How Deep Is Your Love

...And its me you need to show
How deep is your love?

So sang the Bee Gees in their smash hit song from 1977.  The song from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was a #1 hit on the U.S. charts and reached #3 in the U.K. But for Bee Gees fans everywhere, the song is still charting in the reaches of our hearts and memories.

The Bee Gees have always held a special place in my life.  And as I heard the news about Robin Gibb’s death last week, those memories came flooding back.  The songs and the story of the Brothers Gibb have also held an uncanny parallel to moments in my own life.  While I was born in 1967, I was truly a child of the ‘70’s and I often tell people “I’m from the '70’s.”  The Bee Gees released some of their biggest hits in that musically important year:  New York Mining Disaster, To Love Somebody, and Holiday.

Classics Bee Gees & a Barry Gibb production from the late '70's.

I just the right age when the Bee Gees took over the airwaves and much of Pop Culture from 1977-79.  The first album that came into our home was the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack (Dec. 1977).  We had Disco Fever like almost everybody else.  I remember later going to GECMO and my Dad getting my Mom the Here At Last...Bee Gees Live album (May 1977).  We played the hell out of it as well, but it didn’t compare to those magical songs of Fever.

Not the Brothers Gibb, but "The Boys":  Mark, Philip, and Gabe

Back then it was easy to be a Bee Gees fan.  They were simply everywhere!  You had the awesome video of Stayin' Alive featuring those white jumpsuits, the Fever soundtrack, Barry Gibb writing/producing the Grease Soundtrack, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and of course the endless hits. Beginning in Christmas 1977 the Bee Gees penned the following #1 Hits:  Staying Alive, How Deep Is Your Love, Night Fever, I Just Want To Be Your Everything, (Love Is) Thicker Than Water (for Andy Gibb), and If I Can’t Have You (for Yvonne Elliman). They held the No.1 spot on the U.S. Charts for 25 of 32 consecutive weeks.

My sister thought Barry & Barbra were married!

As kids, our personal SaturdayNight Fever happened when we arrived home from 5:15 Mass on Saturday nights.  We’d typically have hamburgers, and while mom was cooking we’d be playing disco with our records in the living room. We’d eat, watch the Muppets & Dance Fever with Deney Terrio, then play Bee Gees songs and the like.  We’d take turns using flashlights with colored construction paper taped to them, to simulate a disco ball.

As I look back now, I see how deep the Bee Gees were in my life.  Their music, with its vocal harmonies, its peaceful sways, and poignant lyrics reminds me of a simpler time.  It reminds me of a time before technology:  we had time for each other and music was the soundtrack of the memories we were making.

Growing up in the ‘70’s, there was us three brothers and my sister.  But in our family, it was always

Circa 1988: Former Disco Kingpins. Yes, I was still in corduroy

about the boys:  "The boys are coming”, “The boys are going?” “What are the boys doing?"  In many ways it was just us three.  We’d play together.  We’d mow lawns together.  We spent Friday nights at Grandma and Grandpa’s together.  Like the Bee Gees, we were a family of talent.  I was the artist & a later photographer.  My brother Mark was the journalist and story teller.  Philip was the musician & now web designer.  My sister Christina became a creative writer and teacher.  And later my brother Michael became a graphic artist.

When I hear the Bee Gees,  I am reminded not only of their great music but of the interesting parallels & coincidences that I have placed upon our different, yet sometimes similar stories:

SNF opened on Dec. 16, 1977

-The Gibb family had three boys, plus one:  Andy.  Our family had three boys, then later we added one more:  my brother Michael.

-Saturday Night Fever was released in 1977, on my mother’s birthday: December 16.

-My brother Philip was tall and skinny with long hair, like Robin Gibb.

-We have a strong family of siblings, but we brothers have always had a strong bond like the Brothers Gibb.

In 2003, I made my own CD of all the Bee Gees non-disco hits.

-The Bee Gees moved past the era of their hits, but always came "back home" to them, keeping the songs that made them stars close to their hearts.  We also moved past those songs, but at least for me, I came back to them realizing their depth and beauty in my adult life- never again feeling the need to apologize for being a Bee Gees fan.

-In 1998, my Aunt died in Texas, leaving my Dad with only one sibling:  his brother Victor.  In a very special trip, my brother Mark and I journeyed with my Dad and our Uncle Vic to Texas for the funeral:  two pairs of brothers.  For them, they were the youngest in their family; for us we were the oldest.  Twice the Bee Gees made a similar trek as brothers to a sibling's funeral:  The Bee Gees in 1988 for Andy Gibb's funeral and Robin and Barry to Maurice's funeral in 2003. 

In 2001, I got word when I was in Brazil that my uncle, my father’s last brother, had died.  I grieved at the thought that my father had no brothers left.  For at that point you are no longer a brother anymore, but someone who once was a brother.  I can only imagine what my father then, and what Barry Gibb is feeling now at the reality of losing all your brothers.  My dad had five, Barry had three.

Brothers:  My Dad John M. "Chet" Acosta & his brother Vic:  on the way to Texas in 1998.

 -In 2005, when my father was dying of heart failure the Bee Gees song How Can You Mend A Broken Heart came on the radio as I was leaving the hospital one day.  In that moment, the lyrics took on a new meaning for me:

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
How can can you mend this broken man...
Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again

The song came on at a time when the doctors had told us that my Dad was living with only 33% of his heart functioning--a physically broken heart.  And there was nothing we could do to stop it--like stopping the rain or the sun.  And we wanted to mend my Dad’s broken heart so that he could continue to live.  A year later, in grief counseling I learned that the death of a loved one breaks your heart, and that your heart will be forever fractured.

After my Dad’s death,  I assembled a group of songs on CD that were from different eras of his life.  How Deep Is Your Love rose up to represent not only that time in our lives, but the quiet, calm man my father was.  There is a peace in that song that is very representative of him.

Brothers:  My Uncle Vic & my Dad; My brother Mark & me in 1998.

-Lastly, I read April 21, 2012 that Robin Gibb was roused from his coma after the family had played him music and Barry Gibb sang to him in his hospital bed.  In 2005, my father also recovered from a coma three days after having a heart attack that we were certain would take his life.  We spoke to him, but heard later from a nurse that the Beethoven music we'd left in the room (my Dad’s favorite music) got him moving his head back and forth in rhythm.

And so we fans mourn the loss of of Robin Gibb, author of some of the sweetest sounds of harmony displayed in those early Bee Gees songs.  Those of us who are brothers, mourn personally Barry’s loss of his brothers.  We children of the '70’s mourn and sweetly remember the days gone by when the Bee Gees ruled the world.  To Barry, Maurice, Robin, and Andy Gibb I thank you for a lifetime of musical memories, that has been my soundtrack as the world has changed all around me.

....Cause we’re living in a world of fools
Breaking us down
When they all should let us be
We belong to you and me