1986 was a poor year for Barry
Gibb. Following the commercial
under-performance of his first solo
album, the experimental
Now Voyager,
MCA declined to release his
follow-up album. Of course, in
hindsight, it was only a temporary
blip as one year later the Bee Gees
would release their hugely
successful ESP album, featuring the
number one smash 'You Win Again',
but this had meant that an entire
album of Barry Gibb tracks had been
left on the shelf to gather dust.
Just as the Bee Gees were returning
to the top of the game, Barry had
also been working on his first
movie. Called 'Hawks', the British
film was about two terminally ill
guys who decide to spend their final
weeks and months living life to the
full. The film, which starred
current (at the time) James Bond
Timothy Dalton and future ER star
Anthony Edwards, was from an idea by
Barry Gibb and was partly funded by
him. Most importantly, it featured
several of the tracks that would
have been on his unreleased 1986
solo album. This was the perfect
excuse for Barry to ensure that his
songs finally saw the light of day.
The previous album was therefore
repackaged as the soundtrack to
'Hawks'. Not every track made it
onto the album, though, and some of
the tracks that were included on the
album did not actually feature in
the film at all. He also recorded
two new tracks especially for the
album, one being the melancholy
single 'Childhood Days', one of
Barry's finest solo works.
The other tracks are a real mixed
bag. There are a couple of wonderful
Barry ballads, 'Not In Love At All'
and 'My Eternal Love', the latter
being a song which, despite its
slightly abstract lyrics and
indifferent sound quality, is sung
in falsetto and sounds to all
intents and purposes like an updated
late 1970s Bee Gees track.
However, most of the tracks were
fairly inaccessible and largely
self-indulgent, and now sound very
dated. The track 'Celebration De La
Vie' is an instrumental and is the
theme music from the film, although
it is a less satisfying version that
actually used in the film itself.
The album also features the Diana
Ross Gibb-composed hit, 'Chain
Reaction', which also features in
the film.
This album was only released in the
UK and is now very rare. Whilst not
featuring Barry Gibb at his best
(perhaps that gives some clues as to
why it wasn't originally released by
MCA), it
has some notable tracks and is worth
searching out.
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Where to Buy
Buy vinyl single Childhood Days from Hawks (released 1988)
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