Bee Gees single by single thread

Holiday (1967)

Released: September 1967
B-side: Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You (US & Australia) / Red Chair, Fade Away (Continental Europe)
Charts: #16 (USA), #18 (Canada), #2 (Netherlands), #10 (Spain), #18 (France)

 

"Holiday" is a song released by the Bee Gees in the United States in September 1967. It appeared on the album Bee Gees' 1st. The song was not released as a single in their native United Kingdom because Polydor UK released the single "World" from their next album Horizontal.

The song was prominently featured in the South Korean film Nowhere to Hide. It later featured in the South Korean television series Reply 1997, and South Korean girl group Red Velvet's Level Up Project, as a contrast to the song of the same name by SM Entertainment labelmate, Girl's Generation.

One of the robots sang the song in the "Mitchell" episode of the American television comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Composition and recording
The song is composed primarily in a minor key with a strong orchestral presence. Brothers Barry and Robin Gibb, who also wrote the song, share lead vocals. The song was recorded during the same session as "To Love Somebody" around April 1967.

Release
The song's flipside was "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You" in the US, Canada and Australia but "Red Chair, Fade Away" was used in other territories. The song's music video, consisted of footage of the band enjoying traveling a city bus in Paris. Their footage visiting Paris is also used as the music video for "Words". Another promotional film, filmed in black and white, featured the group performing the song.

The song remained a concert favourite for over 30 years, and Maurice Gibb often provided the audience with comedic antics by attempting many failed attempts to join Barry and Robin while singing this song. Evidence of this can be seen in the 1989 "One For All" concert video where Maurice takes a camera from a film cameraman standing nearby and films Barry and Robin as they sing the song.

Holiday (Bee Gees song) - Wikipedia

 

yet another early favourite.
my parents orange best of the bee gees album was always a favourite and these are the bee gees i grew up with

 

The first of their mysterious lyrics singles.
They were often panned for their ability to crank out a song almost instantly as it being throw away music.
The truth is that their often rather odd lyrics allows listeners to make the song personal to them and in doing so they have endured for generations now.

 

Three amazing singles in a row. Love Holiday. Wish Robin didn’t change his voice for the next album onward. Love the sound of it on Holiday & I Can’t See Nobody.

 

the flipside "Every Christian lionhearted man" gave me the heebeejeebees when i was little, but i grew to love it also

 

The Paris promo video

 

It's alright, but a bit of a comedown after "To Love Somebody". Delightfully moody. I'd never heard it before picking up Their Greatest Hits: The Record in the mid-2000's.

 

Another fantastic release. Holiday.... it's so simple yet beautiful with Robin's delicate vocals. Just love it.

The flip side(s) are interesting. Didn't quite understand Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You the first few times I heard it. I've definitely come to appreciate it though. Red Chair Fade Away is eclectic...not a favorite of mine but I don't skip it often either. Certainly a product of the era lol.

My thoughts exactly.

The vague lyrics allows each listener to interpret the meaning differently.

 

I've always LOVED this particular promo video!

Particularly when Maurice (as usual) makes Robin laugh around the 1:10 mark lol.

Such a random yet casual video showing the guys relaxed and enjoying themselves.

 

Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, my local Top 40 station had a weekly oldies show on Saturday night, and it seemed like they played “Holiday” every week. I remember the line “throwing stones, throwing stones” and it wasn’t until I purchased the “Tales” box in 1990 that I learned that this hauntingly beautiful ballad was from the same group that just dominated the airwaves in the late 70s with Stayin’ Alive and Tragedy.

 

I've never been a fan of To Love Somebody, which was my very first exposure to the Bee Gees. I think it's a very good song though. The flip side Close Another Door is not one of the standout tracks on First.

I'm not sure exactly when I first heard Holiday -- I think on the radio, although it didn't become much of a hit here -- but I disliked it intensely for quiet a while. Those days, however, are long gone and now I quite like it. Both flips are personal favourites off First (although Please Read Me is the ultimate).

 

A magnificent bit of "Baroque'nroll" very much in the same vein as "Pretty Ballerina," "Andmoreagain," and "You're A Very Lovely Woman," all also from 1967. Like "Spicks & Specks," a big portion of it is based on Pachelbel's Canon chords. It was an interesting choice having Barry sing the first twenty-five seconds and having Robin sing the rest of it. I've always loved that one note that sounds like one of the violins is not quite in tune with the others (at 2:24 of the HQ video and 2:23 of the promo video). For me, it paints a mental image of a string section that definitely consists of humans and not robots.

"Every Christian Lionhearted Man Will Show You" is a bit weird. It's partially a Gregorian chant (like The Yardbirds' "Still I'm Sad"), and partially an echo-laden workout for the drummer. An interesting coincidence is that The Associations' then current B-side, "Requiem For The Masses" (the flipside of "Never My Love") also begins with a Gregorian chant.

"Red Chair Fade Away" (like "Turn Of The Century") became a flop single for the Cyrkle a few months later:

 

"Holiday". I would place this one towards the very top of my favorite singles by the Brothers Gibb. The minor key (Am), Robin's vocal, the keyboard and the harp playing creating such an ominous vibe that still resonates with me since first hearing it some 40+ years ago. Even the rather odd and abrupt ending of the song is thrilling.

In the mid 70s, When I was a small child and lived on a dirt road in rural nowhere Michigan, I would ride the schoolbus to school in the early morn. My Brother and I were the very first ones picked up at the crack of dawn. The Busdriver lady was short and sandy brown with thick glasses and teeth not unlike Robin's. Anyway, She had an 8-track tape player installed and only one album, Best Of Bee Gees, that I heard every single morning, over and over, for as long as I can remember. She never once played anything else. That made such a huge impression on me musically, and I couldn't wait for "Holiday" to play again.

 

Yes!

 

I'm not crazy about the original recording, but my first exposure to this great song was on Here At Last album, and I've always preferred the live versions.

 

"Holiday" is yet another great Bee Gees single. This was one more 45 I first got in my 1974 Bee Gees binge, and just as was true of "To Love Somebody," it seemed familiar when I first played it. Perhaps I'd also heard it in the 1960s. Perhaps it was just so haunting that it seemed timeless to me.

As a speaker of American English, "ooh, you're a holiday" didn't make literal sense to me. Only much later did I learn that in the mother country, "holiday" means what we Yanks call "vacation." Then I think I got it: The "you" is a welcome respite from the day-to-day, week-to-week grind, and to have that "every day" as the song states later -- how great that would be!

But my favorite couplet in the song is this:
"Millions of eyes can see
Yet why am I so blind?"
Had the song been written a bit later than it was, it would have been a brilliant observation about fame and self-doubt. Perhaps that's one reason it stayed in the set list for so many years. As it was, it could have been about anything -- or about popularity in general, in which case the question would have been one of independence rather than doubt. It's such a great question.

"Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You" is yet another weird one, but in a good way. The title, of course, reminded me of Richard the Lion-Hearted, whom I already knew of when I first heard the song. Knowing he was from medieval times, the Gregorian chant-like vocals made sense. The closest analogue I can immediately recall is "Still I'm Sad" by the Yardbirds. But the Bee Gees use a haunting Mellotron riff instead of standard rock instruments to drive the song along.

"Red Chair, Fade Away," the B-side outside the U.S., is pretty good, too, but it sounds like a B-side or album cut.

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Instead of releasing "Holiday" in the UK, two of the Bee Gees (Robin and Maurice) sang harmony vocals on a cover by a singer named Oscar, who also was signed to Robert Stigwood's Reaction label. Before recording "Holiday," Oscar already had released "Over the Wall We Go," an early David Bowie song, and "Join My Gang," written by Pete Townshend, as A-sides.

Within a year, Oscar, whose full name was Paul Oscar Beuselinck, had changed his performing name to Paul Nicholas. He then had a long stage and screen career (he was in the movies Tommy and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and was part of the London cast of Hair) and had a Top 5 hit in the U.S. in the fall of 1977 with "Heaven on the 7th Floor."

This would not be the last time the Brothers Gibb chose not to release a single of their own to avoid competing with a cover.

Here's the Oscar version of "Holiday":



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Two months before the 45 was released, both sides of the future single received special mention in a mainstream newspaper. In a contemporaneous review of the album Bee Gees' 1st that appeared in the July 30, 1967 edition of The New York Times, Richard Goldstein wrote (parentheses in original, brackets added for clarity):

Two major compositions (“Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Tell You” and “Holiday”) are superb examples of eclectic Pop music. They share a brooding ecclesiastical mood (“We always thought if somebody put monks in a song it would sell" [said Barry Gibb]). The former song begins with Gregorian chanting, then slides into an easy rhythm, followed by some salty vocalizing in the chorus. It moves back and forth from religiosity to rock (ending in a mournful drum fade-out) with brilliant continuity because all the melodies are tightly knit; they speak to one another.

"Holiday” has more secular overtones, but it uses a cathedral organ to juxtapose a gay lyric with a melancholy tune. The tension between words and melody provides just the right setting for what the Bee Gees want to say in “Holiday”: its protagonist cannot love the girl of his dreams. His statement is executed with precise and stunning musical irony.

Once "Holiday" became the Bee Gees' third U.S. single, in Record World the Bee Gees graduated from "sleeper" status to the front-page "Single Picks of the Week" in the September 23, 1967 issue. The magazine editors wrote, "'Holiday' ... is cause for a holiday, since it is another of the distinctive, inventive Bee Gees mood pieces." Billboard yet again predicted a top-20 result for "Holiday" the same week: "An intriguing ballad change of pace from their 'To Love Somebody' hit, this outstanding Robert Stigwood Production should quickly prove to be a hot sales item for the group."

In both Billboard and Record World, "Holiday" did better than "To Love Somebody" as it peaked at #16 in both; Cash Box saw the song get all the way to #12, the highest peak yet for the Bee Gees in the States. "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You" did not make the charts in any of the three trade papers, though it later appeared on the 1969 LP Best of Bee Gees.

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The biggest difference between the mono and stereo versions of these two songs is the echo that is all over both songs in stereo. It's not quite as bad as when Columbia Records took a mono recording, split it into two channels, then put one channel on a slight delay, creating an echo effect that the label passed off as "stereo." (Think Gene Autry's 1949 recording of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which sadly still receives airplay, and sometimes shows up on CD compilations, in fake stereo.) At least the Bee Gees' stereo recordings are true stereo with separation. The mono mixes are significantly drier and much more pleasing to my ears.

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Atco assigned the catalog number 45-6521 to this 45. "Holiday" has a matrix number of 67C-12681, and that of "Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You" is 67C-12685. (This shows that both are the same versions as on the LP Bee Gees' 1st. The Atlantic labels assigned matrix numbers to album cuts consecutively based on the album's running order if the song was not previously released or otherwise given one.)

Again, five different pressing plants made copies of "Holiday" for Atco -- the same five that made "To Love Somebody." First pressings from Monarch (MO), Plastic Products (PL), and Specialty (SP) lack a reference to the album from which the two songs came. Second pressings from all three, plus all copies from American Record Pressing (AM) and Columbia Pitman (CP, which finally appears on the label), mention on both sides of the label some variation of "From L.P. 33-223".

The AM copies again have anomalies that those from the other plants don't have: There is no "45" before the catalog number (6521), and the number is on the left side of the label rather than the right.

Basically, there are eight known variants of the "Holiday" single:
-- AM: perimeter print "ATCO RECORDS 1841 BROADWAY, N.Y. N.Y."; album reference "From L.P.-33-223"
-- CP: perimeter print "Division of ATLANTIC RECORDS, New York, N.Y."; album reference "From L.P. 33-223"
-- MO (1st): perimeter print "ATCO RECORDS 1841 BROADWAY, N.Y. N.Y."; no album reference
-- MO (2nd): perimeter print "DISTRIBUTED BY ATCO RECORD SALES, 1841 BROADWAY, N.Y., N.Y "; album reference "From L.P. 33-223"
-- PL (1st): perimeter print "Division of ATLANTIC RECORDS, New York, N.Y."; no album reference
-- PL (2nd): perimeter print "Division of ATLANTIC RECORDS, New York, N.Y."; album reference "From Atco L.P. 33-323" (evidently, every PL 2nd pressing has this incorrect catalog number; in a weird coincidence, Atco SD 33-323 was used in 1970 for -- get this -- Robin's Reign by Robin Gibb)
-- SP (1st): perimeter print "Division of ATLANTIC RECORDS, 1841 B'way, N.Y., N.Y."; no album reference
-- SP (2nd): perimeter print "Division of ATLANTIC RECORDS, 1841 B'way, N.Y., N.Y."; album reference "From LP-33-223"

Promo copies exist from at least Specialty (SP) and Plastic Products (PL). Neither version has a reference to an album.

 

Funny, I’ve loved this song for 5o years and didn’t realize Barry sang the opening line until now. I thought the whole thing was Robin.

 

The Bee Gees were about to become very, very popular in New Zealand thru to 1971, but To Love Somebody and Holiday didn't bother the New Zealand hit parade, whereas New York Mining Disaster 1941 reached #3. Still, we only had a top twenty back then and those two songs could have had a successful chart run if the charts had been a top 40.

 

Sorry to take the thread a little off topic but all the Bee Gees talk got me interested in reading their story again. I read Tragedy - Ballad of the Bee Gees and found it lacking. Could anyone recommend a really good book on them? Thanks in advance!

 

You can't go wrong with Tales of the Brothers Gibb, most of the more recent bios (like Tragedy) cherry picks stuff from that book but is nowhere as detailed. Written and compiled by fans and collectors with a host of interviews with their co-producers, former band members, artists they've worked with and other people close to the Gibbs.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780387407

 

I agree with FH, and also recommend the one official bio by David Leaf. It came out in 1979 so it obviously is just part of the story.

Keppel Road and The Official Story of the Bee Gees are excellent DVDs too.

 

Tales of the Brothers Gibb would be my recommendation as well. Fantastic bio!

I also recommend Bee Gees: The Day-By-Day Story, 1945-1972 by Andrew Sandoval. Very informative and interesting!

https://www.amazon.com/Bee-Gees-Day...534084000&sr=8-1&keywords=bee+gees+day+by+day

 

Massachusetts (1967)

Released: 19 September 1967 (UK), November 1967 (US)
B-side: Barker of the UFO (UK), Sir Geoffrey Saved the World (US)
Charts: #1 (UK), #11 (US), #2 (Australia & Canada), #1 (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden)