Death to Disco

Timing is everything.

It could be that an idea comes together with the perfect alignment of time and place.

There could be a wave of public interest that carries something from relative obscurity to be regarded as a modern classic.

Having a good idea first gives a head start and can be critical in maximising publicity, profit and endurance of a product or service.

On the flip side, everything has its equivalent of a "sell by" or "use by" date and can either go out of fashion with a big noise or just fade into obscurity with some semblance of pride and character.

By 1976 the dance and social phenomenon of Disco was beginning to wane.

This was down to a number of factors including the emergence of alternative music scenes including the early signs of Punk and New Wave but mainly down to a rather weak and boring single beat formula and a lot of bland and nondescript artistes and songs.

Disco was not quite dead but was certainly in its last throes.

There appeared to be little hope for a stay of execution until in 1977 the release of the soundtrack and movie by Paramount Pictures of "Saturday Night Fever", a Robert Stigwood Production.

It had a realistically gritty and in places dark storyline centred around a group of Italian Americans in New York whose dead end jobs were only tolerated in order to produce the paychecks by which to let rip over the weekend in the Disco Clubs of Manhattan and the New York suburbs.

The film was relatively low budget for the period at $4 million dollars and the Studio had no great expectations of having a hit on its hands so much so that they waived their rights to Royalties for the soundtrack album before it was even released. The album surprised everyone with record pre-sales and held a position in the US Album Charts for 24 weeks.

The success was entirely down to the well crafted tracks contributed by the Bee Gees, comprising the talented brothers of Maurice, Barry and Robin Gibbs.

The opening of the film was to a distinctive walking beat with iconic bass and drums readily capturing the style and persona of the lead, John Travolta playing the downtrodden daytime Paint Shop worker but weekend Disco Dancer, Tony Manero.

The idea of the movie had been plagued with problems with the script struggling to be finalised, the main female lead not yet chosen and a director, called in a short notice getting to grips with the whole project.

As though a saving grace, it took the Bee Gees only a week after meeting the Producer to send through a cassette of tracks and six formed the nucleus of the soundtrack album.

These became established as hits in their own right, including "Stayin' Alive", "How deep is your love", "Night Fever", "More than a woman", "If I can't have you" and "You should be dancing".

The mixture of up beat tempos and melodic masterpieces were an ideal combination to capture the aspirational motives of the main characters.

The themes behind the action were often controversial and stark covering rape, suicide and ultimate disappointment in what life hands out to you.

The style aspects of great clothes, hair and attitudes to match summed up Disco Mania and the unique sounds behind Saturday Night Fever were widely regarded as being the saviours of the genre, or at least giving it some extension of popularity for a few more years. It was acknowledged as being a close thing but then again, timing is everything.