Review: 'The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart' a Playful, Poignant Documentary

Frank Marshall's documentary "The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" begins and ends with the only surviving Gibb brother, Barry, meditating on time, memory, and mortality. It's a strong start to a film that's often funny and playful, but just as often poignant and surprising.

If you thought the Bee Gees started and ended with "Saturday Night Fever" and the golden age of disco, you'd be wrong. The brothers - Barry and a set of younger twins, Robin and Maurice - had been a musical act polishing their songwriting and three-part harmonies for about two decades before "Saturday Night Fever" set new records and made them very rich (for a second time). In fact, as the Beatles were storming America, one Gibb remembers, the brothers looked on with astonishment: "That's what we were trying to do!"

That was also when they decided they needed to take aim at the American market "and made up our minds that we were going to be part of the British invasion" even though by that time the English-born brothers were living with their parents and siblings in Australia, where they formed The Bee Gees in 1958. (They'd already had a band in England by then - "The Rattlesnakes.")

Barry helps narrate the story in interview footage from 2017, as do his brothers Maurice and Robin, via archival footage. A plethora of other commentators - spouses, band members, friends, fans - round out the ranks of those who appear on camera to offer anecdotes and insights. (Nick Jonas, for instance, can tell you a little about the tensions that exist when brothers make music together and get famous while doing it.)

It was as part of the 1960s music scene that The Bee Gees first rose to prominence, thanks in large part to Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who got the brothers' demo tapes into the hands of another manager, Robert Stigwood. After they signed with Stigwood in 1967, the brothers took off. Tragically, the song they wrote for Otis Redding, "To Love Somebody," wasn't performed by that legend; Redding died in a plane crash before he could perform the tune. Instead, the brothers recorded the song themselves, with Barry singing the vocals, and it became a hit single (not to mention being covered by numerous other recording artists since).

The story of The Bee Gees assumed a familiar shape: Fame, fortune, tensions within the group, and a breakup prompted by Robin's decision to split off on his own in 1969. A period of uncertainty followed. (A solo performance by Robin didn't go so well, with angry fans trying to storm the stage and throwing things.)

Then Epstein died, Stigwood stepped in to gather the brothers together again, and Act Two dawned for The Bee Gees, who drew on their two years apart to write songs like "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart." Moe creative peaks and valleys followed, with one period being so bleak for the band that their new single had to be sent out to radio stations with a blank label because the band's "stock was so low," as one source puts it.

That single was "Jive Talkin'," and - you guessed right - it was a hit. Recorded in Miami after Eric Clapton suggested the brothers relocate and let a sunny new locale influence their music, and inspired by the rhythm of a daily commute across a bridge with the tires going clickey-click, the song proved Clapton's insight that "the guys were an R&B band that hadn't worked that out yet" to be correct.

Add an off-the-cuff falsetto over the top, which Barry did for "Nights on Broadway," and a truly new sound was born that fit right into the emerging disco scene. Add a little echo to that falsetto and you got the bona fide disco hit "We Should Be Dancing."

But the secret ingredients didn't all come down to matters of technique. As we hear from various collaborators, band members, and friends, the brothers had a way of connecting with each other musically that let them pluck music from the air - and a "spontaneity," as one fellow has it, that shone through on the records.

"They would write on the spot," one interviewee recalls for the camera, "And they could bounce off each other.... They just did it naturally."

The Bee Gees were in the process of writing a new album when they were approached to write songs for a movie that had been inspired about New York's nascent disco scene. In short order they turned in a demo tape with five brilliant songs that formed the backbone of the soundtrack for "Saturday Night Fever," "Staying Alive" and Night Fever" among them. Pianist Blue Weaver, a part of the band by then, was inspired to write one of those songs by music Chopin composed in E-flat - namely, "How Deep is Your Love." "My heart is in that song," Weaver recalls, misty-eyed. (Adding to the delight is recent scholarship strengthening the case that Chopin was gay and the prolific author of love letters to young men he was taken with over the years.)

By that time, youngest brother Andy had moved to the States as well, and was pursuing his own musical career - and doing it with such great success that he was overshadowing his older brothers, keeping them from the number one spot on the charts on at least one occasion.

But The Bee Gees got sucked up in what now looks like an early manifestation of the current age's hyper-politicized, and not-so-overtly racist, polarization. A Chicago DJ named Steve Dahls went after disco music relentlessly; with The Bee Gees having reached an insane height of popularity, they made for an easy target, and Dahls would inhale nitrous and mock their songs in a resulting high-pitched singing voice. Things came to an ugly head when the Chicago White Sox hosted a "disco sucks" night that offered discounted tickets for sports fans who brought along a disco record to be destroyed right on the field. An African American man who was working at the stadium at that time recalls seeing R&B records - the work of Black musicians - being offered up among the disco albums. Unsurprisingly, the night turned into a scene of mob violence that damaged the park. Recalling the ugly spasm, the former stadium employee reckons that "It was a racist, homophobic book burning."

The Bee Gees hit a slump then, only for another twist in their journey to occur when Barbra Streisand reached out with interest in teaming up with them, resulting in the album "Guilty" and opening doors for a string of similar collaborations with more high-profile stars, including Dionne Warwick ("Heartbreaker") and Diana Ross ("Chain Reaction").

Sadly, Andy Gibb died in 1988, just as he was about to join his older brothers as an official member of the band. His death was followed, in 2003, by that of Maurice (either from complications related to surgery or of a heart attack while awaiting surgery to address an intestinal condition - accounts vary), with Robin dying of cancer in 2012.

Barry - whose initials provided the band's name in the first place - is the last man standing; he reckons that the brothers "did everything we set out to do," but he also discloses that he'd rather have his brothers back than all the hit records they created.

Justin Timberlake, who fetches up among the fellow musicians who appear here to offer their thoughts, has a slightly different take: "They were fuckin' awesome!"

"The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" premieres on HBO on Dec. 12.