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From album
One Night Only
Bee Gees · 1998 · Track 19
Details
Duración2:48
ÁlbumOne Night Only
Año1998
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The story behind
The melancholy that envelops I Started a Joke seems to stem from an airplane journey. According to Robin Gibb, the melody came to him while traveling on a British Airways Vickers Viscount aircraft, about a hundred kilometers from Essen. The constant drone of the propeller engines, he recounts, plunged him into a kind of trance that, over time, transformed into a melody reminiscent of a church choir. The story, humorously told by Barry Gibb, suggests they stopped the plane in a nearby town to finish the lyrics in a hotel, although he clarifies it was actually a city and not a pub. This anecdote, filled with the psychedelia of the era where ideas, however strange they seemed, found their meaning, is embodied in a composition that was the last to be recorded for the album Idea, completed on June 20, 1968. The song, primarily written by Robin Gibb with contributions from Barry and Maurice on the bridge, was produced by the Bee Gees themselves along with Robert Stigwood.
I Started a Joke was released as a single in the United States in December 1968, and it was the last to feature guitarist Vince Melouney, who left the band shortly after. In the United Kingdom, it was not released as a single, but there was an alternative version by Heath Hampstead. The B-side varied by country: in France, Swan Song was included, while elsewhere it was Kilburn Towers. The song proved its reach by topping the charts in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. In Canada, it remained at the top of the RPM charts for two weeks. In the United States, it debuted at number 66 on the Cashbox magazine chart in December 1968 and climbed to number 6. Cash Box described it as part of the Bee Gees' more "smooth" style, highlighting its "paradoxical imagery" that offered a "magnetic charm for mystical interpretation." Decades later, in 1995, Faith No More re-recorded it as the B-side to their single Digging the Grave, and it appeared on some editions of their album King for a Day... Fool for a Lifetime.