Bee Gees single by single thread

It's pretty close to the studio version aside from some horns during the bridge.

 

It definitely had a physical single in the USA. I also like this live version, maybe even better than the studio version.
It's an odd but intriguing single, and the last one before that "fever" thing changed things forever.

 

I replayed the live version of "Edge of the Universe" to remind me of what it sounded like, because I've rarely heard it since 1977, when it was a hit. Even back then, I heard it on American Top 40 almost as often as I heard it on the radio otherwise. But it's quite good! I bought the 45 when it was popular and spun it a few times. Here at Last...Bee Gees...Live was already a hit double LP when the single came out; "Edge of the Universe" was a good choice for release. In retrospect, it was the calm before the storm, the chills before the fever.

As was true of many other Bee Gees singles of this era, "Edge of the Universe" was shortened for the 45. The album version is 5:15; the single, though listed with other times on the label, actually plays 3:54. Two edits and a fade were made to the LP cut.

Between this 45, a later B-side, and some RSO Top Line oldies, I think six different tracks from the live album ended up on 45s.

---

In the July 16, 1977 Cash Box, "Edge of the Universe" became yet another Bee Gees single to receive a spotlighted review on its Picks of the Week page: "This cut from 'Here at Last -- Live' has already been a favorite to play as an album cut. As a concert number as well as a single, the tune combines the sounds that made the Bee Gees popular in the '60s as well as the '70s, featuring an impeccably harmonized chorus and a tricky rock and roll bridge that keeps listeners begging for more." Record World had the song as one of its Page 1 single reviews yet again: "Originally the B side of 'Nights On Broadway,' this song in its live version seems a sure winner. The melody is its most attractive feature, and the performance, of course, shines."

Billboard didn't think as much of "Edge of the Universe"; it listed the song among its Recommended (31-100 chart peak) singles in its July 16, 1977 issue and stated only the 45 rpm equivalent of name, rank, and serial number.

That lack of enthusiasm was closer to what eventually happened. "Edge of the Universe" peaked at #26 in both Billboard and Cash Box and only #42 in Record World. It didn't make the Radio & Records chart. It also got to #43 on the 50-position Billboard Easy Listening chart.

Not a lot of stations programmed the song, and on those that did, it wasn't a big hit. An exception was WBIT in Adel, GA, in the far southern part of the state, where it made the top 5.

---

"Edge of the Universe"/"Words" was released in July 1977 based on the industry review date. It came out a full six weeks after its parent album, Here at Last...Bee Gees...Live. Thanks to the recent success of Kiss Alive! and especially Frampton Comes Alive!, releasing a single (or more) from a live album was no longer unusual. And the Bee Gees' live set was very popular: It peaked at #8 in Billboard and spent 90 weeks on its LP chart, longer than any other Bee Gees album (not including the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack).

The 45 has a catalog number of RSO RS 880. "Edge of the Universe" has a matrix number of 77 NP 2708; the "Words" matrix number is 77 NP 2719. This again reflects their order and location on the album. All copies of "Words" have a listed time of 4:23; "Edge of the Universe" is listed differently on different labels.

Probably in hopes of spurring airplay, RSO put three timings on "Edge of the Universe" promo copies and labeled them "Intro", "Basic Time", and "Fade". It then carried that over to stock copies. In theory, the actual time of the song was the sum of the three numbers; in reality, it wasn't. Depending on which pressing plant supplied the 45 you bought, the total was 3:35, 3:18, or 3:01 -- and all of them had the exact same version of the song, which actually clocks in at 3:54, as mentioned earlier.

Four different pressing plants, one more than usual, made 45s of "Edge of the Universe." Joining CBS Pitman, PRC, and CBS Santa Maria was CBS Terre Haute, which is only about 100 miles from the PRC plant (both in Indiana). Terre Haute and Pitman pressings are fairly similar in general; the bold print on the Terre Haute copies tends to be smaller, and the catalog number is in bolder and thicker print.

All four have the same basic information on the labels, but each has its differences.

CBS Pitman has STEREO on both labels. It has the time of "Edge of the Universe" listed as Intro: :10 / Basic Time: 3:01 / Fade: :07
PRC has the "Edge of the Universe" time as Intro: :27 / Basic Time: 3:01 / Fade: :07
CBS Santa Maria omits all the details on the time of "Edge of the Universe" and simply states "Time: 3:01" (imagine the surprise if someone tried to include it as part of a carefully calculated mixtape!)
CBS Terre Haute has STEREO on both labels. It lists "Edge of the Universe" as
Intro: :27 / Basic Time: 3:01 / Fade: :07 ...
Oddly, it has the words TOP SIDE on the "Edge of the Universe" label and FLIP SIDE on the "Words" label. Finally, it has the American spelling of ORGANIZATION on both labels (the other three plants use the British spelling with an S).

RSO did not use CBS Terre Haute as an overflow, but from the beginning. I say this because all the promo 45s I've seen were pressed at Terre Haute. They have white labels, one side mono, the other side stereo; the time listed is the :27 / 3:01 / :07 version; and both labels have the words TOP SIDE on them.

 

I heard I.O.I.O. For the first time on the Tales From The Brothers Gibb set in 1990 and it instantly became my favorite Bee Gees song. Still is and on a playlist I made for our now 21 month old daughter I Back it up with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and she sings along with both. I recently acquired an original vinyl of Cucumber Castle and play it all the time. Love it!

 

"I.O.I.O." is also one of my favourite singles by the Bee Gees. Very catchy.

 

Can't remember if anyone posted this version of Edge of the Universe, but I've always liked this performance as well:

 

CBS Terre Haute's involvement here does seem odd. As noted, CBS Terre Haute and PRC were located fairly close to one another, and likely typically supplied a lot of the same geographic areas. A record company making pressing arrangements with different plants to cover different parts of the country would seem to need one plant in that area, not two.

And as I mentioned in an earlier post, it's my impression that there was a close relationship between PolyGram and PRC, due to PRC having previously been owned by the Phonogram half of the company (Mercury/Philips). I think PolyGram was very deliberately using CBS only for the parts of the country PRC couldn't supply. They needed CBS to press 45s for them at Pitman and Santa Maria, to cover the eastern and western parts of the country. They didn't need CBS to press 45s for them at Terre Haute, because PRC could cover that part of the country.

So, against that backdrop, why was this 45 pressed at both PRC and CBS Terre Haute? Here's a theory: Perhaps there was a capacity issue around this time at Pitman (which up to this point had pressed the promos of all of the Bee Gees' Polydor-distributed RSO 45s), and a decision was made by CBS to press at least some of the 45s they were contracted to press for Polydor that would have normally been pressed at Pitman (including the promos) at Terre Haute instead. Just speculation on my part, but it's one possible explanation.

 

The complete lack of picture sleeves on U.S. Bee Gees 45s prior to 1983 has been brought up a couple of times. If you look at usage patterns of picture sleeves by the U.S. record industry, that's less surprising than it may seem at first glance.

In the 1960s, it's my impression that picture sleeves saw moderate usage by the U.S. record industry, with artists who were more popular and on larger labels more likely to get them more consistently. (Almost every '60s 45 by Elvis Presley, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones had a picture sleeve, for example.) If you picked up a list of the Billboard Top 40 from a random week in say, 1965, and looked up which 45s came with picture sleeves, I'd guess you'd probably find ten or fifteen singles that had them, with the majority of them fitting the "popular artist on a larger label" model. I think the level of usage dropped towards the end of the decade as the industry began to transition into the next era, when picture sleeves would be much fewer and farther between.

As far as the Bee Gees go, I don't think Atlantic/Atco was a heavy user of picture sleeves (Atlantic was really a small company until it became part of the Warner Bros. organization in 1967), and the Bee Gees didn't start releasing 45s in the U.S. until the later part of the decade, when picture sleeves were already in decline as an institution. With that background, it's not too surprising that none of the Bee Gees' '60s U.S. 45s had a picture sleeve.

In the 1970s, the U.S. record industry largely stopped using picture sleeves. Very few artists got them on anything resembling a consistent basis, no matter how popular they were. If you picked up a list of the Billboard Top 40 from a random week in 1975, and looked up which 45s came with picture sleeves, you'd probably find no more than two or three singles that had them. I'm suspect there were weeks in the mid '70s when there wasn't a single song in the Top 40 whose 45 came with a picture sleeve. The vast majority of singles from the '70s, even the big hits, simply don't have them. The Bee Gees were no exception.

Around 1977, there began to be a noticeable uptick in the number of picture sleeves available. With each passing year thereafter, there seemed to be more U.S. singles with picture sleeves than there were the year before. But into the early '80s, the use of picture sleeves was hardly universal. There were still many hits that didn't have them. This included everything the Bee Gees released up through Living Eyes.

As picture sleeves began to make a comeback in the late '70s, some trends emerged in terms of which records got them and which didn't. One of those trends is that sleeves seemed to be somewhat more common among artists who were marketed primarily towards younger audiences. This may explain why Andy managed to get picture sleeves on a few of his 45s several years before his older brothers did. A picture sleeve with a nice shot of Andy might be a selling point for a teenage girl perusing the 45 rack at her local record store.

By 1984, things had reached a point where picture sleeves had become so common in the U.S. that it had become surprising for a big hit to not have one. If you picked up a list of the Billboard Top 40 from a random week in 1985, and looked up which 45s came with picture sleeves, you'd probably find that at least 30 to 35 singles had them. There are probably weeks in the 1984-88 timeframe when there wasn't a single song in the Top 40 whose 45 wasn't available with a picture sleeve.

Accordingly, almost all of the U.S. singles the Bee Gees released from 1983 through the end of the decade, as well as many of the solo singles put out by Barry and Robin while the group was on hiatus from 1984-86, came with picture sleeves. Note that this results in an odd situation where the group's more popular singles from the '60s and '70s never had picture sleeves, but their less popular material from the '80s did. The explanation is that whether a particular Bee Gees U.S. 45 came with a picture sleeve is more reflective of how much the U.S. record industry was using picture sleeves at the time than of how popular the group was at the time.

By the later part of 1988, the usage of picture sleeves on U.S. singles was starting to decline noticeably again. This time, it was because the popularity of 45s themselves had entered a steep decline, with record companies and consumers pushing them aside in favor of cassette singles. Many hit singles from 1988-89 still had them, but by 1990 every U.S. label had stopped making picture sleeves for 45s on anything other than a very occasional basis.

 

I wonder if part of the picture sleeve is that it comes down to how singles in general were marketed and used in US. In the UK, artists went out their way to make these stand alone value added packages from LPs, where here they were used to help sell the LP and included on the parent package.

 

Andy Gibb - (Love Is) Thicker Than Water (1977)

Released: September 1977
B-side: Words and Music (US), Flowing Rivers (UK)
Charts: #1 (USA), #2 (Canada), #13 (Australia), #25 (New Zealand)

 

"(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" is a song performed by Andy Gibb, released in 1977, it was his second single that topped the US Billboard Hot 100. It was mainly written by Barry Gibb, with help from Andy Gibb. The B-side of this song was "Words and Music" in the US, but "Flowing Rivers" in the UK. It became a gold record.

Billboard magazine describes the song as "a midtempo ballad that changes pace from a lushly romantic and soft [Andy] Gibb vocal to an uptempo instrumental drive. Plenty of melody and another catchy hook".



Writing and recording
"(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" was written originally by Barry Gibb in Bermuda alone with Andy Gibb credited as co-writer on the latter. Andy Gibb later revealed writing a song with Barry:

“ I did one song with Barry, 'Thicker Than Water' which I thought was good", Gibb explains, "Even though it says on the credits 'B. & A. Gibb', it is really Barry's song - it is very hard to write with Barry, but he said, 'Help me think of a great title'. That was a period where Barry was thinking of titles first and seeing how they would inspire him to write a song, we were thinking of titles first and seeing how they would inspire him to write a song, We were thinking of good titles, and I said, 'How about Thicker Than Water?' I did not say 'Love Is' just 'Thicker Than Water', he said 'That's great!' and then he came up with 'Love is higher than a mountain' and he just went on from there, but the title was totally my idea.”

"(Love Is) Thicker than Water" was recorded in October 1976 at the Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, during the same time as "I Just Want to Be Your Everything". On the two tracks, Joe Walsh of Eagles played guitar. The song was certified Gold in the United States on 16 February 1978 as Robert Stigwood presented Gibb with his first gold record at the Roxy in Los Angeles.

Aftermath
As evidence of the Gibb brothers' U.S. chart domination in 1978, atop the 4 March 1978 Hot 100 the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" was displaced by this song, which in turn was displaced two weeks later by the Bee Gees' "Night Fever", which in turn was displaced eight weeks later by Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You". Since Barry Gibb had a hand in writing all four of these songs, he became the only person in history to write four consecutive US number-one singles, a feat unmatched to this day. The song was released in February 1978 in Netherlands.

On 7 October 1977 Andy performed the song, and "I Just Want to Be Your Everything", on The Midnight Special.

 

There! That oughta give the songs some respectability among the rockers.

I generally don't like songs that have slow dreamy parts, then harder or faster parts (think: "Bella Linda" by The Grass Roots, but that song was marred by changes in tempo, too.) but barry Gibb made it work. What I like is the part after the guitar solo bridge near the end, where Andy just sings "La la, la la la la la la la...", as if it's a placeholder for lyrics.

 

I'd have to listen carefully to this song to be sure, but I think it has a few time signature changes, or places where time signature goes out the window for a couple of bars. Either that, or the odd places at which the accents fall make it sound like that. Either way it's unusual for a Bee Gees Song, at least of that era, though they dabbled a bit with this on some of their earlier songs.

 

No. As a musician who still remembers the basics, I can assure you that the time signature remains constant throughout the song. All you have to do is count 4/4 from letter A right after the drum fill intro. Count it out.

Yes. Barry Gibb was always doing stuff like that. He used some of those tricks on Barbra Streisand's Guilty album, too.

 

Good song. Again, not a favorite, but a good song nonetheless. Andy really sounded a lot like Barry on this song (at least to my ears).

 

Usually teen idols made me want to run screaming from the room, but while I wasn't a huge fan of his singing, Barry certainly wasn't saddling his kid brother with Bee Gees rejects. Both of Andy's big hit singles were fantastic tunes, and this one in particular is really adventuresome, uniquely constructed. I love the dynamic shifts between the verse and chorus, the forceful instrumental break, and the meandering ending of the song. It's vaguely proggy, a little Eagles (hello, Joe Walsh), kicks in with a decidedly disco beat, and is unlike pretty much anything else on the charts at the time.

Barry Gibb was totally on fire at this point.

 

I enjoyed this one much more than IJWTBYE at the time. I liked the tempo changes and it just sounded less teeny-bopper. Of course, I came around to the first one a few years after the fact but I needed no such epiphany to enjoy Thicker.

 

Again, count it out. The tempo doesn't change. Steadily tap your finger as the song plays if you have to to see that it is all the same tempo.

 

I love this song. It's one of those records where the musicianship and the songwriting go hand in hand and help to create something memorable.

 

Like "I Just Want to Be Your Everything," "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" takes me back to my senior year in high school, when I was overcome with teenage angst. This song spoke to the confused feelings I was dealing with even more than Andy Gibb's first hit. "Heaven's angel, devil's daughter" is exactly what it felt like; her presence gave me the warm fuzzies, but it also tormented me. "Should I find out she don't care at all, she'll leave me crying in the end... but I can't leave her..." Even if all this, in my case, was happening only in my overactive, hormone-addled mind, it was so real.

The song is haunting. Its interesting and unusual musical structure, not to mention Joe Walsh's guitar solo between verses (it's so obviously him playing that I'm not sure why it took me so long to put two and two together) keeps me coming back to it even now. It is probably my favorite Andy Gibb song.

I don't remember hearing the unedited version until the single edit had become thoroughly ingrained in me. That slow, soft instrumental before what always sounded like "die-da-die, da-die-da-die-da-die" rather than mere la-la-las kind of throws me. The single trims two lines from the final repeat of the chorus, perfectly cuts that slow instrumental, and fades early. Fortunately, the 45 version is on YouTube as I write this:



"(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" was part of a period where RSO Records had the #1 single on Billboard for 21 straight weeks, 29 of 32, and 31 of 37 from late 1977 through the first eight months of 1978. With the way songs stay at #1 for months at a time in the 2000s, it wouldn't surprise me if that dominance has been surpassed since then, but to me, the only thing today's Hot 100 has in common with the 1978 Hot 100 is the name. Today, a song can exist as vaporware (i.e., you can't buy it anywhere) and be a hit...

---

In the November 5, 1977 issue of Billboard, the magazine predicted a top-30 placement for "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water," writing, "Gibbs' [sic] followup to his No. 1 'I Just Want To Be Your Everything' is a midtempo ballad that changes pace from a lushly romantic and soft Gibb vocal to an uptempo instrumental drive. Plenty of melody and another catchy hook." The same week, Cash Box had it as one of its four spotlighted singles in its Picks of the Week: "The youngest brother Gibb made an impressive debut with his first single, and this second selection further reveals the diversity of his album, 'Flowing Rivers.' The choral harmonies are full of pop appeal, while the arrangement adds a grandiose touch that will attract more progressive tastes. Another chart hit seems likely." Finally, Record World had its review on Page 1 of the November 5 issue: "The follow-up to the year's most successful debut single flows with a light touch and a clever chorus/hook. It sounds like a pop natural."

Indeed it was. Like its predecessor, "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" was a slow mover. It eventually hit #1 in three of the four trade papers; in all three cases, it knocked his older brothers' hit "Stayin' Alive" from the top. In Billboard, "Thicker Than Water" spent two weeks at #1, March 4 and 11, 1978; it was replaced at the top by "Night Fever." In both Cash Box and Record World, the song spent one week at #1 -- March 4, 1978. In the former, it was topped by "Emotion" by Samantha Sang on March 11; in the latter, "Stayin' Alive" returned to the top on March 11. Radio & Records was the exception, as it peaked at #3 on February 24; ahead of it were "Stayin' Alive" at #1 and "Emotion" at #2.

On the Billboard Easy Listening chart, "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" peaked at #18. It did not cross over to the R&B charts.

---

Vent time: Wikipedia is useless for 45 rpm release dates. When only one date is given, the default is to assume that it is wrong!

I have no idea why, but from its beginning, its editors have taken a UK-centric attitude toward almost everything, including spelling, and especially music. If it gave alternate release dates for different countries, or -- just as important -- noted that some songs were singles in some countries but not in others, I'd have less of a problem. But Wikipedia only rarely does it.

OK, vent over.

I bring this up because "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" came out after "How Deep Is Your Love" in the U.S., where it mattered most by 1977. Based on industry review dates, "Thicker Than Water" was released in the second half of October 1977.

Its catalog number was RSO RS 883. "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" has a matrix number of 77 NP 2665, and its B-side, "Words and Music," 77 NP 2661, again matching their location on the Flowing Rivers LP. The A-side time is listed as 3:18; the B-side, 4:38. (The LP length of the former is 4:15.) Those are about the only constants on the 45 labels, as the pressings of this single are a confusing mess.

It appears as if four different pressing plants handled production of this 45: CBS Pitman for the East Coast, PRC and CBS Terre Haute for the Midwest, and Monarch, a new one for RSO, for the West. All but PRC have the word STEREO on the labels.

Regardless of pressing plant, one way to tell an early edition from a later one is by the perimeter print: Around January 1, 1978, RSO Records altered the company information from "MANUFACTURED AND MARKETED BY POLYDOR 810 SEVENTH AVE./N.Y., N.Y. 10019" to "MANUFACTURED & MARKETED BY RSO RECORDS, INC. 8335 SUNSET BLVD., LOS ANGELES, CA 90069". The Polydor versions are early editions; the RSO-print versions are later.

But another alteration was made to the labels even before the change in address from New York to Los Angeles. For the second straight Andy Gibb single, a change in the listed publishing was made. The first pressing has it listed as "Stigwood Music, Inc./Andy Gibb Music/Joye Publishing/Hugh & Barbara Gibb (Unichappell Music) (BMI)" on both sides. This was changed to "Stigwood Music, Inc. (Unichappell Music) (BMI)" at some point.

I have seen 10 (ten) variations of this 45. I will break them down by pressing plant, theoretically in order:

CBS Pitman
1st: N.Y., N.Y. address / five publishers
2nd: N.Y., N.Y. address / two publishers
3rd: Los Angeles, CA address / two publishers

CBS Terre Haute
1st: N.Y., N.Y. address / five publishers
[appears to have been only one pressing here]

PRC
1st: N.Y., N.Y. address / five publishers / "Haven" logo at right in error (probably meant for labels of "Baby Come Back" by Player)
2nd: N.Y., N.Y. address / five publishers
3rd: N.Y., N.Y. address / two publishers
4th: Los Angeles, CA address / two publishers

Monarch
1st: N.Y., N.Y. address / five publishers
2nd: Los Angeles, CA address / five publishers
[appears as if Monarch never altered the publishing]

Fun, eh?

White-label promo copies with "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" on both sides, mono/stereo, five publishers, came from CBS Pitman.

No U.S. copies were issued with picture sleeves.

The RIAA certified "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" as a Gold Record on February 16, 1978.

 

I've been saying this for years. The reason is because Wikipedia started in the U,K.. It is based in the U.K., and it seems that the majority of its publishers are also in the U.K.. This happens more with music than anything else.

So, now that you've said it, maybe some of the people around here will take the complaint seriously. That said, any one of us can go in and add and correct things.

 

Really like both of these songs,Barry had the exact formula for where pop music was at that time.
My only sadness in hindsight is how much that whole era eventually destroyed Andy.

 

Where on earth do you get these crazy notions?

It was founded in San Diego. The first server was in San Diego. It took off after being mentioned on Slashdot (also a US site) in March and July of 2001 - also an American site.

The plurality of editors (20%) reside in the United States, followed by Germany (12%) and Russia (7%).

Wikipedia:Wikipedians - Wikipedia

 

That may scuttle my earlier theory about CBS diverting production of "Edge of The Universe" to Terre Haute due to capacity issues at Pitman. Then again, this single wasn't released too long after "Edge Of The Universe" was, so whatever factors were at work for "Edge Of The Universe" may have still been lingering here. I'm curious to see whether Tim finds that Terre Haute continued to press any Bee Gees/Andy Gibb 45s after this.

45cat has "(Love Is) Thicker Than Water" being released in the U.K. in January 1978, well after "How Deep is Your Love". If that's accurate, I don't know what country the September 1977 release date on Wikipedia came from.

 

Thanks for the correction. I cannot back up where I read that it was started in the U.K., but it remains that an awful lot of the music entries I see on Wiki are published from the U.K. perspective. Tim pointed this out, too. You got any explaination for that?