Bee Gees single by single thread

Geoff Bridgford was the last musician to be awarded full member status of the Bee Gees, asked to officially join the group in March 1971 and remained with them until before the Japan tour kicked off in March 1972 when he bowed out.

He is still making music and released a CD a few years ago which is quite good.

 

He has also posted a few videos from his Bee Gees days: Geoff Bridgford

I actually posted one of these videos in an earlier post lol.

His sound is pretty good. Not quite to my taste, but good nonetheless.

 

With a slight pick-up in tempo, I've always felt that "Dearest" could've been a good vehicle for Tiny Tim, singing about his mother.

"Israel" is just plain tuneless.

 

Just listened to both.

Won't do that again for a long time.

 

Run to Me (1972)

Released: 7 July 1972
B-side: Road to Alaska
Charts: #9 (UK), #16 (USA), #3 (Australia, South Africa), #6 (Canada, New Zealand), #28 (Netherlands)

 

"Run to Me" is a song by the Bee Gees, the lead single and first track on the group's album To Whom It May Concern (1972). The song reached the UK Top 10 and the US Top 20.

Written by Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb. Lead vocals by Barry Gibb on the verses and Robin Gibb on the chorus.



Writing and recording
Robin Gibb recalls in The Mail on Sunday on 1 November 2009:

We wrote this is at our manager Robert Stigwood's house in Beverly Hills. He was a great visionary and championed our beliefs and chemistry as brothers. Lyrically, this song chronicles the wishes of a man who longs to be noticed by a broken-hearted girl.

Robin also recalls, "We recorded 'Run to Me' and Andy Williams cut it on his LP. If Andy Williams came up to us and said write a song and we wrote 'Run to Me' for him, he probably wouldn't have recorded it. But we recorded it and then he recorded it."

"Run to Me" was recorded on 12 April 1972 at London's IBC Studios, on the same day as "Bad Bad Dreams" and "Please Don't Turn Out The Lights". It was very much in the mold of the last two successful singles, "Don't Wanna Live Inside Myself" and "My World". The song has a straight verse-chorus number with vocal by both Barry and Robin. Maurice sings in a very low key along with Robin in the chorus which is barely audible, something he rarely did in concert when they performed this song.

Release and live performances
Released 7 July 1972, "Run to Me" saw the Bee Gees return to the UK Top 10 after a three-year absence, climbing to number 9, while in the US it reached number 16. The first Bee Gees single without drummer Geoff Bridgford as he left the band in January that year.

A promotional video for this song was filmed in black and white, featuring Barry and Robin singing in front of Maurice's grand piano.

Cover versions

• Dionne Warwick and Barry Manilow released a version in 1985, which reached number 12 in the US Adult Contemporary chart and at number 86 in the UK; the song was included on Warwick's studio album Finder of Lost Loves.
• Anita Meyer and Lee Towers made it a top 10 hit in the Netherlands in late 1985.
• Oscar de la Hoya from his 2000 self-titled album, his version peaked at number twenty-three on the Adult Contemporary, while the Spanish version "Ven a Mi" peaked at number one on the Hot Latin Songs chart.

Less notable covers include those by Demis Roussos, Sarah Vaughan, La Chiesa, Brenda Lee, Raul Malo, Barry Manilow, Marie Osmond, Jerry Vale, and a duet between Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet.

Run to Me (Bee Gees song) - Wikipedia

 

Love this song,Barrys breathy lead with Robins pleading chorus is such a hook.
Easily the best song on the album so they picked the obvious winner.

Road to Alaska could have been a single on its own.

 

To Whom It May Concern is my second favorite Bee Gees album. I love nearly every song on it without question. The whole thing just works for me.

Run To Me

Great song. Very catchy melody. Infectious chorus. Gorgeous harmonies. Loved when they included this as part of their live medleys. A classic.

Robin's oldest son, Spencer, covered Run To Me with his band, 54 Seconds, as part of a tribute album called A Song For My Father:



Run to Alaska

Fantastic song that is not typical of Robin, which makes it work even more to me. Very upbeat and fun. Would have made a great single for this album.

 

"Run To Me" was the last Bee Gee single to display any element that can loosely be described as "Beatlesque." It's the pentatonic nature of the melody when Barry sings the line, "Am I unwise, to open up your eyes?" which contains echoes of "Child Of Nature/Jealous Guy." Lyrically, the song is certainly reminiscent of "Any Time At All," which also makes the same use of the word, "Shoulder."

"Road To Alaska" is a simple 12-bar blues workout with a bass line that might have been inspired by "Draggin' The Line."

As a side note, in my opinion, "To Whom It May Concern" was easily the most consistant Bee Gees album of the early 1970s, as far as hummable melodies go. The problem with it is that most of the tracks would've benefited greatly from an increase in tempo. "I Can Bring Love" is one of Barry's best melodies, "Sea Of Smiling Faces" is one of Robin's best, and "You Know It's For You" is Maurice at his peak. They're all just begging to be covered by some other act, with much more focused production and engineering.

 

Great song, reminds me more of the Hollies than the Beatles though. The "Now and then, you need someone older" line is a bit of a clunker however.

 

Run to Me is a reasonably decent effort, but I can think of Bee Gees songs I like a whole lot more.

I was lukewarm toward Israel but it's been ages since I heard it (and perhaps only once, or maybe twice). I think there was something about the chord changes in the chorus that put me off.

I'm not sure if I'd heard either of these two B-sides.

 

Great cut! I think this one is underrated. Did well in the US - I vaguely remember it from when I was a tyke - but not as well as it probably deserved. Nicely dramatic without being OTT.

 

Really? Because I recall thinking even as a child that several of their disco-era tracks often sprouted Beatle-esque elements, if only in the harmonies.

I love that line, I think it paints a pretty vivid picture of a guy who was in a relationship with a younger woman who broke it off, but comes back to him occasionally when subsequent relationships fall apart. Like a lot of their songs it's inherently melancholy.

 

To me it is the real leap off into a lost period.

Both those songs you mentioned are pleasant to the ear but were out of sync with the 72-75 era.
They were too sing songy or saccharine without the chorus hook of Run To Me.
Up tempo was taking hold and the 60s were already long past in the US.
No matter how many times I listen to TWIMC or LIATC those two albums generally make me cringe outside of Run To Me and a couple others.

 

Here in The Netherlands I first heard Run To Me by way of a cover in the 80s (didn't know back then it was a cover):

 

Best that you don't listen to A Kick In The Head... then! I recently found an almost-perfect-sounding CD copy of this unreleased classic. Bee Gees 'wilderness years' heaven.

 

Great single off a slightly disappointing album

 

That is funny because I love A Kick In The Head.
To me it sounds like they were moving in the right direction albeit slowly.
Their singles history is really kind of binary,a great song was released or a terrible one was.
In that case a terrible one was after a bad one but that discussion will begin shortly.

 

I love the Bee Gees and almost every song discussed in this thread so far, but that doesn't mean they were all worthy of being singles.

At a minimum, they should have had more balance between up tempo rockers and ballads (think Beatles on Past Masters). Way too many melancholy slow tempo A-Sides.

 

"Run to Me" is terrific, easily my second favorite Bee Gees hit of what I would call their Silver Era, which started with "Lonely Days" and ended with their last Atco single. (The First Golden Era was from "New York Mining Disaster 1941" to "First of May," and the Second Golden Era is yet to come.) The song received saturation airplay on WFIL in Philadelphia, on which it made the top 10. As for me, I grabbed onto it quickly and wouldn't let go. I didn't know it was a Bee Gees song until a year or so later, mainly because I was more song-oriented in 1972. Only when I started to collect 45s in 1973 did I begin to more vigorously match artists with titles.

"Run to Me" still resonates with me. To me, the song is sung from the point of view of a guy on the outside looking in, who wishes the object of his affection would see that he's, well, maybe not The One, but a pretty good alternative. Frankly, there are times in my life where that would be just fine by me. Today, at my age, most of the women I know would "need someone older" in order to run to me. And they're in no hurry to do so.

"Road to Alaska" sounds like one of Maurice Gibb's quirky, un-Bee-Gee-like, B-sides, but with Robin singing instead. As with other similar songs of this era, I like it, don't love it, but enjoy hearing it.

---

In the late 1970, no later than 1979, I heard a female singer covering "Run to Me" on WMGK, which was a Philadelphia adult-contemporary station at the time. She changed the line in the chorus about needing someone older to "Now and then, when her love grows colder/Oh darling, you run to me." This completely changed the meaning of the song, from a guy wishing that the object of his affection would see that he's worthy of attention to a woman who is in, or wants, an affair. I've remembered this cover all these years, and in putting this post together, I decided to try to find out more about this cover I remembered so distinctly. And I did: It's by a woman who went by the name Flower, and she recorded it in 1977 for United Artists in the U.S.:



---

Billboard revamped its singles review page by the summer of 1972. It grouped "Run to Me" among its Pop Picks for July 15, 1972, but wrote nothing more about it. Cash Box placed the song second in its Singles Picks of the Week, behind only "The Guitar Man" by Bread: "A speedy chart return for them is a given on this one. Features their best chorus in years. Eyeing the #1 spot." Record World had "Run to Me" as one of its four front-page reviews, also on July 15: "First Bee Gees release in some time is as gently irresistible as 'How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.' Hook will have you singing along in no time. A smash!"

In almost every way, "Run to Me" was a bigger hit than "My World." It became another Top 10 hit in Record World, where it peaked at #9. In Cash Box, it got as high as #11. But in Billboard, it reached the same peak as "My World" (#16), even though it seemed to be more popular on radio than its immediate predecessor.

On the Billboard Easy Listening chart, "Run to Me" peaked at #6.

---

Atco 45-6896 was released shortly after the first of July, 1972, based on when the reviews appeared in the trade papers. "Run to Me" had the matrix number 72C-24714 and "Road to Alaska" was numbered 72C-24715. Evidently, Atco received these two tracks before it got the rest of the To Whom It May Concern album cuts, thus its consecutive numbers reflecting the A and B side of the single.

Stock copies of "Run to Me" were pressed by Specialty (SP), Plastic Products (PL), and Monarch (MO). As usual, the 45s are fold-down mono. The perimeter print is the same from all three: "MFG. BY ATLANTIC RECORDING CORP., 1841 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, N.Y.".

There is a significant difference between first and second pressings of the 45 from all three pressing plants. The earliest copies have the publishing on both sides as "Casserole, Lupis, BMI"; later copies have the publishing as "Casserole; BMI & W.B. Music Corp.; ASCAP". This change was made at all three locations, but seems to be less common from Monarch.

Promo copies are known to exist from SP and PL with "Run to Me" in mono on one side, stereo on the other. The publishing is listed as "Casserole, Lupis, BMI".

On the Tales of the Brothers Gibb box set, "Run to Me" plays 3:04. The 45 label lists the time as 3:05. However, the actual running time of both the single and album is closer to 3:11. Listen closely to the song both on the 45 and To Whom It May Concern and you can hear "So darling, you run to me" before the fade decays; this is missing on the box set version.

 

Cheryl Lyn Flor aka Flower would go on to record a song titled "Here Inside" featuring backing vocals by Andy Gibb in 1981.

 

Love this promo video version of the song:

 

Oh what an awesome video!

"Run to Me" is sheer beauty from the brothers. Lovely breathy Barry vocals with a magnificent start to the chorus by Robin. And then they all come in to deliver the knockout blow...wow!!

 

Thank you for the interesting information regarding Maurice singing along with Robin in the chorus.

 

Love this song, and just like "Too Much Heaven", I always felt that "Run To Me" deserved a better live fate than just a medley snippet in the later years.