Of all the qualities that America has to offer to visitors, you wouldn’t expect poorly tended roads would be high among them. Yet the Bee Gees will forever be grateful to a rugged stretch of Florida highway.
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Their daily commute to their record studio in Florida brought about the inspiration for the 1975 song “Jive Talkin’.” It gave the band a commercial lifeline when they needed it most, and it redefined their sound in a way that would pay massive dividends in the years to come.
Course Correction
The Bee Gees seemed like a spent commercial force as they prepared to make their 1975 album Main Course. After scoring big in the late ’60s and early ’70s with lush, orchestrated ballads, the Brothers Gibb found the grounds of musical taste shifting uncomfortably underneath their feet as the ’70s progressed.
It’s common knowledge the band thrived in the second half of the decade with their disco-flavored songs. But their shift wasn’t calculated. Nor was it as sudden as it’s sometimes portrayed. Their 1974 album Mr. Natural found them incorporating Philly soul-style elements to their approach, so they were clearly on the path to changing their sound in a profound way.
Another underrated catalyst for their shift was their relocation to Florida to record the album. It exposed them to American clubs and the sounds emanating from them. But more than anything, the new environs paid off thanks to a fateful stretch of Florida road that led to the creation of “Jive Talkin’,” the song that would single-handedly bring the band back from the brink of career implosion.
Jumping “Jive”
If you’ve ever heard “Jive Talkin’,” you know that the song possesses a unique, rubbery rhythmic pulse. The origin of that pulse was a somewhat rickety bridge the band passed over every day on their way from their living quarters in Biscayne Bay to the studio in Miami. As the tires rolled over the bridge, Barry Gibb heard something musical in it.
He memorized the sound, and he and his brothers (Robin and Maurice) set about writing a track based on it. They originally called it “Drive Talkin’” to commemorate what inspired it. But when Barry sang the chorus, others in the studio heard the word “jive” instead.
When the brothers were informed “jive” was American slang for lying, they wrote lyrics based on the concept of a woman who can’t be trusted. “Jive Talkin’” capitalized on the burgeoning disco craze and soared to the top of the U.S. charts, a place to which the group would often return in the upcoming few years with even more disco-flavored smashes.
Behind the Lyrics of “Jive Talkin’”
Barry Gibb doesn’t waste any time getting to the point in the song: It’s just your jive talkin’, you’re telling me lies. From that point, the narrator delineates all the ways this girl deceives him. Yet he says it more as an exasperated shrug rather than a definitive putdown, because he doesn’t seem like he’s prepared to leave her: Oh, my child, you got so much / You gonna take away my energy.
It’s to the point this girl who constantly cries wolf is well-known for her prevarications: Nobody believes what you say. But it’s the narrator who bears the brunt of it: There you go with your fancy lies / Leavin’ me lookin’ like a dumbstruck fool. In the final lines, he admits he might be stuck in this mode for a long time: And if there’s somebody you’ll love till you die / Then all that jive talkin’ just gets in your way.
“Jive Talkin’” provides a great example of how songwriting requires a kind of hyper-awareness, because just about anything can be the match that lights the fire of a hit song. In the case of this classic, it was a rough patch of road that rescued the Bee Gees from an even rougher patch in their career.
Photo by Robin Platzer/Getty Images
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