HBO’s New Bee Gees Doc Will Send You On A Magnificent Musical Journey

The title of new documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, which debuts this Saturday, December 12 on HBO and HBO Max, is not only a nod to the band’s first No. 1 U.S. single but also a reference to an olive branch Barry Gibb extended to his brother and band mate Robin after one of their notorious rifts.

“That particular song, when Barry was writing it he reached out to Robin and offered him the first verse, which is always special in a band,” director Frank Marshall says during a zoom interview.

”Whoever gets to sing that first verse, it’s an honor. And it was one of the things that brought them back together after one of the dark periods in their relationship. They kept mending their broken hearts as they went through this journey. It seemed like an appropriate title.”

That this anecdote isn’t included in the actual film—which begins with the young Brothers Gibb honing their talents in Australia and follows their move to London in 1967 and subsequent meteoric rise—is symbolic of the authorized doc’s only weakness. 

Marshall’s lens is heavy on interviews, including new conversations with Barry, the last surviving brother; band mates from the Bee Gees’ heyday; family members; and fresh commentary from musicians Eric Clapton, Noel Gallagher, Nick Jonas, Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Justin Timberlake. It also weaves in ample interview footage from David Leaf’s 1999 chronicle of the supergroup.

But while it doesn’t skirt around the delusions that accompany fast fame—brother Maurice at one point proclaims he owned 21 Rolls Royces before he turned 21—and the jealousies and breakups that encroached (particularly between Barry and Robin over who would sing lead vocals), the film at times stops short of peeling back the whole curtain behind its impressive array of home movies, concert footage and photographs. 

What is front and center in the doc is the music, and what a magnificent opus it is. Viewers of all generations should be ready to immediately spiral down a Bees Gees rabbit hole, which frankly isn’t a bad place to be as we wrap this most trying of years.

Above all, it reminds us of the majestic ways this band of brothers could craft a song. More than 1,000 of them, in fact, including 20 No. 1 hits in the U.S. and U.K. during a span of more than 50 years. 

While the group was omnipresent in the mid- to late-‘70s with the explosion of The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, which has sold more than 16 million copies in the U.S. and won the 1977 Grammy for album of the year, the trio was so much more than disco. The documentary dives deep into the earlier pop melodies, their reinvention after the massive “Disco Sucks” backlash–a fascinating chapter of this story—and their ability to remain at the top of their game penning and producing songs for artists including Barbra Streisand (Guilty) and Dolly Parton (Islands in the Stream).  

“I think people don’t know what heavyweights they were,” says Marshall, who produced films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Seabiscuit. “A lot of people just tie them to the disco period, and that’s not fair. They had this amazing impact on music and pop culture, so I’d like to introduce, and reintroduce, the real Bee Gees and five decades of musical brilliance.”

The musical brilliance of Barry and twin brothers Robin and Maurice also extended to youngest brother Andy, whose songs also soared to the top of the charts and who deservedly gets his own chapter in the documentary. 

The stories behind the songs are nothing short of spectacular. How Barry and Robin, at the request of their manger Robert Stigwood, originally wrote To Love Somebody for Otis Redding, but Redding died before he ever got to record it. How the clickity-clack of their car driving across the Biscayne Bay bridge to Criteria Recording Studios in Miami inspired the opening sequence in Jive Talkin’. How they created the drum loop for Stayin’ Alive. 

Behind the hits, however, there was a lot of drama, drama that still seems to haunt Barry Gibb. At the age of 74, he’s had to say goodbye to all three of his brothers. Andy, who struggled with drug addiction, died first, in 1988, at the age of 30. Maurice passed away in 2003, of complications caused by a twisted intestine, and Robin died in 2012, of complications from cancer and intestinal surgery.

As the eldest brother declares at the opening of the nearly two-hour film, “I am beginning to recognize the fact that nothing is true. It’s all down to perception.” His pain in being left as the sole storyteller is palpable. 

“He was really reflective, very honest. There is a lot of sadness,” says Marshall, who says the two quickly developed a rapport and still talk weekly. “It was interesting, maybe it was like a therapy session to talk about things because he talked about things in a way he may not have talked about in the heyday.”

Robin and Maurice—the brother who took on the role of family peacekeeper—certainly get their share of screen time, thanks in large part to those previous interviews. 

“I wanted Robin and Maurice to have their own voices, and Barry really wanted to have as much as we could from his brothers’ perspectives,” Marshall says. “David Leaf did these wonderful interviews with the three of them that were very candid. I wanted all of them at the same time talking about what their life was like and reflecting back, and then I would have Barry come in every once in a while to sort of be the narrator of those periods.”

A 25-song soundtrack was released to complement The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart. Start your engines.