The track’s famous drum loop came after the band’s drummer Dennis Bryon took a break to visit his sick mother, and two engineers working with the Bee Gees replicated a drum track by splicing bars from the band’s prior hit, “Night Fever,” into a half-inch four-track loop.

“It’s not pretty or pop like you remember.”Īlso Read: 'Melania Trump' Talks Christmas With Colbert and Plagiarizes Michelle Obama One Last Time (Video) “When you listen to the drum track on ‘Stayin’ Alive” by itself, it’s really this super rugged, tough thing,” producer Mark Ronson said during the documentary. “‘Stayin’ Alive’ was the influence New York gave to us, and the energy level at that point in the late 70s was really survival,” Barry Gibb said. In fact, the Bee Gees wrote the song as an homage to New York’s gritty streets during that era, as to their influences from Black culture and R&B, as noted by the lyrical references to the plights of minority New Yorkers sprinkled in between the catchy chorus. Released in 1977, just over a year after serial killer David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz terrorized New York during the summer of 1976 with eight unprovoked slayings across the city, the song was produced during the time, aptly described by Irish writer Dermot McEvoy, when “New York’s grime was golden” and the lyrics reflect the uncertain state of things in America’s biggest city. “The lyrics very obviously state the scenario of survival.”Īlso Read: Surviving Bee Gee Barry Gibb Says He'd Rather Have His Brothers 'Back Here and No Hits at All' “Very few people realize it’s to do with anything but dance, but the lyrics don’t talk about dance at all,” Robin Gibb said in archival footage included in the documentary (Gibb died in 2012). The song’s complicated history is explained in HBO’s new documentary “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” a biography of the legendary pop group.

It enjoyed 4 weeks at the top of the billboard charts and is widely credited for firmly cementing disco as mainstream phenomenon and the Bee Gees themselves as 1970s dance music icons.Īnd weirdly enough, that almost didn’t happen - “Stayin’ Alive” wasn’t originally written to be a dance club tune. The song was the first track off the hugely successful soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever” and as used in the film provides the backdrop for one of the defining cinematic moments of the 1970s. “Stayin’ Alive” is the Bee Gees’ most recognizable song, and arguably one of the most well-known dance tracks ever created.

Stayin' Alive by Miriam Ann Moore