. The ploy worked: the song peaked at #12 on the U.K. charts and #14 in the U.S.

      As I write this, Robin Gibb lies in a coma. This would seem to bring to an end a family saga marked by enormous success and terrible tragedy (Maurice and younger brother Andy predeceased him). Despite my misgivings about the later direction of the Bee Gees' career, the group undoubtedly made a huge impression on the musical scene with their trademark falsettos. At their best, they were very, very fine indeed.