Bee Gees – Horizontal

The declamatory opening bars of World hammer home the psychedelia of Horizontal but it’s less quirky than on Bee Gees 1^st and decidedly heavier too. The band stray into interesting new territories such as chanson, Really and Sincerely, and blues rock, The Change Is Made.

Some of 1st‘s wayward edges have been ironed out so that Horizontal has a more settled, consolidated feel. The song-writing is solid, sometimes inspired, and they convince across the range. Surprisingly, instead of expanding the soul repertoire of 1^st it’s pretty much abandoned here.

The depressed album

Often labelled the Bee Gees’ depressed album, Horizontal has a remarkable coherency.

I find the flow of Side 1 the most satisfying in their back catalogue; as one song fades you can’t wait for the next because you feel a growing confidence in their hands. Really and Sincerely somehow manages to build upon the emotion of And the Sun Will Shine. Between those two highs Lemons Never Forget provides some necessary acidity and channels the Beatles less slavishly than In My Own Time whilst the wistful, subtly playful Birdie takes the emotional impact down a few notches just when needed. Side 1’s spinoff, Barry‘s spotlight centre stage solo With the Sun in My Eyes, envelopes you in love’s warm glow.

Side 2 is the lesser, lumbered as it is with the resolutely mainstream Massachusetts but the final three tracks intrigue, hinting at an alternative more rock oriented Bee Gees, an option which the band would only occasionally take up.

As for the depression, it’s there but Horizontal is by no means a depressing listen. Yes, there is bitterness – The Change Is Made – and queasy otherworldliness – Horizontal – but the eye opening World is breathtaking as well as post-traumatic and the painfully naked Really and Sincerely ultimately cathartic.

Truly lush

Crucially, they show their prettier side without just layering on the strings. Birdie is truly lush thanks to Vince’s warm guitar licks and regret beautifully poised on Day Time Girl, the album’s dark horse and one of their finest ballads. Both have terrific chord modulations and lovely melodies.

Bee Gees 1^st is a fresher, more diverting album but Horizontal the more satisfying.

Horizontal [1968]

Side 1
World
And the Sun Will Shine
Lemons Never Forget
Really and Sincerely
Birdie Told Me
With The Sun In My Eyes

Side 2
Massachusetts
Harry Braff
Day Time Girl
The Ernest Of Being George
The Change Is Made
Horizontal

Singles 1967/68 [related to Horizontal]

Massachusetts
Barker of the UFO

World
Sir Geoffrey Saved the World

Words*
Sinking Ships

* Words, a non-album track, was recorded the same day as World (3rd October 1967) and so in that sense can be said to be Horizontal-related

Unreleased 1968

Out of Line*
Ring My Bell*
Mrs Gillespie’s Refridgerator*
Deeply, Deeply Me*
All My Christmases Came at Once*
Thank You for Christmas*
Medley: Silent Night/Hark the Herald Angels Sing*

* released on Horizontal Rhino reissue, 2006

-> Idea
<- Bee Gees 1st

Bee Gees Top 50 1966-72
Bee Gees’ Home Page

And the Sun Will Shine

No. 3 in Top 50 Bee Gees’ Songs 1966-72

By Barry, Maurice & Robin Gibb
Lead Vocal: Robin
Album Horizontal 1968

“You should be here standing so near to me”

My enthusiasm for the Bee Gees wanes a little with their drift towards all-out, orchestral emotional ballads. And the Sun Will Shine is one of the earliest examples (if you listen to the albums purely chronologically – we haven’t quite got to Massachusetts yet!).

We’re not talking First of May sentimentality here. And the Sun Will Shine is a far more sophisticated, nuanced beast.

Unique atmosphere

And the Sun Will Shine has a fascinating, unique atmosphere, one of angst, despair even, giving way to a kind of redemption.

I would say it is about someone experiencing the intense pain of a love that has ended. This is never made explicit but we are presented with images of rain, clouds, trees, birds and trains, a landscape of the mind and possibly also an actual place which the lovers used to share. Now this place evokes emptiness and an indifferent world (‘Trains roar by and the birds disappear’) through which one of them And the Sun Will Shine tries to work through his feelings.

There is a plea to ‘give me time alone’ as if the singer recognises the necessary cathartic nature of what must be endured in order to reach a kind of freedom beyond. He is overcome with grief but it is punctuated by moments of clarity and self awareness – ‘I know it’s only the weather’.

The orchestration gives the sense of waves of ruminating emotion gathering force. I love the way from time to time the ‘cellos break through the strings’ swell like an emotional undercurrent, particularly effective at 1.51-1.54.

Pause for thought

As a contrast, the song uses pauses to provide respite and insight ‘Then I wake up/Then I grow up’. The orchestra falls away and these phrases are accompanied by a cor anglais/harpsichord motif, underlining the clarion ‘wake-up’ call.

For the chorus – ‘And the sun will shine…’ – the orchestra swells once again but the key has shifted from minor to major, the mood from despair to uplift, even ecstasy.

The song’s overall dark/light feel is contained even within the final few seconds of Robin’s falling away ‘And the love…’ over a fairly rapid fade and then his barely heard higher register vocal in the final moments.

Overall though, despite its ‘clautrophobic’ verses, the light side triumphs; the clue is there in the title’s ‘And…’ , pointing to an optimistic, cyclic inevitability.

European flavour

And the Sun Will Shine – and its near neighbour on Horizontal Really and Sincerely – were issued as single A and B-sides in France. That underscores the European – dare I say, existential – flavour of both songs.

Interesting that some of Robin’s lyrics were ad libbed although you would never guess this.

Interesting also that the fullness of the orchestration, which feels such an integral part of this song was actually added later, foreshadowing techniques Robin was to use on his 1969/70 solo material, Robin’s Reign and Sing Slowly Sisters

The aching quality of Robin’s voice (recorded in one take) and the surround of the orchestra come together to create a particular kind of interior emotionality which I’ve never encountered elsewhere.

Paul Jones: And the Sun Will Shine

No 2 Morning of My Life (In the Morning) – 1966 version
No 4 To Love Somebody

Paul Jones: And the Sun Will Shine

Reminded of another Bee Gees’ cover version thanks to this morning’s Sounds of the 60s – Paul Jones’ 1968 single A-side And the Sun Will Shine.

This is one of my favourite Gibb compositions with a unique emotional atmosphere – when performed by the brothers.

Unfortunately, despite boasting an A-list line-up of Paul McCartney on drums, Jeff Beck on guitar, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass and Nicky Hopkins on keyboards there isn’t much of an emotional atmosphere to be had here, except a rather over-egged febrile one.

After a nice hymnal introduction, Peter Asher’s production neither enhances the song nor shows off the talents of its musicians. Paul Jones’ commanding voice conveys an unwarranted urgency better suited to his messianic Privilege role. The verses are needlessly shortened to the song’s detriment. Overall it’s a messy mish-mash which surely pleased no one (the single wasn’t a hit).

Better head for the B-side, Paul Jones’ own song The Dog Presides if it’s stellar blues rock you’re after or for the definitive version of a fine song, the Bee Gees’ own on Horizontal.

Followers of Bee Gees Top 50 Songs 1966-72 may have correctly guessed that And the Sun Will Shine will make a highly placed appearance before too long!

Have a good Easter weekend.

Really and Sincerely

No. 7 in Top 50 Bee Gees’ Songs 1966-72

By Barry, Maurice & Robin Gibb
Lead Vocal: Robin
Album Horizontal 1968

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“Love is so easy to lose”

By fateful coinicidence, on this Good Friday I land upon a song which resonates with themes of Easter – the redeeming power of abiding love in the face of death and near death.

Robin Gibb and his future wife Molly were involved in the Hither Green train disaster of 1967 which killed over forty people and left many others injured. The south London crash, especially the carnage which followed in its wake, left a lasting impression on Robin and Really and Sincerely came out of his brush with death.

Life’s embrace

When I first heard this song it did not greatly appeal to me. It seemed to interrupt the flow of Horizontal and such pained intensity made for slightly uncomfortable listening. Perhaps it was reading about the circumstances which inspired Really and Sincerely or living not far from Hither Green myself which prompted me to listen again.

Now I could feel the song’s vulnerability, its passion. What had seemed at first like overexposed rawness was now humble gratitude in the face of deliverance and a plea for life’s embrace.

Robin’s voice, so utterly unlike any other in or outside of popular music has a passionate directness which combines pain and joy. He can sound both fragile and intense at the same time.

Existential meditation

Really and Sincerely uses a chanson sensibility to convey a lonely existential meditation. In its wintry verses accompanied by plaintive piano accordion and ‘cello, Robin strains for something seemingly unobtainable. The lyrics speak of an unbearable but unnamed Really & Sincerely separation: ‘I’m on the other side, though you remember my name’. This, I would imagine, is his survivor’s guilt or, more specifically, a speculation that he might so easily have lost Molly that day.

Then the suspended tension of the verse gives way to a more easeful chorus – ‘Turn me down’ – with its warm horns and the relief of strings. Chastened, at last Robin achieves the longed for sense of connection and gratitude. The chorus culminates with the simple, humble ‘really and sincerely I’ve tried’ but the song’s essence is to be found in the line: ‘Love is so easy to lose’.

Prayerful passion

I love Really and Sincerely and wonder how I could not have done so from the start. Far from interrupting the album, it seems to flow from And the Sun Will Shine, taking that song’s intensity to another level. Really and Sincerely adds depth and vulnerability to Horizontal and I can’t imagine the album without it (interesting that it was the last song to be recorded).

The title is taking a risk in itself, giving the song something to live up to. This passionately prayerful piece does not fall short.

No 6 Gilbert Green
No 8 Odessa (City on the Black Sea)

Birdie

No. 10 in Top 50 Bee Gees’ Songs 1966-72

By Barry, Maurice & Robin Gibb
Lead Vocal: Barry
Album Horizontal 1968

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“I think about her in my time, know in my mind it’s over”

One of the Bee Gees’ loveliest songs thanks to deployment of lush 7^th and 9^th chords over a winsome but never trying melody. Vince’s liquid guitar adds splashes of colour. There are some interesting key changes.

And now I find that lovely line ‘lavender traces memory’ is actually ‘loving the traces left for me’ if numerous lyric sites are to be believed.

The wistful romanticism of the verses gives way to a more realistic assessment with ‘But it’s hopeless to say…’ Birdie ends with a sigh over ‘you’ and a half comforting/half gently ironic woodwind coda.

No 9 Red Chair Fade Away
No 11 Day Time Girl

Day Time Girl

No. 11 in Top 50 Bee Gees’ Songs 1966-72

By Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb
Lead Vocals: Maurice & Robin(?)
Album Horizontal 1968

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“All the people will stare as she falls to the ground”

Day Time Girl appears to be about a relationship that ends because of a girl’s reluctance to sleep with her lover who is left with the sense that she used him. His consolation is that she is headed for a fall and will look back ‘remembering all she has missed’.

For such an extraordinarily pretty concoction ‘Day Time Girl’ masks a sourness in keeping with Horizontal’s depressed feel. Its heart is every bit as dark as the three much heavier songs which follow to close the album. The story is the man’s but in conjuring the girl’s very flowery untouchability, he uses this against her, as if to pin her down and then let her go.

Breathless whirl

Bill Shepherd ‘s arrangement weaves a graceful, classically-trained string and woodwind waltz around this tale of regret and, it has to be said, ill will. The phrasing of the verses almost seem to have about them a kind of sunken, melancholic sullenness. The fluctuating major-minor melody swells at the bridge as if the singer grows strong in his sense that he has been wronged. There is the lovely touch of a (Beatlesque) diminished third in the falling – ‘she took advantage of this’. At times, the song sounds as if it might semi-expire during its pauses until the Day Time Girl takes her leave in a weightless, breathless whirl of harp and strings.

Put like this, Day Time Girl perhaps doesn’t sound like the most attractive of propositions. But the loveliness of its melody and the song’s elegant restraint cannot but fail to impress. Maurice brings a delicacy to his piano playing and the vocals (probably Maurice and Robin though at times sounding also like Barry) are admirably refined.

The brothers tackled ‘classic folk’, as they termed it,* elsewhere but never so exquisitely as here.

* Robin in Horizontal (Rhino CD re-issue 2006), accompanying booklet, page 4.

No 10 Birdie
No 12 Holiday

Lemons Never Forget

No. 13 in Top 50 Bee Gees’ Songs 1966-72

By Barry, Maurice & Robin Gibb
Lead Vocal: Barry
Album: Horizontal 1968

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“An apple is a fool”

Written with The Beatles’ Apple in mind, this song marries an often nonsensical humour to a punchy band-only accompaniment. With heavy drums, pounding piano and Vince’s sly guitar fills, the result is a compelling slice of psychedelic rock, albeit one filtered through the Bee Gees’ innately melodic sensibility.

Constantly shifting key changes, especially during the bridge, demonstrate how expertly Barry could bring innovation and variety to bear on a three minute pop song.

Despite the apparent whimsicality of the lyrics, the overall effect is one of sardonic humour hammered home by emphatic piano chops and Barrie’s commanding, almost Lennon-like, double-tracked vocal.

Elevated Lemons

You might feel that I have elevated Lemons Never Forget a little beyond its station in the Top 50 given the run of more ambitious and ‘deeper’ songs in the recent countdown. But Lemons‘ combination of sharp pop-rock sensibility and those suggestions of psychedelia combined with the song’s slam dunk brevity, I always find both thoroughly irresistable and impressive. The Bee Gees attempted something similar with The Earnest of Being George on Horizontal but this is the definitive article.

No 12 Holiday
No 14 Walking Back to Waterloo

World

No. 18 in Top 50 Bee Gees’ Songs 1966-72

By Barry, Maurice & Robin Gibb
Lead Vocals: Barry & Robin
Single A-side, 1967
Album: Horizontal 1968

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“And of course it rains everyday”

World crashes us into the Bee Gees’ second album, Horizontal, like a kind of wake-up call. Repetitive bass, pounding piano and percussion are quickly followed by Barry’s starstruck ‘Now I’ve found that the world is round’ vocal paired with ethereal mellotron and piano. This gives way to short-lived wailing electric guitar and percussion. Some superb Beatlesque multi-tracked vocals take over – ‘Living tomorrow, where in the world will I be?’ and then the quietly self-doubting breakdown ‘Or am I needed here?’

In under a minute, several highly contrasting styles are effortlessly stitched together to create a disjointed but dramatically compelling piece which flows beautifully. It’s quite a radical take on the pop single.

World is also significant for being the first appearance on a Bee Gees record of heavily compressed, double-tracked piano, a characteristic element of their late 60s sound.*

Map of the World

I’m sure I read somewhere that the song was conceived as a kind of satire on wide-eyed hippies; the Bee Gees were never very big on flower-power (despite donating so generously to its allied musical genres). This could be the case.

World could also be read as being about someone whose eyes are suddenly opened to the reality of things with defences stripped away, the world crashing into everyday consciousness; certainly an air of disappointment turning into crisis and then bewilderment characterises the song. It suggests some kind of prisoner (literal or of the mind?) who has had an awakening too late and can now only ponder ‘all of the things I have done… all of the times I’ve gone wrong’ and ‘why do they keep me here?’

Or World could simply be about the planet as seen from space (the promo film certainly suggests this).

Whatever the interpretation, World‘s revelation brings discomfort as much as it does clarity and it’s that sense of continuing unease – confusion coupled with moments of clarity – which gives the song much of its power.

Round going round

Despite its inventive, stylistic contrasts, World marks the first instance of the brothers using repetition as a central compositional device such that the song could almost go spinning on and on ad infinitum. It’s maybe something I view a little warily. Repetition was overused to rather tiring effect with weaker ballads on the Two Years On album. Somehow its early appearance here feels significant. Perhaps I’m relating it too much to 1972’s My World, a vastly inferior titular follow-up where repetition is the entire raison-d’etre of the song.

Actually, the circularity of World feels both fresh and integral. With its creative disjunctures and slightly head askance, skewed outlook it’s an arresting album opener. The last two choruses – Robin takes over the vocal before Barry returns for the chorus-to-fade – with their harp, strings and horns perhaps hint at a final release.

A 1967 Top of the Pops performance is one of the standout clips from last year’s The Bee Gees at the BBC… and Beyond.

*if you listen to the albums chronologically, that is, though Lemons Never Forget was recorded before World and Words around the same time.

No 17 Kilburn Towers
No 19 Trafalgar

The Change Is Made

No. 34 in Top 50 Bee Gees’ Songs 1966-72

By Barry, Maurice & Robin Gibb
Lead Vocal: Barry
Album: Horizontal 1968

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“Look out my window, I can see tomorrow”

The Bee Gees do loose-limbed guitar blues rock and do it rather well.

I wouldn’t want a whole album of this but it adds another dimension to Horizontal, sitting neatly in the middle of those final three, heavy songs which are nevertheless entirely different from each other.

Bill Shepherd quite rightly lets vocal and guitars do the talking so orchestral accompaniment is restricted to brass and, latterly, strings and the odd timpani roll. Lack of vocal harmonies also make for a starker than usual feel.

No 33 Bad Bad Dreams
No 35 It’s Just the Way

Horizontal

No. 44 in Top 50 Bee Gees’ Songs 1966-72

By Barry, Maurice & Robin Gibb
Lead Vocals: Barry & Robin
Album: Horizontal 1968

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“This is the start of the end”

Horizontal isn’t an entirely enjoyable listen for me. I can never quite relax into it. It slightly disturbs me. Maybe it’s something about the melodic shifts or Barry’s wail on that descending ‘Goodbyyyye’. Maurice’s mellotron is never more ghostly. The whole song has an air of finitude about it, something fatalistic, haunted. I don’t want to get too close.

So much of Horizontal (the album) is about endings. This is the final track and it’s yet another ending, the final one: ‘This is the start of the end’ … Horizontal has that deathly quality.

The one thing I do know about ‘Horizontal’ is that I dislike the line ‘And feeling moments of swimming in cream’. I had always heard this as ‘feeling moments of swimming upstream’ which seemed to make more sense if related to (trying to resist) the end of life. ‘Swimming in cream’ gives me nothing at all.

As a song, I respect its atmosphere of discomfort. But I haven’t yet learned to make friends with ‘Horizontal’.

No 43 I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You
No 45 I Laugh in Your Face