Bee Gees

1
  • Year:
    1997
  • Inducted by:
    Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys) & Raffael Saddiq
  • Category:
    Performers

Introduction

We dare you to listen to the high-flying harmonies of the Bee Gees without singing along.

Few bands can say they stuck together for more than forty years, let alone that in that time they sold more than 200 million records. These brothers had an almost supernatural instinct for creating chart-toppers, and their talent in songwriting, production and performance skills lent them an artistic control that established them as Seventies icons.

Hall of Fame Essay

1997

Jim Farber

A great melody travels anywhere - through any age, over any beat, arranged in any genre. 

While memo­rable records can find sharp hooks in rhythm, production impact or even sheer noise, they can’t enjoy  the interpretations - and thus the endlessly multiplied lives - of a perfectly rounded tune. No group makes the point  more conclusively than the Bee Gees, an act whose magic melodies have weathered thirty years of trends, morphed through a music school’s worth of styles and forged five-hundred covers, all while stressing nothing so much as their hummable core.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Program Cover 1997
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1997 Inductees The Bee Gees
They are forever young, forever new.
Arif Mardin

Photography: Kevin Mazur, WireImage