The Bee Gees - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1971-1973

Here's the third and final album of the Bee Gees performing at the BBC in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Of the three volumes, this is the one I'm the proudest to present. Their late 1960s BBC sessions have been frequently bootlegged, and sometimes released as "grey market" albums in Europe (meaning it's technically legal there but the artist didn't authorize it and doesn't get any money from it). However, their early 1970s BBC sessions are much more obscure, to the point that it took me a long time to even confirm that they existed. I couldn't find any of the BBC performances on this album until musical associate Marley came along and shared what he had direct from BBC transcription discs. That means despite their obscurity, these versions sound great. So a big thanks to Marley.

As I mentioned in the previous volumes, I wanted to make this kind of an alternate best of collection for this time period, so if any big hits weren't included, I tried to find them from other TV or radio shows. For this album, five of the songs come from such sources. "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" and "In the Morning (Morning of My Life)" come from different British TV shows. It's especially surprising that "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" was never performed for the BBC, since that was a number one song in Britain in 1971. But the band didn't do any BBC sessions in 1971.

"Living in Chicago," "Massachusetts," and "Saw a New Morning" are from Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show." I'd included "Massachusetts" on Volume 1 in this series, but this is a significantly different acoustic version. "Living in Chicago" and "Saw a New Morning" weren't hits, but I found these sources with excellent sound quality, so I figured I'd throw them in.

Everything here is officially unreleased. The remaining seven songs come from three different BBC studio sessions. In the early 1970s, BBC policy started changing, and often the musical artists were allowed to just use the exact studio versions instead of doing unique versions for the BBC. Some of these are pretty similar to the recorded versions, but I checked closely and they're all different. In 1974, the Bee Gees just had their records played for a BBC session that year, so I didn't bother including that, or anything after, since that same situation persisted.

By the way, "I've Gotta Get a Message to You" was a number one hit in Britain in 1968, but the group didn't play it for the BBC around then. Instead, they did it in a 1973 session. Maybe they realized they'd missed it back then, so they made up for that years later.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (Bee Gees)
02 In the Morning [Morning of My Life] (Bee Gees)
03 Bad, Bad Dreams (Bee Gees)
04 Never Been Alone (Bee Gees)
05 Run to Me [Edit] (Bee Gees)
06 Living in Chicago (Bee Gees)
07 Alive (Bee Gees)
08 Sea of Smiling Faces (Bee Gees)
09 Massachusetts [Acoustic Version] (Bee Gees)
10 Saw a New Morning (Bee Gees)
11 I've Gotta Get a Message to You (Bee Gees)
12 Wouldn't I Be Someone (Bee Gees)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15278200/TBeeGs_1971-1973_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in a hotel room in Japan in 1972. Maurice Gibb was the joker of the group. He's joking around here, gripping the end of a guitar cable with his teeth.