Joseph Brennan's Bee Gees Discography is part of ColumbiaWeb.

See also Webmania Hits Columbia and Electronic Distance, by Brett Forman.

Joe Brennan (center) with Bee Gees Maurice (left) and Barry. Photo by Lynn Saville.

Mill, Socrates, Dickinson, and--the Bee Gees: Columbia has them all. It's no surprise, when you place the resources of a great research university at the hands of a scholar with a strong interest in 1960s British Invasion rock groups. The scholar is Joe Brennan '73C '82LS, and his musical passions are the Beatles and the Bee Gees. The Web comes in as the medium that has enabled Brennan to bring together longstanding personal interests and more recent professional concerns in his position at Columbia as a user services consultant specializing in e-mail. He helps people needing assistance with e-mail services, lends a hand on the AcIS hotline, and occasionally gets to teach a course on such topics as electronic mail or a survey of Internet resources. In what spare time he can find, Brennan has assembled a wealth of information pertaining to New York--he has created a schematic subway map that has won serious interest from the Metropolitan Transit Authority--and on the Fab Four and the Brothers Gibb.

  "I always want to know more about things I like," Brennan says. "My two favorite music groups since the 1960s are the Beatles and the Bee Gees. There are a lot of books about the Beatles, and I have many of them, but for the Bee Gees much less is available." By 1975, he had begun assembling information about the English-born brothers who emigrated to Australia with their family in 1958. When they returned to their homeland nine years later, they achieved near-instant acclaim and a seemingly endless string of hit records.

  The Bee Gees discography, which last year garnered a citation as a "Web Winner" from Computer Life magazine, had humble beginnings. "It took a long time," Brennan admits. "I kept finding out about songs and records I didn't have, and it became very hard to keep track of everything, so I began a chronological list just to help me remember things. It was on so many sheets of paper in a folder."

  Then when Columbia got World Wide Web capability in 1994, he began to enter the lists online. "It turned out to be a great idea," he adds. "I get mail from time to time from people who have run across one of my pages, and often enough they have things to add or correct, so it keeps changing a little and getting more accurate."

  Among those to take note of Brennan's Web page were members of the Bee Gees themselves. On a visit to New York this spring to record a track for their upcoming album, by unofficial count the 29th release in their four-decade-long careers, brothers Barry and Maurice Gibb had Brennan down to their midtown recording studio for a brief chat and photo session. The third Bee Gee, Robin Gibb, had stayed behind at the group's home base in Miami.

  It was Brennan's first meeting with the Gibbs, and their conversation ranged from computer-talk to some questions he hoped to clear up for his Web page. Maurice, a self-confessed computer freak, has upgraded over the years from an original Macintosh to an 8-gigabyte PowerPC that he uses for digital video and editing. In contrast, elder brother Barry smilingly described himself as "computer-free." Both, however, spoke enthusiastically about the new technology and its impact on their lives and work.

  One area in which the Internet in particular holds great promise for the group is as a way of spreading word of new releases. It is accessible both to diehard fans and to those who have not kept up with the Bee Gees since their phenomenal chart success in the 70s, followed by their work as producers for artists like Barbra Streisand, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, and Jimmy Ruffin in the 80s. The medium is welcome in light of the ongoing fragmentation of the radio audience, with Top 40 radio being swept away by an explosion of formats catering to a seemingly endless proliferation of tastes.

  "Years ago, you'd release a record just to have a hit," Maurice pointed out. "It wasn't pigeonholed. But if 'Strawberry Fields' was released today, would it be AOR [album oriented rock], or maybe the 'I don't know' chart? Or 'Eleanor Rigby'--would that be classical?" He adds, "Groups like us were making records in those days just in the hope that people would like it. We didn't think of the demographics in those years."

  At the same time, the Bee Gees themselves continue to try on new musical styles, and in recent releases they have taken distinctly different approaches from track to track. Explains Barry, "I don't believe in the uniformity of an album. There shouldn't be a thread of familiarity unless the whole album is about one subject, even if it's a subconscious one--then you can go that way and be happy about it. We like so many kinds of music, we don't feel comfortable putting just one style on an album. It's all just music."

John and the Bee Gees.

  Whatever you call it, the results have been impressive, as even a quick glance through Joe Brennan's discography makes clear. By his estimate, the Brothers Gibb have written nearly 800 songs, the quality of which led to their induction into the BMI Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1994. Among their many other accomplishments are sales of more than 100 million records, which places them fifth on the all-time list, seven Grammy awards, and numerous gold and platinum albums and singles.

  They continue to rack up achievements. In addition to the new recording, which will take their taste for variety one step further through collaborations with a rotating cast of producers and musicians, cover versions of two of their biggest hits--"Stayin' Alive" and "How Deep Is Your Love"--recently hit number one in countries around the world.

  And a digitally remastered version of "Saturday Night Fever," the best-selling soundtrack ever, arrived in stores this past spring.

  What keeps them going after so many years? "The same reason as always," Barry says simply. "Because we love it."