SOUNDTRACK FROM SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER |
As part of the great 33 1/3 series of little books about big albums, Soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever is my twelfth book and as a writer interested in symmetry to the point of obsession almost, I'm stoked that it marks something of a coming of full circle, albeit in a way that's sort of inside out. Because as a writer who started out in the late 70s caught up in the punk movement, I’m now ending up back in the same period but on the other side of the coin – disco. Which, well, put it this way: I always thought, even back then, that 'Death to Disco' was a rally-cry even worse than 'Punk's Not Dead'.
I first fell in love with the Bee Gees in about 1970, and I have long been fascinated by their story and also that of their expatriate Australian manager/Svengali Robert Stigwood, an old theatre queen from Adelaide who produced not only Fever but also Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy and Grease, and that's why this book is part of 33 1/3's 'Oceania' sub-series, because it's a very Australian story, where Stigwood and the Gibb brothers, the pink mafia and the gumnut mafia, intersected to create pop culture history, and to change social history, and to reinvent the Hollywood film musical. The Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever have been much written and talked about, Robert Stigwood to a lesser extent, and that's why I always felt a book like this was much-needed, because the whole phenomena is riven by so much mythology and misinformation, it's clouded the real story, the real forces at play. The book will be out in October, 2024. Meantime, some extra features can be found here. |