‘Another Day to Swing on Clothes Lines’
The Bee Gees and Australia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.31733Keywords:
The Bee Gees, nationhood, Cultural Production, masculinityAbstract
A large proportion of overseas-born artists comprise the pop music industries in Australia. Keith Urban, Rick Springfield, members of Cold Chisel, The Angels and Masters Apprentices, for example, not only represent themselves as ‘Australian;’ they are frequently associated with the nation by critics and audiences. The Bee Gees also exemplify this trend. In this article, I wish to bring into focus The Bee Gees’ curious connection with Australia. In order to do this task, I ask a series of questions; first, what is The Bee Gees connection to Australia? Second, how has this connection been constructed and continually reinforced? Third, what forms of discursive resistance against their ‘Australianness’ exist in regard to these constructions? And finally, how might we critically understand the tensions that have emerged regarding their legitimacy as an ‘Australian band’? I argue that their connection to Australia is continually renegotiated due in large part to their incompatibility with dominant performances of masculinity by Australian white male musicians.
References
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Stockbridge, Sally. 1989. ‘Programming Rock n’ Roll: The Australian Version’. Cultural Studies 3/1: 73–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502388900490051
Stratton, Jon. 2007. Australian Rock: Essays on Popular Music. Perth: Network Books.
Taylor, Timothy D. 2012. The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226791142.001.0001
Thornton, S. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Hanover: Wesleyan.
Trainer, Adam. 2016. ‘“Making Do in Ways That We Hadn’t Done Before”: The Early Popular Music Industry in Perth’. Journal of Popular Music Studies 28/2: 248–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpms.12171
von Appen, Ralf, and Andre Doehring. 2006. ‘Nevermind the Beatles, Here’s Exile 61 and Nico: “The Top 100 Records of All Time”—A Canon of Pop and Rock Albums from a Sociological and an Aesthetic Perspective’. Popular Music 25/1: 21–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143005000693
Walker, Clinton. 2014. ‘The Three-Minute Genius’. In The Best Music Writing under the Australian Sun, ed. Christian Ryan, 16–26. Sydney: Hardie Grant Books.
Young, Greg. 2004. ‘The Aesthetics of Masculinity in Late Twentieth-Century Australian Pop Music’. Popular Music 23/2: 173–93. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143004000145
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. New York: Verso.
Apter, Jeff. 2015. Tragedy. Melbourne: Echo.
ARIA. n.d. ARIA Hall of Fame Induction Criteria. Online at http://www.aria.com.au/pages/hall-of-fame.htm (accessed August 6, 2015).
Arnold, Eric J. (producer) 2008. A&E Biography – Andy Gibb. A&E TV Network. First broadcast August 31, 2008.
Arrow, M. 2009. Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia Since 1945. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Australian Music History. 2009. ‘Australian Singles Charts for 1977’. Online at http://australianmusichistory.com/australian-singles-charts-for-1977 (accessed July 30, 2015).
Bee Gees, The. 1977. Birth of Brilliance. Festival Records.
—2010. One Night Only. Eagle Rock Entertainment.
Booth, Douglas. 2012. Australian Beach Cultures: The History of Sun, Sand and Surf. London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
—1992. The Logic of Practice. California: Stanford University Press.
Cash, Tony. 1997. Keppel Road: The Life and Music of the Bee Gees. Polygram Video.
Cusic, Don. 2005. ‘In Defense of Cover Songs’. Popular Music and Society 28/2: 171–77.
Eales, Alison. 2011. ‘“You’re Telling me Lies”: Accounts of Creativity in Popular Music’. Masters of Letters dissertation, University of Glasgow.
Echols, Alice. 2010. Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. New York: W. W. Norton.
Frith, Simon. 1996. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gracyk, Theodore. 1996. Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books.
Hartley, John, and Joshua Green. 2006. ‘The Public Sphere on the Beach’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 9/3: 341–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549406066077
Hayward, Philip. 1992. ‘Introduction’. In From Pop to Punk to Postmodernism: Popular Music and Australian Culture from the 1960s to the 1990s, ed. Philip Hayward. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Hesmondhalgh, David. 2013. The Cultural Industries. London: Sage.
Horne, Donald. 2009. The Lucky Country. Victoria: Penguin Books.
Hollow, C. 2013. ‘Barry Gibb Chats Australia, Stayin’ Alive and Willie Nelson’s Brain Farts’. ARIA Charts. Online at: http://www.ariacharts.com.au/news/37834/interview:-barry-gibb-chats-australia,-’stayin’-alive’-and-willie-nelson’s-brain-farts (accessed February 2014). Please note that this interview has since been removed.
Hunt, Johanna. n.d. SNL Transcripts: Cameron Diaz: 04/09/05: The Barry Gibb Talk Show. Online at http://snltranscripts.jt.org/04/04pgibb.phtml (accessed July 5, 2015).
Huntsman, Leone. 2001. Sand in Our Souls: The Beach in Australian History. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishers.
Jordan, Chris. 1996. ‘Gender and Class Mobility in Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance’. Journal of Popular Film and Television 24/3: 116–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.1996.9943721
Leaf, David. 2001. This Is Where I Came In: The Official Story of the Bee Gees. Eagle Rock Entertainment.
Lipsitz, George. 1994. Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism, and the Poetics of Place. London: Verso.
Marothy, Janos. 1974. Music and the Bourgeois, Music and the Prolearian. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado.
McFarlane, Ian. 2000. The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
McGregor, Craig. 1992. ‘Growing Up (Uncool): Pop Music and Youth Culture in the ’50 and ’60s’. In From Pop to Punk to Postmodernism: Popular Music and Australian Culture from the 1960s to the 1990s, ed. Philip Hayward, 91–99. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
O’Donnell, John, Toby Creswell and Craig Mathieson. 2010. The 100 Best Australian Albums. Sydney: Hardie Grant.
Pessen, Edward. 1985. ‘The Great Songwriters of Tin Pan Alley’s Golden Age: A Social, Occupational, and Aesthetic Inquiry’. American Music 3/2: 180–97. https://doi.org/10.2307/3051635
Peterson, Richard A. 1990. ‘Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of Rock Music’. Popular Music 9/1: 97–116. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000003767
Rowse, Tim. 1978. ‘Heaven and a Hills Hoist: Australian Critics on Suburbia’. Meanjin 37/1: 3–13.
Schmutz, Vaughn. 2005. ‘Retrospective Cultural Consecration in Popular Music’. American Behavioral Scientist 48/11: 1510–523. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764205276617
Shuker, Roy. 2008. Understanding Popular Music Culture, 3rd ed. New York: Routledge.
Stockbridge, Sally. 1989. ‘Programming Rock n’ Roll: The Australian Version’. Cultural Studies 3/1: 73–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502388900490051
Stratton, Jon. 2007. Australian Rock: Essays on Popular Music. Perth: Network Books.
Taylor, Timothy D. 2012. The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226791142.001.0001
Thornton, S. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Hanover: Wesleyan.
Trainer, Adam. 2016. ‘“Making Do in Ways That We Hadn’t Done Before”: The Early Popular Music Industry in Perth’. Journal of Popular Music Studies 28/2: 248–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpms.12171
von Appen, Ralf, and Andre Doehring. 2006. ‘Nevermind the Beatles, Here’s Exile 61 and Nico: “The Top 100 Records of All Time”—A Canon of Pop and Rock Albums from a Sociological and an Aesthetic Perspective’. Popular Music 25/1: 21–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143005000693
Walker, Clinton. 2014. ‘The Three-Minute Genius’. In The Best Music Writing under the Australian Sun, ed. Christian Ryan, 16–26. Sydney: Hardie Grant Books.
Young, Greg. 2004. ‘The Aesthetics of Masculinity in Late Twentieth-Century Australian Pop Music’. Popular Music 23/2: 173–93. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143004000145
Published
2017-05-03
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
O'Grady, P. (2017). ‘Another Day to Swing on Clothes Lines’: The Bee Gees and Australia. Perfect Beat, 18(1), 29-47. https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.31733
